3 His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. 2 Peter 1:3-4

Do you know God?
Let me ask this seemingly simple question again, but this time consider what the word “know” means. We might know something about the topic of history but not know it enough to teach the subject or know the dates when monumental things took place…we simply know about history but not truly know history. There’s a great divide between knowing about something and truly KNOWING something.

The same thing can be applied to our knowledge of God. Even demons know about God don’t they? Many people in our world know something about God…but how many people truly KNOW God? This passage this morning reminds me that it isn’t enough to simply know something about God but it must become something much, much deeper. My heart, my soul longs for that communion with the One who created me. There is, in all of us, this innate essence to be known. We desire for others to know us. This isn’t some sort of narcissistic notion, but rather this essence inside all of us to be wanted, to be loved, to be known. It speaks of a very intimate kind of knowing.

GOD KNOWS YOU!
God knows you. This is a truth we all must come to terms with in our own spiritual development and formation of our faith. God knows you so intimately. Psalm 139 speaks of this. Before we were even created, God knew us. Before we had conscious thought – God knew us. He knows us better than our parents, spouses and kids know us. He peers into our hearts and knows us for who we are.

For some of us, this notion that God deeply knows us scares us to death. He knows me- He knows you.

DO YOU REALLY KNOW GOD?
If God knows us, and He does, then should the reciprocation of that knowing be evident in our study and worship of Him? He has “called us by His own glory and goodness” (v3)…that should be a relief for us. We didn’t have enough glory and goodness in our total depravity. God knew this lack of glory and goodness was evident within us and so He sends us His Son Jesus so that we might know Him truly! Total and utter redemption can come to us all by knowing Christ!

It is not good enough to know about religion, or about being kind to others or even knowing about God. It is never good enough. We have meditate on His words written for us in His scripture. We have to know Him in our prayer life, in our prayer closets. We have to know Him in our treatment of other people and our love for even our enemies. Every facet of our lives should be consumed with knowing God. This is the pathway of Holiness – knowing God, Surrendering Self, and through the Holy Spirit becoming like Christ.

Do you know God?

-Just a thought for today.

When at times life is at a cross-roads
when, restless, life sweeps away all desire.
Begin, then on your knees dear Soldier
for God to once again ignite that fire.

When apathy begins to reign supreme
and careless hearts and minds devour
Allow our prayerful hopes to take wing
and He will grant to us His holy Power.

Dear Soldier get back into the fight
your battle, this war is not yet won
The Holy Spirit can come and empower
until His work, and earth’s darkness is done.

“Those who trust in The Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever.” (Psalm 125:1)

When I was a teenager I worked at camp. Before the camping season even began and the children poured into cabins and onto the docks of the lake for a swim, we (the staff), would first begin with team building exercises. These exercises included climbing obstacles, figuring out puzzles and my worst fear: the trust fall. I had difficulty trusting those around me. I hated having to let go. I feared what might happen if those behind me chose not to catch me. I envisioned the pain that I would feel to fall to the ground. I also imagined my bruised pride as I might lay there looking up at people who really did not care to help me in my time of need. Luckily those scenarios never happened. I never fell to the ground, nor did those gathered below me choose not to catch me. But I still had trust issues. Do you have trust issues?

Read Psalm 125:1 again. There is a key word that ties everything else together within this sentence; the word “Trust”. Trust can be a powerful companion, but it can also be the one weakness within the armor of faith. Ask yourself honestly, “how much do I trust my Lord?” It’s a startling question with many, many different answers. For some of us we struggle to trust anyone, let alone God. For others trust is attainable but only after every other resource has been extinguished. Still others, the very few, trust is all that they possess and God is near to them at every human endeavor.

Which one represents you today? How much do you trust the Savior? Are you willing to go where He beckons? Are you placing your all in His hands? Have you ever had trust issues? Do you still envision in your mind how it will feel when God lets you down? Trust Him today. He won’t let you fall. He won’t let you down. We too can place our all in His hands and find that we will endure forever because of His unfailing strength and love. Let go…and fall into His safe and loving arms today.

-Just a thought…perhaps a frightening thought at that.

It’s a cliche. It’s a metaphor floating on a current. Wave after wave, bobbing on the foamy seas, a lonely bottle with a message inside. It is a song. It is one of the hits from iconic 80’s band The Police, entitled “Message in a bottle”. The song’s theme is nothing new. It is something that every person on earth has struggled with. Not being marooned on a deserted island, but the feelings of total and utter loneliness. Everyone has experienced these feelings of loneliness and solitude. It doesn’t take a deserted island to feel this way, it just happens sometimes. Perhaps it manifests itself through forms of depression. Other times loneliness happens at the intersections of choice.

We find ourselves lonely even when in a crowded room. Loneliness creeps into the corners of the heart, weighing us down like an old roof on a buckled and bowing barn in an abandoned field. Eventually that barn is going to collapse. Eventually in this loneliness the roof caves in on us and we find ourselves casting these bottles into the seas so that someone, anyone might hear us and we will no longer be alone.

King David felt like this. He cast many “messages in bottles” when he composed psalms of prayers and desperations to God. In Psalm 142 David identifies the emotion of loneliness because he had been there, he had lived in the shadows of loneliness. “Look and see, there is no one at my right hand; no one is concerned for me. I have no refuge; no one cares for my life.” (Psalm 142:4) Yet there is wisdom here as well. He goes on to disclose the remedy for such moments of despair and desolation; “I cry to you, LORD; I say, “You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.” (Psalm 142:5) David knew where his hope could be found even in the midst of his loneliness. Earlier in the same Psalm he says; “When my spirit grows faint within me, it is you who watch over my way. In the path where I walk people have hidden a snare for me.” (Psalm 142:3)

Are you casting out messages in bottles today? Are you alone in your troubles? Does it seem like the roof has caved in on your life and has pressed you down and crushed you by these burdens? Take comfort, take courage, because you are NOT alone! God is near and He will never leave you alone. When you cry out to Him, He will answer you.

