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⁹“And Solomon, my son, learn to know the God of your ancestors intimately. Worship and serve him with your whole heart and a willing mind. For the LORD sees every heart and knows every plan and thought. If you seek him, you will find him. But if you forsake him, he will reject you forever. ¹⁰So take this seriously. The LORD has chosen you to build a Temple as his sanctuary. Be strong, and do the work.”
1 Chronicles 28:9-10 (NLT)

That’s the advice King David gave his son Solomon shortly before his death. I find the first sentence to be quite interesting – “learn to know the God of your ancestors intimately” – emphasis mine, of course. Those key words learn, know and intimately teach us important lessons about our relationship with God:

We learn to know Him intimately. It doesn’t just happen. It doesn’t even come naturally.

“Be still, and know that I am God!”
Psalm 46:10a (NLT)

Being still doesn’t come naturally to most of us. But we can learn to be still. We can learn the difference between God’s voice and satan’s temptations. We can learn the difference between God’s voice and our emotions. If we want to know God intimately, we must learn to know him. We must study His ways and follow His leading. And in learning, there is error. We won’t always get it right. But we can confess any sin in those errors, turn toward Him again and He accepts us and teaches us more.

We learn to know Him intimately. We don’t learn about Him, we learn to know Him. I know many things about President Obama. But I don’t know him. I’ve never met the man or anyone in his family. I’ve watched him in various situations over the years, seen a movie about his upbringing and life influences, but I’ve never talked to him to learn what makes his heart beat. I don’t know Him intimately.

We’re not just to learn to know things about God, we’re to learn to know God. That means meeting with Him, not just reading our Bibles. It means having fellowship with Him, not just singing praise songs.

We learn to know Him intimately. God doesn’t want a surface relationship. He wants intimacy. And intimacy means that we must also be vulnerable to Him. He already knows all our stuff, so let’s just admit it and be transparent with God. When worship becomes tender with the fullness of the Spirit, let’s not rush past it. Let’s learn to be still in God’s presence.

The wonderful thing is that God wants us to know Him intimately. Yes, we must learn to know Him intimately, but we have His assurance that we will find Him when we seek Him with all our heart. We have His promise that He will be found by us. He wants intimacy with us. Let’s pursue it!

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 4th, 2013 at 7:07 am and is filed under Intimacy with God, worship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.