God knows me,
all about me. There is nothing about who I am that He does not know
fully. He is the omniscient, omnipresent God. He knows everything and
always has. He is everywhere all the time. God knows.
When we forget that truth in our daily lives, we make two serious mistakes. The first is that we become mechanical, external Christians. Since an external righteousness is all that's needed to impress men, we slide into such a mindset and become artificial Christians. Oh, we go through all the right motions and say all the right words, but our hearts are as cold as ice. We may worship God externally to the delight of all, including ourselves, but we have no sense of His presence. In our hearts we have other loves. But God knows our hearts, and He will not accept our outward lies when our hearts are out of step with Him and His desires for our lives. He wants a relationship, a relationship built on mutual love not crowd pleasing hypocrisy. And remember, Jesus defined hypocrisy as doing all the right things for the wrong reason--to gain the praise of men. To forget that God knows me is to admit that I don't know Him. And that I only want Him on the fringes of my life.
And sometimes this creeps into our prayers--one of the ways we communicate with Him and thus grow into a deeper relationship with Him. I can't count the number of times I have prayed to God, and, instead of telling Him what I was really feeling, fed Him some spiritualized mumbo jumbo that was not my heart's desire at all. It's not as if He doesn't know my heart. All I've done is tried to "snow" Him with dishonest communication--always a detriment to a deep, satisfying relationship.
The second mistake we make when we forget that God knows us is that we often come to the wrong conclusion about His attitude toward us. There are many disciples who love Him and are committed to serving Him, to obeying Him, to doing His will. Yet, they often fail, make mistakes, and then imagine that He is angry and disappointed with them. Not so. The God who knows our hearts, knows that our deep desire is to please Him, and He is delighted with us--even when our humanity gets in the way of our commitment to Him. The devil delights in making us think that God must be displeased with us, that we are out of His will and walking far from Him. But if our heart's desire is to please Him, He is pleased with us. He knows us. He looks at the thoughts and intents of our hearts.
God knows. He can't be fooled. If there is a gap between our theology and our heart's desire, He knows. If our Christianity is superficial and we think He doesn't know it, we are self-deceived. If our Christian walk flows from a heart that loves Him and desires to please Him and we think that He's disappointed with us because of our failures, we are self-deceived as well.
May I never forget that He knows me. The minute I do I make an idol of my own reasoning ability and feelings. I have failed to understand and to know Him. And to know and be known by Him is the path to the walk of faith that alone can please His loving heart. Any other path is a path of thorns.
When we forget that truth in our daily lives, we make two serious mistakes. The first is that we become mechanical, external Christians. Since an external righteousness is all that's needed to impress men, we slide into such a mindset and become artificial Christians. Oh, we go through all the right motions and say all the right words, but our hearts are as cold as ice. We may worship God externally to the delight of all, including ourselves, but we have no sense of His presence. In our hearts we have other loves. But God knows our hearts, and He will not accept our outward lies when our hearts are out of step with Him and His desires for our lives. He wants a relationship, a relationship built on mutual love not crowd pleasing hypocrisy. And remember, Jesus defined hypocrisy as doing all the right things for the wrong reason--to gain the praise of men. To forget that God knows me is to admit that I don't know Him. And that I only want Him on the fringes of my life.
And sometimes this creeps into our prayers--one of the ways we communicate with Him and thus grow into a deeper relationship with Him. I can't count the number of times I have prayed to God, and, instead of telling Him what I was really feeling, fed Him some spiritualized mumbo jumbo that was not my heart's desire at all. It's not as if He doesn't know my heart. All I've done is tried to "snow" Him with dishonest communication--always a detriment to a deep, satisfying relationship.
The second mistake we make when we forget that God knows us is that we often come to the wrong conclusion about His attitude toward us. There are many disciples who love Him and are committed to serving Him, to obeying Him, to doing His will. Yet, they often fail, make mistakes, and then imagine that He is angry and disappointed with them. Not so. The God who knows our hearts, knows that our deep desire is to please Him, and He is delighted with us--even when our humanity gets in the way of our commitment to Him. The devil delights in making us think that God must be displeased with us, that we are out of His will and walking far from Him. But if our heart's desire is to please Him, He is pleased with us. He knows us. He looks at the thoughts and intents of our hearts.
God knows. He can't be fooled. If there is a gap between our theology and our heart's desire, He knows. If our Christianity is superficial and we think He doesn't know it, we are self-deceived. If our Christian walk flows from a heart that loves Him and desires to please Him and we think that He's disappointed with us because of our failures, we are self-deceived as well.
May I never forget that He knows me. The minute I do I make an idol of my own reasoning ability and feelings. I have failed to understand and to know Him. And to know and be known by Him is the path to the walk of faith that alone can please His loving heart. Any other path is a path of thorns.
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