Monday, February 10, 2014
378 - How Do You Know You Know Him?
Spirituality Column #378
February 11, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville
February 11, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville
How Do You Know You Know Him?
By Bob Walters
It’s
easy to go to church, read the Bible, give some money, say a prayer, sing a
song, serve in the Kingdom, perform a kindness and profess faith.
What’s
hard is knowing that you know God,
Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
The
theological, doctrinal, church word for this is “discernment” – the ability or
awareness to discern, distinguish, determine, discriminate and detect the
presence, leading, and will of God. Most
of the time when somebody says they have “heard God speak,” they are saying
they have received a truth, a comfort, a direction, or quite possibly even a
challenge from God. And the way they
received it was discernment.
Christians
100 percent “get” this, or at least we should, and for sure accessing
communication with God ought to be the primary goal of every human being. It shouldn’t be all that surprising that God
who created us, the divine Jesus who was a living, breathing man, and the Holy
Spirit who was sent to help us “discern” God (John 14:15-22, Acts 2:1-2), can
communicate in sometimes startlingly plain terms with our living, breathing,
stumbling lives in this world.
Philosophically
modern man – and that term means “man who believes he has helped to create and
define God” (seriously, that’s what “modernism” means”) – usually winces when
he hears anyone mention “talking to God.”
It crosses a line of worldly rationality into otherworldly faith that
shouldn’t really be there – can’t be there – if God is simply something
conjured as a self-medicating mental prescriptive for man’s everyday confusion
about the meaning of life, where we come from, where we fit in, where we are
going, and why we are here.
Knowing Christ
doesn’t mean we will escape confusion, always act right, or know all the
answers. Non-believers are quick to say
that God is a delusion, an illusion, even a deception. Yet, God does amazing things with our minds. A trusting believer will entertain occasional
doubts and ask questions, but discernment is as real as a sunrise.
The first tests
of discerning God are selfless love and divine peace (Philippians 4:4-9). Things that “build up” His Kingdom tend to be
from God. Conversely, hatred, anger and
fear tend to indicate self-directed worldly interests, Satan’s favorite
playground.
As for
Christ? When you know Him for real, you’ll
feel His presence continually, church becomes a state of mind not just a Sunday
destination, the Bible makes increasingly more sense, and prayer is a time of
joy. This is how God talks to us.
Never doubt God
is knowable, but first you have to talk to Him.
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