(I wrote this in 2015; it tells the story of the beginning of my journey on a path to a deeper knowledge of GOD)
Getting to Know Him
Better
Whatever you want, I surrender to You.
Whatever it takes, I am willing to do.
You know I am weak, so I’m leaning on You
To give me the power for yielding to You.
Whatever I’ve gained I now count it as loss.
I want to surrender whatever the cost.
Whatever I’ve cherished can never come close
To knowing you, Jesus, and loving You most.
These are the words I wrote in my journal during the Restore
Retreat last October. The retreat was a
life-changing experience. In the quiet
setting of the retreat center, I was able to be still and really listen with my
heart to the deep truths that God had for me. It had been a while since I had
such meaningful instruction from the Word of God. The lessons delved deep into the scriptures,
shedding light on the cultural context of the passages and on the definitions
of the words in the original Greek. The Passover meal that we shared also
aroused my interest in the land and customs of Israel. I
hungered for more.
I expected that getting to know God would involve more
intense Bible study and quiet time with Him.
Well, that was part of it, but God had a great adventure planned for me,
a journey that we would walk together as He revealed Himself to me along the
way.
A month after the retreat, when I “accidentally” stumbled on
information about a tour to Israel, I casually mentioned it to my husband. Tim
had frequently expressed a desire to go to the Holy Land, but, my response was
usually, “Not me. It’s not on my list. It’s way too dangerous.” But Tim took
that little bit of information about the tour and pursued it. Then he announced that he was going---was I
coming along? (I don’t think he would have actually left me behind, but
sometimes I need a little extra push to make a decision.) We met with the tour
leader and discussed the details of the trip. She related something that a
Jewish man told her on her previous tour. He said, “No one just comes to Israel. You are invited by God, and you decide to
answer the invitation.”
It was as if Jesus was saying to me, “Do you want to know me
better? Then come and see where I lived when I was on the earth. Come and visit
my old neighborhood.”
The trip was flawless.
Not once did I feel fearful or even nervous, for I felt God’s hand of
protection on our group the entire time. What a thrill to set foot in the place where
it all began….where God began His relationship
with man, where the patriarchs and prophets lived and preached and witnessed
miracles in their midst. It was such a joy to travel along the rocky paths that
Jesus, the rabbi, walked with His disciples, teaching them through parables and
object lessons along the way. Seeing the city of Jerusalem and the surrounding
landscape helped me to envision what it might have been like to watch Jesus
pray in the Garden of Gethsemane and struggle down that road to the cross. Our
Jewish guide helped us to understand eastern culture and thinking, giving new
meaning to events in the Bible. I gained a deep appreciation of how God has
dealt with the nation Israel over the centuries, and how even now prophecies
are still being fulfilled, for He is still at work. The trip was an
exhilarating “mountaintop” experience that gave me a greater reverence for the awesome
God of Israel and for the Son who suffered and died for me.
But…God had much more to teach me about Himself. The second
part of my education involved knowing Him through suffering. In Philippians 3:10 we read that the apostle
Paul prayed “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection (I like that…..knowing
the resurrection power) and may share His sufferings”… (Ooh, I don’t like that
so much---suffering.) Shortly after returning from the trip, God had some
lessons to teach me through illness.
If the trip to Israel was a
mountaintop experience, illness was certainly a dark valley. I clung to God’s word with the belief that
there is somehow a purpose in all of this. I wanted to draw closer to the
Savior, to experience His presence, and to hear His voice. But I really didn’t feel His presence. Sometimes I wondered if I was just talking to
an imaginary friend. If He was speaking
to me, I couldn’t hear Him because the pain was screaming so loudly and the
enemy was constantly taunting me, saying, “God has abandoned you. He is
finished with you. You are useless. Your life is over.”
Then one afternoon while in the
waiting room at the clinic, I was reading Beth Moore’s Jesus the One and
Only. In the book, Beth Moore encouraged the reader to try and picture what
Jesus might have looked like. The face that
immediately came to mind was the face of the young technician who was in charge
of calling patients and showing them into the doctor’s office. Ok, the young
man has dark hair and a beard, and he does look a bit like he could be Jewish,
but the feature that stood out was the kindness on his face. I noticed how he smiled at the patients and
asked them how they were feeling. He addressed them by name. It’s how I imagined Jesus must have talked to
the sick and the suffering.
Then I began to think of the various
manifestations of God’s love for me during my illness:
I have seen Christ in the way my
husband shows unconditional love for me even when I am unlovely. He has been a
true servant, waiting on me and caring for me when I am too weak to care for
myself. This is an example of God’s love. God loved us while we were yet
sinners, when we had nothing to offer him in return.
When I cried, family members cried
with me. It reminds me of the way Jesus was also “deeply moved in his spirit
and greatly troubled” when he saw Mary weeping over her brother Lazarus, even
though he knew the final outcome, even though he knew he would raise Lazarus
from the dead.
I wish I could hear God’s voice
with my own ears, but God has never spoken to me that way. He has spoken to me,
though, through caring Christian friends who shared scriptures with me and
encouraged me with God’s Word.
I haven’t seen visions of Jesus,
but, come to think of it, I have seen Christ all around me. I see him in the face of my pastor, who knows
my name. In shepherding his flock, this pastor is imitating the Good Shepherd,
who knows his sheep.
I see Christ’s example of a
servant’s heart in my principal, who has taken my carpool duty for me and has
taken care of my class when I had doctor’s appointments.
I have seen Jesus and experienced His
presence because all of these people who have ministered to me are
believers. They have Christ’s Holy
Spirit indwelling them.
In First Fruit’s of Zion’s book Restoration:
Returning the Torah of God to the Disciples of Jesus, there is an
explanation of what happens when we accept Christ and become a new creation (II
Corinthians 5:17):
“As believers, we are given a
portion of God’s Holy Spirit to dwell within us. We actually become temples of the Holy
Spirit. The Holy Spirit that dwells
within us is the same Spirit that dwelled within and anointed Yeshua (Hebrew
for Jesus). Therefore, we say it is the
Spirit of Yeshua that dwells in within us. Indeed, ’Messiah in you (is) the
hope of glory’ (Colossians 1:27)…….When we show the love of Yeshua to others,
it is not our love we are manifesting, but the Master’s love made manifest
through us. Because Messiah dwells within us, our acts of love are actually His
acts of love. We become, as it were, the
hands and feet of Messiah.”
Through the body of Christ, I am
getting to know a Savior who is kind and compassionate, who knows my name and
feels my pain, whose love is unconditional and sacrificial.
Paul said in Philippians 3:8, “I
count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ
Jesus my Lord.” In our journey here on earth, our goal is to get to know Him
better. Getting to know Him is more than
just an academic endeavor. Sometimes it
involves those mountaintop experiences, where we get a taste of His awesome
power. Sometimes we get to know Him
better through the fellowship of His sufferings. And though we aren’t able to
see Him, hear His voice, or touch Him the way the disciples did, His Presence
is made manifest to us through other believers, the body of Christ.
I don’t know why God has chosen to take me down these
particular paths as He teaches me and guides me and as I develop my
relationship with Him. Some of the roads
are not ones I would have chosen. I do
know that He loves me, and that no pain I experience will ever be wasted. I am
trusting the words of I Peter 5:10: “After you have suffered a little while,
the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself
restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”
The Weaver
My life is but a weaving
Between my Lord and me,
I cannot choose the colors
He worketh steadily.
Oftimes He weaveth sorrow,
And I in foolish pride
Forget He sees the upper,
And I the underside.
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