"Knowing God"
Before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the world, from beginning to end, you are God. (Psalm 90:2 NLT)
Before the world began there was God. He is the unmoved mover. He is the creator & sustainer of all things. All that we know & see is not an accident but part of the design of an all-powerful God. He was God in the beginning & he will be God forever.
Moses begins his prayer with focusing on the person of God. His creativity, his sovereignty, his eternity, his originality, & his divinity are all in view here. Before Moses asks anything of God or from God he focuses on the person of God. It's the person of God that drives his prayer. In fact, without an intimate knowledge of the person of God how can we accurately make requests of him? If we don't understand who he is we cannot understand who we are. If we don't understand who we are we cannot understand what we need from him. Everything in our lives starts & ends with God. He is the beginning & the end & everything in between. We should start our day with God, live it with God, & end it with God. A day lived in full saturation of the person & presence of God is the only way to live this life he has given us.
A.W. Tozer, in his book "Knowledge of the Holy," begins by saying that the most important thing about a person is what they think about when they think about God. In other words, the most important thing about me is not my job, my personality, my looks, my hobbies, my ambitions, my dreams, my education, or my family. The most important thing about me is what enters my mind when I think about God. This is true because our understanding of God determines our very lives! For example, since we know that God has existed & will exist for all of eternity we can be rest assured that his presence will be with us forever. What a promise! But if we don't know God we can't know his promises. If we don't know God we can't know his Word. Knowing God is central to our lives. It is what Paul said in Philippians 3 when he said, "I want to know Christ!" The gospel of John says in 17:3 that "This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, & Jesus Christ whom you have sent." We think about eternal life & we assume it's a place. Jesus here teaches us that it's not a place but a person. Our lives are not about us, they are about him. Our lives are not about a creed or cause before they are about him. God & our understanding of him is central to our existence.
How well do we know God? How is it positively or negatively affecting our lives & our usefulness to him?
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