Tag Archive for knowing God

Deep Knowing

2021-08-13 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

Father, in Your great heart
You long for us to know You
entirely and completely,
all we are
knowing
all You are.

You created this entire universe,
immense and majestic,
not only to show us Yourself,
but to engulf us in
Your power,
Your wisdom,
Your love, and
the vastness of Your mystery.
Yet even as we are immersed in all this, we see only
the fringes of Your robe.
We hear only
a faint whisper of You. (Job 26:14)

To show Yourself completely,
You gave us Your own Son.
You incarnated Him as
the most helpless and humble of all human beings:
the newborn infant of
an unmarried peasant girl
from a small, oppressed people
in one corner of the world.

Here is the transcendent, undiminished God!
Here is the full radiance of Your glory!
Here is the exact representation of Your very nature! (Hebrews 1:3)
Here is the fullness of Your Deity in bodily form, and
You have made us
full and complete
in Him. (Colossians 2:9-10)
As we look to Him,
we are being changed into His likeness. (2 Corinthians 3:18)

But we do yet see Him for all He is. (1 John 3:2)
With all His many magnificent names,
He has a name, an identity,
that no one knows but Him. (Revelation 19:12)

But we know this:
when He appears,
we will be like Him,
because we will see Him just as He is. (1 John 3:2, NASB)
We will know Him fully,
we will know You, Father,
even as we are fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:12)

Your deep longing for us
will be fulfilled
every moment,
forever,
entirely and completely,
all we are
knowing
all You are.
We will be immersed in You,
one with You,
saturated with
Your presence,
Your holiness,
Your love,
Your life, in all its depth and richness.

Father, finish what You have begun.
We long for You!
We are waiting at the door.

Whatever awaits me the moment after I die,
Father, I want
my first thought,
my first desire,
my first awareness to be
You.

Hymn: Knowing God

Eternal Life Is Knowing You

2019-10-30 Hymns No comments

How wonderful is
God’s revelation of Himself
in Jesus Christ!
The more we know Him,
the more we realize that
all life, joy, and peace is
knowing Him.
We are complete in Jesus Christ.
Sing at Christmas or year round.
The tune is familiar.

Recording
Printed Music

You made us from Yourself, O my God, O my God.
Your mercy calls us back, O my God.
The love that longs to bless,
The needs that we confess
Are You and nothing less, O my God, living God!
Your promise is Yourself, Father God!

Your promise now is here. What a gift: Jesus Christ!
Our Brother and Your Son, Jesus Christ!
All mystery and delight,
All wisdom and all right,
All power, love, and life fill Your Son, Jesus Christ.
We stand complete in Him, Jesus Christ!

What life and light and joy knowing You, knowing You!
We long for nothing else knowing You.
Our childish fear and pride
We gladly throw aside
With hearts now open wide knowing You, knowing You.
Eternal life is this: knowing You!

by Ken Bible, © 2019 LNWhymns.com.

Deep Knowing

2017-10-09 Devotional with Hymn No comments

Father, in Your great heart
You long for us to know You
entirely and completely,
all we are
knowing
all You are.

You created this entire universe,
immense and majestic,
not only to show us Yourself,
but to engulf us in
Your power,
Your wisdom,
Your love, and
the vastness of Your mystery.
Yet even as we are immersed in all this, we see only
the fringes of Your robe.
We hear only
a faint whisper of You. (Job 26:14)

To show Yourself completely,
You gave us Your own Son.
You incarnated Him as
the most helpless and humble of all human beings:
the newborn infant of
an unmarried peasant girl
from a small, oppressed people
in one corner of the world.

Here is the transcendent, undiminished God!
Here is the full radiance of Your glory!
Here is the exact representation of Your very nature! (Hebrews 1:3)
Here is the fullness of Your Deity in bodily form, and
You have made us
full and complete
in Him. (Colossians 2:9-10)
As we look to Him,
we are being changed into His likeness. (2 Corinthians 3:18)

But we do yet see Him for all He is. (1 John 3:2)
With all His many magnificent names,
He has a name, an identity,
that no one knows but Him. (Revelation 19:12)

But we know this:
when He appears,
we will be like Him,
because we will see Him just as He is. (1 John 3:2, NASB)
We will know Him fully,
we will know You, Father,
even as we are fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:12)

Your deep longing for us
will be fulfilled
every moment,
forever,
entirely and completely,
all we are
knowing
all You are.
We will be immersed in You,
one with You,
saturated with
Your presence,
Your holiness,
Your love,
Your life, in all its depth and richness.

