Knowing God

Woke up this morning at 4am to Matt’s work alarm going off (oops—Matt is not at work).  When I jumped up to get it I jinked my neck and ended up back on the bed in pain…it was an early start.  After a massage from my amazing husband and a hot shower it was coffee time, and luckily the kids had a sleep in (6:30am) so I could sit and rest my neck.  That was the start to my Sunday morning.  All of that doesn’t really have anything to do with the title of this post, I just thought I’d share about my poor neck before getting on with it, cause I was on to do communion this morning and thought I’d share it here as well, it’s about knowing God which won’t be a big surprise if you’ve read the previous post…

John 14:6-9.  I’ll let you read it yourself but it’s basically Jesus saying he is in the father and the father is in him…whoever knows him knows the father.

Then the shocking fact that Christianity isn’t a religion…some of you already know this, but for those who don’t – religion is man-made, Christianity is God made.  Christianity is a relationship with God and with that comes eternal life.

I was listening to a message the other day by a Pastor named Bayless Conley (he has a TV ministry as well that is seen around the world).  He shared a story about his daughter travelling around Europe with a friend.  In Switzerland they found an out of the way Inn and were talking to the old lady that owned the place trying to decide whether or not to stay there.  As they were talking, the topic of God came up and the lady said she didn’t know much about God, but she did watch a show with a guy named Bayless Conley, to which his daughter replied ‘I know him, he’s my dad!’.  Bayless made the point that that should be our reaction when we hear the name of God ‘I know Him, He’s my dad!’.

Often though we get side tracked with our own stuff.  When we pray we are asking for our own needs, when we read the bible we are looking for answers to what we are dealing with in life and when we sing praise and worship we are hoping for those warm fuzzies.  There is nothing wrong with any of this.  In fact The bible tells us to bring our worries to God.  But we need to make sure that that is not all we do.

Jesus did not die so that we could have warm fuzzies, he did not die so that we could have a nice car or a big house or lots of money.  He didn’t even die so that we would never know suffering or pain or tears.  Jesus died so that we could have a relationship with God.

I finished by saying that we should take the opportunity of sharing in communion to make a new effort to get to know God better, so that when someone say’s the name of God we can say ‘I know Him, He’s my dad!’