We Have All the Rest

"But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." (Matthew 6:33)

Again, part of the answer we are looking for is the fact that so many professing Christians just want to get things from God. Anyone can write a book now that will sell - just give it a title like, "Seventeen Ways to Get Things From God!" You will have immediate sales. Or, write a book called, "Fourteen Ways to Have Peace of Mind" - and away they go by the ton! Many people seem to be interested in knowing God for what they can get out of Him.

They do not seem to know that God wants to give Himself. He wants to impart Himself with His gifts. Any gift that He would give us would be incomplete if it were separate from the knowledge of God Himself.

I feel that we must repudiate this great, modern wave of seeking God for His benefits. The sovereign God wants to be loved for Himself and honored for Himself, but that is only part of what He wants. The other part is that He wants us to know that when we have Him, we have everything - we have all the rest. Jesus made that plain when He said, "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matthew 6:33).

Lord, I know that in having You I will have everything I could ever need. Just give me Yourself today, Lord, and that's enough. Amen

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Beyond Our Power of Thought

"Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God; and every one what loveth is born of God, and knoweth God." (1 John 4:7)

If you are longing after God with the exception that you are going to be able to think your way through to Him, you are completely mistaken.

The promise is that God will fill the heart, or man's inner-most being. The Word of God makes it very plain that the Church of Jesus Christ will never operate and minister and prosper by the stock of knowledge in the heads of Christian believers but by the warmth and urgency of God's love and compassion flowing through their beings.

Now, don't throw your head away - you are going to need it! I am convinced that God has made it plain that man alone, of all the creatures on earth, is created so that he can have fullness of knowledge about the earth and all the wonders and glories that it holds. I believe that through grace man can have a fullness of knowledge even about the works of God - but this certainly does NOT mean that we find Him and know Him and love Him through thought processes and human wisdom.

It is utterly and completely futile to try to think our way through to knowing God, who is beyond our power of thought or visualization.

Lord, it's great to know Your works through the intellect, but it is infinitely more wonderful to know Your Person through a relationship with You. Fill my heart today, I pray. Amen

~A. W. Tozer~