Father, finish what You have begun.
We long for You!
We are waiting at the door.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Knowing God
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

We Are Complete in Christ

2017-08-23 Devotional with Hymn No comments

Father, You have gone to such lavish lengths
to help us know You.
This entire universe –
vast and majestic,
powerful and intricate –
speaks of You and
sings of You.
You made us part of this world so we could
hear its every whisper.

You speak of Yourself through Your Word.
Its stories, songs, prophecies, and poems show You
creating and giving,
working and teaching,
forgiving, loving, and even dying for us.

Your promises and pictures of Your coming Messiah
were particularly vivid and varied.
He was to be a full and final revelation of Yourself.
Yet when He came, even those steeped in Your Word were
surprised,
confused, and
even shocked
by Who He was and
Who You are.

You and Your amazing love overflow
every image,
every metaphor, and
every name we have for You.
Creator God, You are more than we can imagine You to be.

Yet we know this:
All You are is complete in Jesus Christ, and
we will be complete in Him.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Complete in Jesus Christ
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

You Are the Blessing

2015-07-30 Devotional, Pictures of God No comments

from the devotional book, PICTURES OF GOD

Father, how You long to bless Your people with all Your best!
And You Yourself are the gift You most long to give.
You are the prosperity that You pour into our souls.
You are the peace, the harmony, the completeness, the well-being
with which You would fill us and our world.
Your own Spirit is the blessing that You would
breathe and
speak and
sing
throughout all we are
into every corner of the universe.

Father, in You, we are cradled in Your
unfailing love and
absolute dependability.
You are unfailing love.
You are absolute dependability.

In You we possess all things.
In You we possess all the riches of reality
rather than this world’s passing illusions.
You are All-in-all,
the Source,
the Goal, and
the Giver.
Whom do we have in heaven but You?
And on earth, what could we ever need but You?
In life,
in death,
in all the world,
in all eternity,
there is nothing we could want but
the blessing You will soon give in all its fullness:
Yourself.

God Finds Joy in You

2015-06-28 Devotional with Hymn No comments

Let us rejoice in our Maker . . . For the Lord takes delight in His people.
(Psalm 149:2, 4, para.)

Imagine for just a minute: get a mental image of human beings in their most primitive condition, without all the trappings of education, hygiene, and culture. I picture cavemen. You may think of a friend or relative. But envision the human creature completely natural and unadorned, in its rawest form.

Now realize that God seeks union with that creature. Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but remember that many people who were strangers to deodorant have enjoyed intimate fellowship with Him. People with no education have known the Unknowable and shared His wisdom. Human creatures that seem so rough and repulsive at times can fully please a holy God. His Spirit can fill and fellowship with our spirit — that spirit within us that is deeper and more basic than our thin layer of cultural training.

Imagine that a caveman, by simply trusting His Creator, can be fully like Jesus Christ.

Pondering that makes me realize how little we understand the kind of beings we are — how we were originally made and how God sees us from His perspective.

It also makes me realize how deeply He understands us and loves us.

The Lord takes delight in His people (Psalm 149:4, para.).

The Lord takes delight in you.

Yes, we can be so unbeautiful. It’s easy to feel that the constant flow of our failures and inconsistencies surely washes away any good standing we might have with God. But our relationship is much more basic and stable than that. His love embraces us at a deeper level.

Put yourself in this picture: 

The Lord your God is with you . . . He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing (Zephaniah 3:17, NIV).

As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you (Isaiah 62:5, NIV).

God enjoys just being with you. He takes pleasure in your company, the way a bridegroom enjoys being near his bride.

Pray that way. Talk to Him as One who is delighted to hear from you, who longs to share your thoughts, who deeply loves the most basic “you.”

