May the Lord grant you a blessed New Year! As I typed the previous greeting, my mind wondered, “What would make this coming year more blessed for me and those whom I’m writing?” How we answer that question will reveal what is really important to us. Our answer will reflect whether we think of blessings in God’s terms or our terms. If we seek the blessings of life without seeking the Giver of blessings, we make the blessings an idol that comes before God. We must guard our hearts from seeking some possession, position, or person that we think is necessary to bring blessing and happiness. Anything or anyone that we put before God becomes an idol. We would do well to start the year out in self examination by asking this question: “Is there something or someone in my life that is more important than God?” Whatever it is is your idol!
I believe that having lives truly blessed of God will require us to acknowledge our idols, pull them down, and cast them out of our hearts. Then we need a growing and deepening knowledge of our God by seeking Him diligently through His natural revelation (His creation) and His special revelation (the Scriptures). Paul’s prayer for the believers at Ephesus reveals our need for knowing God:
Eph 1:16-21, “I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (emphasis added).
Will you pray this prayer for yourself and others? Can we really go another year without becoming more serious about seeking God? We have not because we ask not!
This year I would like to dedicate my Shepherd’s Musings devotionals to seeking and knowing God by writing on the theme “God Is”. The Bible is replete with verses and passages that tell us about who God is and how we can relate with Him. My theme verse for this year will be Hebrews 11:6, “But without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him” (emphasis added).
May the year 2011 be filled with adventure in diligently seeking to know God! Will you join me in a quest to know God more fully and intimately as you seek Him? We can find our greatest satisfaction, pleasure, and fulfillment in Him and Him alone! May “grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord” (2 Peter 1:2). Blessing to you in 2011!
Sincerely in Christ, Mark
Selected Scripture about Knowing God
Emphasis added
1 Corinthians 15:34, “Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame.”
2 Corinthians 4:6, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
2 Corinthians 10:5, “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.”
Colossians 1:9 -10, “And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”
Colossians 3:9-10, “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”
Philippians 3:7-11, “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith-- that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”
Selected Scripture about Idols
Emphasis added
1 Chronicles 16:26, “For all the gods of the peoples are idols, but the LORD made the heavens.”
Isaiah 42:8, “I am the LORD; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.”
1 Thessalonians 1:9-10, “For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.”
1 John 5:21, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”
Revelation 2:14, “But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality.”
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