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Thursday, May 21, 2020
What do we Know?
Jesus spoke earth shaking words to the woman at the well in Samaria:
"If thou knewest the gift of God,
and Who it is that saith ...
thou wouldst have asked of Him" (Jn. 4.10)
Three simple things:
the Gift,
the Giver,
and the Response.
And all are dependent on the knowing ... "if thou knewest."
They are words which shake me today,
and render my life naked before God.
How much do I really know of that which God gives?
How much do I really have of that which God gives?
Beyond all the trappings of conventional Christianity,
and beyond the religious explanations,
beyond my plans and human based endeavors,
how much of that within me is gifted by God?
If Life is to know Him,
then life is measured by the amount of my knowledge of Him.
And the question is how much do I possess of Life?
Does my knowledge come from what is Revealed to me?
Do our churches operate through Light within,
or do they follow the forms of the world's presentation.
Is it too hard to break with this world's structures of expression,
its musical forms,
its stage and light effects?
At the end of the day we do well to remember the words, "If thou knewest,"
-and measure ourselves by this word.
So also at all of the endings in life...
at the end of our prayer and our worship,
at the end of a hymn, of a meeting,
at the end of our reading of the Scriptures,
do we know the reality of it all?
If we really know the Gift there will be things we do,
and also things we cannot do.
The things we do will be in harmony with the Spirit of the Giver,
and all that is not in harmony will be cast aside.
God is infinite - there is always more to know of Him.
Paul writes after many years of service, "that I may know Him." (Phil 3.10)
The Psalmist expresses, "deep calleth unto deep." (Ps. 42.7)
I don't know how much each of us knows - but the Call of God's depths is eternal.
Isaiah speaks of the requirement (44.3)
"I will pour water on him that is thirsty."
Let us come with thirst, and look to God alone,
for the Gift which He alone can bestow.
Here is Life, abundant and eternal.
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Amen and Amen!
ReplyDeleteI've come to understand that part of the problem of the ineffectiveness of the American Church stems from an attempt to claim and created a culture of our own (the Christian publishing industry, music industry, movies, mega-meetings, television shows, politics, etc) and that as a result, the Church has become self-interested, self-promoting, and self-protecting. Fear that the culture of the world would invade and impose itself upon us and our beliefs, we began to cloister and erect barriers between ourselves and the world around us. We wanted to create, in effect, a 'counter-culture' of our own, partly in competition with the world's way of doing things, to show them we could do them too, and partly in a need to define ourselves. There are two problems with this that I have seen. First, fear is not recognized in the Kingdom of God, for God's Light cannot and never will be extinguished, even in times of persecution and/or harassment. The very definition of Light, spiritual and natural, is that darkness does not have the power to overtake it, but in fact, the opposite is true. If the Church really understood this, they would not be wasting so much time on themselves in these vain endeavors. While cloistering may be the easiest and most spiritually non-confrontational avenue to take, I don't see it occurring anywhere in the life of Christ or His disciples, or in the way in which the early Church operated. Secondly, In reality, Christianity is not a culture, and Christ Himself was 'a-cultural,' putting aside all cultural influences that defined Jewishness at that time, but that actually hid the truth of God. Instead, Christianity is a very difficult daily walk in the truth of the Light of God. But, since we don't like difficulties or confrontations, we would rather cloister among ourselves and make ourselves ineffective for the Kingdom of God! There may have been a time and a place for all of this Christian cultural paraphernalia, but it's a different time now. It has been revealed to me that the time is short and the enemy is engaged. It's time to get alone with God, and perhaps that is one good outcomes of the pandemic on the American Church, if they avail themselves of the opportunity. God bless.
ReplyDeleteMuy buena reflexión Pastor Paul. Dios le Bendiga siempre, y derrame mas gracia sobre su vida.
ReplyDeleteComprendo que hay mucho que no conocemos la Iglesia en este tiempo. A La iglesia le gusta la facilidad pero no la intimidad. Queremos el premio sin pasar por el sacrificio. Realmente si supieramos....
Ohhh que Dios nos abra el entendimiento