-Just a thought for today

Its a famous scene in a commercial. A man has just finished his walk when his neighbor informs him that he dropped his butt. The neighbor is trying to give him his butt back but this, now healthy man, refuses to take his butt back. The message is simple. This man has worked hard to discard the excess weight. He refuses to put it back on. It is a part of his old way of living and now he has embraced a new way, a healthier way.

Quite simply, we are all called to this new way of living. Spiritually speaking, if we claim to have accepted Christ as Lord of our lives then the old has gone and the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17). We no longer need the old ways of life. We no longer crave the sins that weighed us down in our sinfulness and depravity. Jesus has reached down and lifted us up to a new and better way of living. We don’t need our butts anymore…ok, I admit that sounds funny. We no longer need that old way, that harmful, self-indulgent way any longer.

Yet the world and Satan himself wants us to pick it back up. They will tempt us to forget about this better way and to come back to where we once were, lost and blind to the sins in and around us. The world will try and convince us to take it back up again because without it we have lost our identity. Without it we are no longer whole. Without it we are simply not ourselves. But dear fellow believers, don’t buy the lie! Don’t give into those temptations of the old life any longer! Don’t let Satan convince you that you have lost your fun, your joy, your freedom, because the opposite is true…you have gained all of that with this new life in Christ Jesus!

So the next time Satan tries to convince you that you dropped something when you gave up your old life, don’t buy the lie! Remember the lengths in which Christ has taken to redeem you and has brought you safe, sound and whole into this new life!

-Just a thought for today!

A STRANGER MEETING:
I met a guy last night while at a men’s retreat who had a testimony to share. He was an addict. An addict who had found a second chance. He was…no, he is an addict that now understands his addiction and is about to graduate from a Christian treatment center. As I encountered this man, I had planned to say a courteous “hello” and walk on by but he firmly grasped my hand and shook it enthusiastically. “This was not going to be a short conversation”; I thought to myself as he pulled me in closer and began to tell me about his life. He had been a habitual cocaine user who had been introduced to the “hard stuff” through other recreational drugs. Slowly he revealed how his life quickly spun out of control. With tears in his eyes he shared with me passionately how he had lost everything and how he had come face to face with his own kids who had wept bitterly at the fear of losing their father. Slowly he had come to realization that his addiction wasn’t under control, it was controlling him.

When the wake up call came he answered it with nothing left to lose. He hopped a train and found himself in the Harbor Light seeking to rid himself of his demons. As he shared his tale with me, a mere stranger he had just met, I found tears in my own eyes and a lump forming in my throat. This guy had been through hell and was on the other side rejoicing because he had found new life, not only from his addictions but a new life in Christ. He was experiencing hope again and he wasn’t afraid of sharing his testimony with everyone he had the chance to encounter. After sharing his story with me about where he had been and how far he had come he told me he would soon be graduating from the recovery program and that he looked forward to going home to see his family, but he was also afraid of that old life that would come creeping back in.

Right there on the roadside, we prayed together. I prayed for his life and where this road would take him. I prayed that he would continue to stay strong and resist the temptations of his addictions. That he would remain strong not only for his well being but also for the well being of his wife and kids. We parted ways then, his story, that chapter of his life complete in its telling. He was now a brother, no longer a stranger. We had shared a bond through his willingness to be vulnerable to a complete stranger. I promised I would keep praying for him and his all too soon homecoming. Then we turned and went our separate ways.

WE’RE ALL ADDICTS:
What? Who? Me? Yes, everyone of us. We all suffer from one addiction or another.
Addictions come in many shapes, sizes and forms. There are the chemical dependancies like drugs, alcohol and other substances. The gentleman I spoke with understood his addiction, he knew he needed help and sought it out in order to save his life. But there are also the emotional addictions like attention craving, self-deprecation, pity, and so on. The Physiological addictions can become equally destructive if left uncheck or unresolved. Pornography and sexual addictions often go unchecked or spoken about and yet the statistics of those who struggle with this type of addiction is staggering.

For some of us it’s the addiction of self-pity. Everything happens to us. The world is out to get us and we seek the attentions of others and the tidal waves of sympathy to balance out this emotional addiction.

Still others suffer from the addiction of fear. Everything causes anxiety or fear in their lives. They subconsciously have to be in a state of constant fear to exist in their “normal”. They continue in this endless cycle of fear which can lead to depression and physical sickness.

Everyone faces some sort of addiction on this pathway of life. Sure chemical dependencies are very obvious and will lead to the total destruction of life much faster than some of the emotional or physical addictions, yet all of them limit us from a healthy normal life. All of them hinder our spiritual growth. All of them seek to further mar the image of God within us through habitual sin.

Praying with that man on the road caused me to evaluate my life. Have I come through hell or am I still struggling through it? Are we healthy, vibrant Christ-followers today or are going through some kind of addictions hell? Is there a substance or an emotional/physiological addiction that is controlling you today? If so, perhaps it’s time to stop running. Perhaps it’s time to admit the kinds of demons your fighting. Perhaps it’s time to recognize how much more we need other Christian brothers and sisters and most importantly how much we need the power of the Holy Spirit to guide us through it into victory.

When we can begin to realize just how in need we are of saving, then and only then can we truly find recovery and allow it to take place in our lives and in our hearts.

-Just a thought for today.