Knowing God or Knowing All About Him

One inconspicuous Sunday, visiting a church to watch my niece get baptized, I heard a message that changed my “walk” forever.

The man delivering the message on this day is not my pastor, but a pastor to our extended family.  He is the pastor of a church where many of my aunts, uncles, and cousins attend, and has been a gift to the family during some extremely painful trials (tragic death of family members) and during times of joy (births and weddings).

Howard said one line that has rung in my head for over 4 years now.

“My prayer is that you would learn to Know God, rather than strive to Know More About Him”

As Howard pointed out, the goal of the Christian life should not be to read a book and be the foremost authority on who God is.  Not that there is value in that, but if you only spend your time on this earth as a student of God, you will never know who he is, or have a chance to experience him in the embrace of a relationship.

I prayed that prayer in my heart with Howard on that Sunday, but I never knew the depth of that request until this past year.  God has been answering that request in so many diverse ways ever since.  Every season of my life since then has been like an onion, peeling back the layers of what this really means.  I find myself not going a week without hearing that in my head, and asking God to keep bringing me to the place where I know Him better, and stop learning about him.

It would take years to explain to you what that has produced in my life, and the trials and tribulations that this prayer has produced.  You’ve read along with me a little bit over the past year, but I can say with 100% assurance, that God heard that prayer and has been answering it ever since.

I love the way Darin Hufford makes the analogy (and I am severely paraphrasing here), “If one of my kids came in to my room and started asking me questions about what I was doing, what I like, what I was working on, etc., I’d be an abusive Father if I halted their questioning and handed them a book, and said – just read my book son, it has everything you need to know about me.”  The book has value, it has truth, and it’s a resource to validate what God is saying in your life, but if you only strive to read and memorize the book, and never stop to speak and listen to the person that wrote it, you’d be missing out on a full and Spirit-led life.

My problem for most of my childhood and early adult life was that I knew the book backwards and forwards, but I never knew the person.  I never heard the person who inspired it.  I never stopped to listen to the person myself, instead relaying on pastors and teachers to speak for him.  I’d speak to him in prayers, but I really never experienced the intamacy of that relationship where I truly felt he was listening to me.

Was I saved?  Yes.

Was I a model Christian? Yes.

Did I teach and lead others according to the book? Yes.

Did I know the man that saved me?  Not really.

Did I know the person I was serving?  Not too well.

Did I truly experience and understand what I was teaching?  Not as much as I once thought.

The past year has been a revelation to get to know him.  To hear his voice at a deep level. To see him work and move in both the mundane and exhilarating experiences of life.  To watch him operate in my life and the lives of those around me.  To know his comfort during difficult trials. To hear him laugh and see him smile in the amazing joyful moments of life.

Maybe they were right. Life must begin at forty.

All I know is that the rest of my time here on earth, and my days in eternity will be about knowing him, not being overly concerned about theology, doctrine, or principles.  It’s about a relationship and spending my time with him and those he surrounds me with. I want this for my wife, I want this for my daughters. I want this for my friends, but I cannot give it to them.  God will not force himself on people – he might interrupt them and save them – but this is a choice we all have to make. An invitation to deep relationship.

It saddens me that there are people who go to church each Sunday and read the Bible regularly, but have no sense of the daily, moment by moment relationship.  Yeah, they are saved.  But they are really missing the gospel in it’s fullness and experiencing love and life from Father because they don’t know him personally.

What are your thoughts on this?  What have you experienced in this revelation?

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Striving versus Taking Action? An Interview with Jim Robbins

On this show, we are privileged to have on as our guest, Jim Robbins, author of the book, Recover Your Good Heart. We have enjoyed Jim’s writings, podcasts, and interviews in the past, and we’re excited to have him speak with us on the topic of “Striving versus Taking Action?”. How do we approach business from a “place of rest”? How do we maintain our edge as entrepreneurs by being decisive and taking action without crossing the line and running our business by our own power? These and other questions will be bantered about by our guest Jim Robbins, and your hosts Matthew Gillogly and Bob Regnerus.

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He Lives…He Speaks…He’s Not Locked In A Building…He’s Everywhere and in Everything

This week I heard Jesus speak again in the most unlikely place — church….and this post is going to seem to contradict this acknowledgement and support it all at the same time.  Stay with me.

This Easter, we sang a song that we’ve been singing for years, in fact, I believe I can accurately say that since I was a baby, and for the last 40 years of my life, we’ve sang this song every year. It’s a hymn titled, “He Lives”.

