There are times when we need to sit and reflect on whether we are seeking God or substituting other things in His place. With busy lives and the busiest time of the year upon us, this meditation by Wade Taylor was one that ministered to me and perhaps to you as well. It's so easy to get "caught up" in what is happening, what will happen, how it all fits together and how we fit into it; when in actuality we need to get caught up in God. Have you ever had a lack in praying and seeking God and physical hunger takes you to the kitchen to satisfy this void? Nothing you eat satisfies but you keep trying. It seems a physical hunger takes over when the real problem is spiritual hunger. Without the spirit being satisfied by time with God our flesh takes over. I hope you get as much out of this as I did. We are in a day and time that we had better draw deep from the well of Living Water.
Entering the Depths with Jesus
Wade E Taylor
Many of us have formed an opinion of what a particular person is like. Then when we met them, they were totally different than we had thought. This is due to a "perceived" knowledge from which we formed an opinion, without "experientially" knowing them.
We began our spiritual life knowing that we needed to be "saved," but we did not personally know Jesus. At the time of our salvation experience, there was placed within us the capacity and desire to personally know the One who redeemed us. Because of this, we can, with the Apostle Paul, say:
"I long to know Christ and the power which is in His resurrection, and to share in His sufferings and die even as He died; in the hope that I may attain to the resurrection from among the dead. I do not say that I have already won the race or have already reached perfection. But I am pressing on, striving to lay hold of the prize for which also Christ has laid hold of me." Philippians 3:10-12 Weymouth
We can be distracted from attaining this goal by trying to understand who the antichrist might be, or, what will happen to those who never heard the Gospel. We are not called to understand these things. Rather, we are called to come to personally know Jesus.
"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8-9
In His time and way, the Lord will reveal to us the things that we should know and understand. If we understood God, He would be no bigger than our understanding. This indeed would be a very small God.
As we devotionally spend time with the Lord in worship and waiting, we will receive spiritual understanding that will establish us upon a rock-solid doctrinal foundation. As our spiritual life is established upon this foundation, and the Lord takes us beyond doctrinal basics, there is a "deep" within the heart of God that will reach out toward us, and stir us to seek to better know Him.
"Deep unto deep is calling. At the noise of Your water-spouts, all of Your breakers and Your billows passed over me." Psalm 42:7 YLT
Even though we may not sense that this "deep" desire to personally know Jesus is within us, it is there. When we are being stirred by the Lord, there is the ever present danger that we will seek some other means to satisfy it. We often become so taken up with information about the Lord that we do not come to the Lord Himself, and allow Him to bring us into the experience of personally knowing Him. We stop short of "experiential" knowledge.
"When they therefore were come together, they asked of Him, saying, Lord, will You at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel ?" Acts 1:6
The disciples were seeking the external, rather than a change within their lives. Many today are doing the same, seeking an adjustment in their personal needs, and their relationships with others, rather than facing the real need, which is within, and from which those things that are external will find their adjustment, or correction.
The Apostle Paul saw beyond the limitations of his natural life, and reached for the higher - that which is eternal. Although he had counted all things but loss, the time came when he could say, "I have suffered the loss of all things." He was able to accept this loss because all that he desired had been lifted from the natural realm into the spiritual, in which he found the satisfaction that he had so intensely sought.
John W Follette, who never married, had a unique relationship with the Lord. While in His home one time, I noticed that he had placed three settings on the table when only he and I were there. When I asked why, he said, "I always set a place for the Lord, then I invite Him to sit at the table with me, while I partake of my meal."
He was able in a practical, yet profound way to fellowship with the Lord, even during the necessary functions of life. He found and entered into that for which he had been created.
The disciples had asked Jesus about the Kingdom being restored to Israel . He answered, "It is not for you to know the times and seasons, but...." He directed their attention to a present work that would inwardly change them, in preparation for the coming of the Kingdom.
As Jesus came up out of the waters of baptism, the heavens opened and His Father said, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." Immediately, "Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness being forty days tempted of the Devil…." After this, the Word tells us that "Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit…" (Luke 4:1-2, 14).
Notice that He had gone into the wilderness in the "fullness" of the Spirit, but returned in the "power" of the Spirit.
Power is the result of a right response to our being tested and proven. To be tested and come through victoriously will produce this empowering, which is broad in its scope and creates within us the ability to go deeper into personally knowing the Lord, and into the deeper realms of spirituality.
Thus, the King James rightly translates Acts 1:8. "You shall receive power after…."
As we obey the Lord, the result of our obedience will produce within us grace, in the form of enabling strength, which will make it yet easier for us to obey. If we disobey, it becomes easier for us to again disobey, as we become "hardened" and progressively, it becomes more difficult to hear His voice or His convicting presence.
Our obeying the Lord and receiving His blessing does not mean that we will never again have a problem. After experiencing a time of remarkable blessings and provisions, things may get worse. The Lord will test us to see if we are capable of rightly handling what we have already received, and if He might trust us with more.
As we come to better understand that the desire of the Lord is for us to enter into a close, personal relationship with Him, we will be able to fully trust Him, even when we may not understand.
Now, to the measure that we have come to personally know Jesus, we are ready to partake with Him in "fellowship with His sufferings" (Philippians 3:10).
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