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Ephesians 1
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

Help Me to Know You

2015-01-15 Devotional, Pictures of God No comments

from the devotional book, PICTURES OF GOD

You are the Creator.
I am Your creature.
Help me to know You.

You are Spirit.
I am dust.
Help me to know You.

I want to see You,
but You overflow every object and every image.
Help me to know You.

I am small and fragmented.
You are beautifully, wonderfully complete.
You are Father and Friend,
Warrior and Shepherd,
Potter and Teacher and King.
You speak Your truth through stories.
You express Your heart through songs.
You show me Yourself
through history and law,
through poems and visions,
through every season and every sensation of life.

Unseen God,
Who You are determines
who I am and
who I am becoming.
Help me to know You.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: The Truth of God Is Greater Far
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

Does It Matter How We Picture God?

2015-01-08 Devotional, Pictures of God One comment

from the devotional book, PICTURES OF GOD

Hosea 6:1-6

If all our mental pictures of God are inevitably incomplete, does it matter how we think of Him? If knowing Him fully is impossible, why try?

Think about this:

  • If we believe that God is like the Greek and Roman gods, powerful yet as flawed and selfish as human beings, how will we live?
  • If we believe that He is violent, heavy-handed, and vengeful toward his enemies, how will we live?
  • If we think of Him like the deists, as a cosmic clock-maker who created the world, wound it up, then walked off to let it run on its own, how will we live?

Some people picture God as a harsh, narrow-minded taskmaster, always pushing them around, always eager to swoop down on them whenever they do the slightest wrong. Often such people live fearful lives, never learning to love and trust Him. They never find peace, acceptance, and belonging in His arms.

For others, God is like Santa Claus or a kindly old grandfather. His only role is to smile and hand out treats. But if our God doesn’t provide or demand discipline, how will we withstand the onslaught of temptation?

But what is more, knowing God is not just a means to an end. It is not just a path to a good life. Knowing God—not simply knowing about Him, but knowing Him—is itself life’s greatest privilege, joy, and fulfillment. Knowing Him aligns us with the truth, with reality. It puts us in harmony with Him and at peace with Him.

God has fully invested Himself in helping us to truly, deeply, personally know Him. Does it matter how we picture Him? Does it matter how we think of Him and how well we know Him? It matters. It matters very much. It matters now, and it will matter throughout eternity.

Revealed by Mystery

2015-01-01 Devotional, Pictures of God No comments

from the devotional book, PICTURES OF GOD

Psalm 19:1-6

If you were to draw a picture of God, what would He look like? How would you picture a God who cannot be pictured?

He is spirit, unlimited by matter. But we are material creatures living in a material world. To us, matter is reality. Sight is one of our main ways of perceiving the world around us. So how do we know an immaterial God? How do we picture Him, grasp Him, imagine Him, relate to Him?

Realize this: God created matter to reveal Himself, not obscure Himself. He conceived and created this material world and the senses that perceive it in order to point us toward Him, not away from Him. Sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste were designed to draw us toward the God Who is far beyond them all.

This magnificent, material, sensual world points us to a Source profoundly greater than itself. Its wonders prod us to look up. They challenge us to imagine something or Someone beyond imagining. They introduce us to a God who is far more than our God-given intelligence can fully grasp. This majestic, intricate universe is just the appetizer, the teaser, the opening phrase of the symphony that is our Glorious God Himself.

God’s mystery doesn’t hide Him. It begins to reveal Him. The Unknowable One is intent on being known. He is intent on being known by you.

Knowing Jesus Better

2014-06-08 Devotional with Hymn No comments

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ…
may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation,
so that you may know him better.
(Ephesians 1:17, NIV)

If being a Christian is knowing You, Jesus,
then growing spiritually is knowing You better.

I don’t want to just know about You, my Lord.
I want to know You.
I want to know You as You really are—
as You really are right now, here with me.

Saul turned from killing Christians
to vigorously arguing for You in just a few days (Acts 9:1-22).
The difference wasn’t additional study.
The difference was meeting You.
He saw You as You are,
and it changed him radically, forever.

Jesus, my Lord God, I want to know You.

Listen…and sing if you want:
Hymn: Come and Follow Me
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

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