Now, many of you know this hymn, have sang it, and probably know the words by heart. I bet a lot of you probably know the fingering for the notes of a trumpet because you’ve seen (or even played) the trumpets do it so many times.

I’ve got to tell you – the Easter songs – I’m on automatic. I know the words, I know the tunes.  I can mail these suckers in with the best of them, and this Easter, I was ready to sing through the motions again, except something changed for me this year. I no longer had a “book smarts” concept of this song. I had more!  I wasn’t just reciting words from memory and spitting them out.  For the first time in 40 years, I realized I was living and experiencing the words of this song.

I serve a risen Savior,
He’s in the world today;
I know that He is living,
Whatever men may say;
I see His hand of mercy,
I hear His voice of cheer,
And just the time I need Him
He’s always near.

Chorus:

He lives, He lives, Christ Jesus lives today!
He walks with me and He talks with me
Along life’s narrow way.
He lives, He live, salvation to impart!
You ask me how I know He lives:
He lives within my heart.

Here’s what the song spoke to me about based on what I’ve lived and experienced this year:

This year that I realized that Jesus is living person, not just a historical man from the Bible that once lived and died for my sins.  I serve a real man, a real Savior, and a real God – I do not serve a church or a Bible.  I serve a God-man who is living, and he doesn’t park his deity in a church building.  He lives IN MY HEART.  And he lives in my wife’s heart, my kid’s heart, my friend’s heart, and millions of believer’s hearts.

If anyone tells you, preaches to you, or claims that God’s home is the church building, they are wrong.  The Bible is CLEAR – HE (Jesus Christ) LIVES WITHIN MY HEART.  (1st John is full of beautiful language that describes this, as well as Jesus intimate talk with his disciples in John 14-17).

I’ve also learned this year that God reveals himself in THOUSANDS of ways to me, not just through the Bible or a Sunday sermon about the Bible. The God I thought I knew was narrowly defined based on what I knew from Genesis to Revelation.  I must admit that at times, I’m furious of what I’ve missed over the years.  If I had just been listening, I could have been hearing him clearly through my wife, my parents, my kids, the radio, through books, in movies, while running (and walking), through night dreams, through day dreams, through conversations at a coffee shop, at weddings, at funerals, at the chiropractor’s office, in staff meetings, sitting alone quietly, watching TV, sitting in an airplane — I could go on, but these are all places I’ve heard him in the past year that I never did before.

When I heard the voice of Papa speak to me as I was walking one day last fall, it changed my life forever. So when I sang “he walks with me and talks with me along life’s narrow way” I was swept with so much joy in that moment I could not hide my smile.  It was amazing because I witnessed this! It happened to me, and I could sing that line with conviction.  I lived the song!

I’m not looking to rattle anyone’s cage who love their church and love the Bible.  I’m not against them, I attend church and I read the Bible.  But if you only allow God to speak to you in church those couple hours a week, you’re missing a lot.  If you only allow him to speak to you when reading a Bible passage and a devotion book, you risk just knowing about him, rather knowing HIM personally.

He speaks often, and you can hear it too if you listen.

Here’s something I’ve tried, and it’s worked countless times….

Ask Papa to simply speak to you in a surprising way.  Don’t go into some long prayer and get emotional and try to butter him up.  Just ask him for this like you’d ask a parent. Then just relax.  You don’t have to conjure anything up, or do anything spiritual to make it happen.  At some point during the day or later in the week, when you least expect it, he will speak to you in some way.  It might be a song on the radio, a call from a friend, a blog post, a TV clip, a line in a book, a sermon, an audidble voice, a quiet whisper to your heart — but he will speak, because he’s a perfect Daddy.  A good daddy will not ignore his child, and this is not a selfish request from a son or daughter.  A son is expected to hear from his dad, a daughter can expect her mom to talk.

He’ll do it.  Expect it!

Let God out of the box.  Let him show you how big He is. Let him show you how much he’s part of this creation and how much he’s a part of your life. He’s in everything, and there’s not a road he’d ignore to find his way into your heart and show his love you.  Let him do it!

Please – comment here or on Facebook. What do you think?

Till next time….

P.S. Be sure to listen to our semi-regular radio show tomorrow, April 7, or check out iTunes for the podcast download.  We’re going to tackle, “Can A Good Christian Be A Good Business Person?”   And don’t miss next week Monday, April 12 when we’ll interview Darin Hufford, author of The Misunderstood God.

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