Passionate about Knowing God

 

God is more than enough for us! In truth, He is infinitely more! Our knowledge of His wisdom, power, and love should be ever expanding, and an eternity is not enough time for us to reach the end of all that He is; for He has no end! If you and I intend to fulfill our destinies in His divine Will and Plan, we must stretch ourselves to allow the sovereignty and magnificence of our God to sink in. Stretching is necessary because we have allowed ourselves to become too comfortable with where we are. We know what we know, and most of us do not hunger to know more. If you haven’t noticed, God is demanding that we snap out of this. All of creation is pushing us to know God more fully than we know Him now.

It’s impossible to think that we can know ourselves without knowing God and without discovering His plan and purpose for our individual lives. We are not ‘stand-alone’ creatures of happenstance. We are an on-purpose people created by an on-purpose God. His Spirit is within us, and whenever we attempt to step outside His framework, we will be bruised and battered by His enemy, satan. Our minds will be attacked, because the mind is the battleground of our lives. The mind is where we have wicked imaginations, and these allow the wrong things to enter our lives.

Proverbs 6:16 tells us that there are seven things that are an abomination to our Heavenly Father. These are things that He hates. One of those is a heart that devises wicked imaginations. This means that He hates it when a person’s mind meditates on the wickedness of the world. To have vengeful, negative, and ugly thoughts is not necessarily a sin, but to sit in them, and allow them to incubate is dangerous business. Jesus Christ shows us this in Matthew 5:28(NLT). He said, “But I say, anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Our Master Jesus makes it clear that the sin begins with the mind. If those sinful thoughts drop into the heart, the sin is committed and must be repented.

Because we are so accustomed to interacting with the world, we connect wrong and right with the exercise of an external or physical action, but Jesus Christ sets this straight. It’s what we have in our hearts and minds that either positions us for God’s glory or the devil’s darkness.

To see this a little further, examine Genesis 6:5-6(NKJV). It says, “Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.” This passage is contained within the record of Noah and the Ark, when every living thing upon the earth was destroyed except Noah and his family. The hearts and minds of men and women had become so full of evil and wickedness that redemption wasn’t possible for them. Their sinful actions came second, but the sin began in their minds through wicked imaginations. All they thought about and imagined was different ways to commit sin.

There can be no doubt that the action our Father is concerned with most is what goes on internally. Jesus Christ said in John 6:53-58(NLT), “53 I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you cannot have eternal life within you. 54 But anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise that person at the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 57 I live because of the living Father who sent me; in the same way, anyone who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 I am the true bread that came down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will not die as your ancestors did (even though they ate the manna) but will live forever.”

In the physical sense, eating food means that we ingest it or take it into our bodies. We then chew on it and digest it so that its nutrients become a part of us. The importance of eating to nourish our physical bodies sustains our lives and gives them strength. Jesus Christ used this process to demonstrate to us how incredibly crucial it is that we eat of His flesh and drink of His blood, that we take every aspect of his person into ourselves. Doing so gives us strength to make it day to day, and most importantly, it gives us the gift of eternal life. The food that we eat while we live on earth ultimately turns to waste, but the food we eat from Christ is life itself, and it will never perish. We ingest the reality of what Christ has done for us through his sacrifice, and we must continually feast on him.

He goes on to tell us in John 6:63(NLT), “The Spirit alone gives eternal life. Human effort accomplishes nothing. And the very words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” Many of us have practices and routines that we go through each day. We lean on our own efforts, and we get used to this. But to be sanctified before God, we must break out of our routines. They keep us from seeing the aspects of our Heavenly Father that He wants to show us. The routines are about physical effort, but Jesus Christ tells us that God is looking for what’s happening internally. He’s looking for a heart and mind that is strong towards Him. What does this look like for us? The answer to this question is that it looks like and is indeed passion. Jesus Christ is passionate about the Father and God wants to see that same passion in each of His children.

The reality is that you and I focus on what we’re passionate about. We become connected with and begin to model whatever we focus on. To focus is to set our minds on a particular mental image or imagination and to allow our minds to stay in that place. The question each of us must ask is how much of this focusing have we applied to God. How much of Christ have we focused on to the point of digesting His flesh and His blood? Are we passionate about God? This is the question we must ask ourselves continually, and He already knows the answer.

Many of us believers know religion, but that does not equate to knowing God. He is calling upon us to stretch and reach beyond the boundaries of what we think we know. Passion causes us to do what Christ commands in Matthew 6:33 which is to seek God with all that we are. Acts 17:26-27 tells us that God predestined and appointed every person’s entrance into this earth. He did this so that we will seek after Him. And not just casually seek Him when we get around to it. We are to grope for Him, feeling our way through the muck and mire of untrained thoughts, and get an image of His brilliance in our minds. And there our minds must remain, stuck on Him, captivated by His splendor, saturated in His love, and amazed by His grace.

We must apply ourselves to changing our imaginations from worldly to Godly. Spend time with Heavenly Father by mediating on His goodness and seeing Him with your mind’s eye. If you have a precious image or portrait of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, spend time gazing upon his glory. The psalmist said in Psalm 77:12(ESV), “I will ponder all your work, and meditate on your mighty deeds.” Our thoughts and feelings tell the story about where our true desires lay. Grope for God and stay your mind upon His marvelous glory. He will meet you in this place of rest and seeking. And if you make a habit of meditating on Him, you will be amazed by the intimacy it brings in your relationship with God. You’ll be stretched beyond what you thought was possible, and God will teach you so much more about Himself and His extraordinary power and love.■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

“Passionate about Knowing God", written for Christian Encouragement and Inspiration© 2023. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.