Seeking Jesus First - Nov. 15, 2022
God desires companionship with us. He has always desired to know us and to be known by us. He is not interested in having us know only about Him. If I teach my kids about God only what my fathers taught me about Him, then they are at least two generations away from actually knowing God. We must introduce people to God, that they may know Him for themselves.
Principles are great for how to live our lives in conjunction with what is good. But principles are not God. We learn about what God has done in the past, but His acts are not Him. Our friends testimonies about who God is and what He has done with them is amazing, but other people’s testimonies are just possibilities to us.
We need to attach words, principles, acts and testimonies to an introduction to God Himself. People need to encounter God for themselves.
John 17:1-3 “Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, 2 as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”
While Jesus was praying to The Father, He said that eternal life is knowing The True God and Jesus Christ Whom He sent.
Faith is more than a “belief”. It is a firm persuasion based upon relationship and experiential knowledge. I believe in God because I know Him. I have encountered Him for myself. I may start to believe because of your testimony or preaching. But, when I confess Jesus Christ as LORD, I become one spirit with Him and He dwells with and in me through His Holy Spirit.
Does the prayer change the person? Yes and No. The prayer of faith changes me if I enter into the knowledge of God and Jesus Christ Whom He sent. And the relationship walk of faith perfects the change.
Phil.3:7-11 “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. 8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”
“Know” God. Father God is Spirit. In order to know Him, He gave us His Spirit to dwell with us and in us.
We are spirit. So His Spirit dwells with and in our spirit.
The first time we see the word “know” in the Bible is, “Adam knew his wife Eve and she bare a son.” “Know” means intimate experiential knowledge. Just as a husband and wife are joined to be one body, “bone of bone and flesh of flesh”, even so we are joined with God The Father and Jesus His Son into one spirit.
We, the church, are known as the bride and body of Christ. This is intimacy. The joining of our spirit with Holy Spirit produces a son. We receive the spirit of adoption, where by we cry, “Abba, Father”. Christ is being formed in us making us into the manifested sons of God.
Like Mary being overshadowed by Holy Spirit and conceiving the man Christ Jesus, when Holy Spirit comes over us and dwells in us, He begins forming us into sons of God - into “christs” or christians. Make no mistake, God has sown His son into the earth expecting to reap sons. “Christ Jesus is the firstborn among many brethren.”
1 Cor. 13:12-13 “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
2 Cor. 3:16-18 “Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Look at the progression of Paul from First Corinthians to Second Corinthians. He starts out saying that we see in a mirror dimly, but one day it will change into a face to face knowledge. In Second Corinthians, He jumps right into saying the mirror is like actually being in a face to face relationship with Jesus Christ. What changed? One could guess that Paul received a greater revelation of the veil being removed in Christ Jesus. Apostle Paul goes through transformation right before our eyes in these two letters. While both statements are true, one carries greater revelation of who we are in Christ.
This transformation is the result of relationship. When we “know” God and Jesus Christ Whom He sent, we receive everlasting life. Everlasting life is the river of life. A river is always new water. There is a constant flow of new life flowing through us and with it new revelation of God Himself. This is companionship with God.
1 Cor. 1:9 “God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
“Be still and know God.” Soak in His Presence. The Greek word for “baptize” is the word used for pickling foods and for dying cloth. You stay saturated long enough to change the nature of what you are. Know Him and be known by Him and be transformed from glory to glory into the very image of God’s dear Son.