Identity - Knowing God 4

With snow still on the ground, I'm thinking Spring and our beautiful iris garden.

Continuing our series on knowing God as our source for security in out quest for building healthy and positive self esteem, A.W. Tozer says, “What COMES INTO OUR MINDS WHEN WE THINK ABOUT God is the most important thing about us. The most remarkable fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.” (Knowledge of the Holy)

How do we begin knowing God? Biblical theology teaches the doctrine of prevenient grace (before a man can seek God, God must first have sought the man.) Jesus said, ‘No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him.”

Dan Dehaan writes: God longed to create man to appreciate Him. God created people to know Him. .. to enjoy Him. God put in men’s hearts the “god-shaped vacuum” that could only be filled with Himself. Why did God create us? To fellowship with us. Why did Christ come to earth? To restore broken fellowship.”

The impulse to pursue God originates with God, and we as Believers all experience that stimulus. The Bible tells us that God is not willing that any should perish. God desires for all men to pursue Him.
However, our response to His prevenient grace is not to resist Him but to aggressively pursue intimacy with Him. Hebrews 11:6 tells us that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

The first question: have you sought Him first of all as your savior and Lord? IF not, it will be impossible to journey in the quest of intimacy with God. John 1:12 tells us that whoever receives Christ into his life becomes a child of God.

How would you classify your quest for knowing God.
1. I’m not a follower of Christ but I’m seeking and considering
2. I’m a Christian, but my diligence in seeking God is lacksidasical
3. I’m hot and cold. I muster up discipline to read the Bible for a while, then I slack off. No consistency.
4. I have trouble seeking God in my troubling circumstances.
5. I’m usually disciplined in diligently seeking God but I yearn for a deeper intimacy with Him.

God is a rewarder of those who DILIGENTLY seek Him. Complacency is not part of the game plan in knowing God. As children of God we already have relationship with Him. Now our challenge is to develop fellowship with God. Developing intimacy with Abba Father. Augustine so aptly stated about God, “Thou hast made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.”

Hosea 6:6,3LB I don’t want your sacrifices, I want your love; I don’t want your offerings, I want you to know me. Oh, that we might know the Lord. Let us press on to know him, and he will respond to us as surely as the coming of dawn or the rain of early spring.