Devotional 93 Knowing God Intimately
Welcome, again, to the Free Range Preacher on Prayer podcast. This is a new thing. It will be a short devotional feature that I would like to do, if not every day, almost every day.
I love devotional thoughts and things that spur us to worship the Lord.
If you're in Scripture every day, if you're reading your Bible every day, it actually gives us endless food for thought. Food for devotional thought actually gives us things to think about that we might read past, or sometimes we read past them. Or they come they jump out new to us on a particular day, or we may be going through a specific situation. So a verse becomes precious to us at the moment. I love those times; I love those thoughts. And being in Scripture, give those.
Today's thoughts are exceptional for me, and just in the big picture of things. And you'll see why here in a second. But I use the verses from Second Timothy 1:12. As always, I use the NASB version. And Paul says, "For this reason, I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed. For I know whom I have believed. And I'm convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day."
Now, this is in Timothy. You know his life ends in his death in the Mamertine prison. So Paul is reaching close to the end of his life. So until that day is obviously the day that he goes to glory.
I love that verse. This passage is an example of our dynamic interaction in prayer. This verse adds a level of trust, and our desire is to have the same faith Paul had. (We will see the nature of this natural element as our faith grows and our prayer lives grow.)
Also, in the way of an aside, I would encourage you to interact with God's word by looking at and noting these passages that excite our hearts, minds, and new inner man.
But in this verse, what stands out to me, what I love about this verse, is Paul says, for I know "whom I have believed," okay, his trust didn't come from the things God can do or the things even God has done, but who God is.
And that dovetails nicely with our last episode on eternal life, knowing God. If eternal life in John 17:3 is knowing God, where you want to get to is where Paul was that he knew Him (Holy God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.) so well he could entrust everything to him.
A biblical story that illustrates this concept is the Book of Esther.
We're not going to read from it today. But basically, Esther is faced with a situation where she needs to talk to her husband, the king. And she has to walk into him because he hasn't summoned her. Circumstance forces Esther to step into his throne room without prior permission.
According to the law, the king had the choice when somebody entered his throne room; uninvited, he could ignore them. Or he could reach out his scepter to them, which then they could touch and come close to him, speaking to him. So he was basically inviting them in. When he reaches out scepter, he's now, in essence, inviting them. By the by, if the king did not reach out to even Esther, his queen, death awaited her.
You can read this story in the Book of Esther, and for this specific lesson, you can find it in chapter four of the same book.
Esther did not know her husband, the king, well enough to know what he would do. So she had some fear of walking in. Finally, the ward of Mordicai, now the queen, overcame her fear. Had she known him better, she probably wouldn't have had that fear. Evidently, he loved her. She expressed her request, which he granted.
In her inner thoughts, Esther wasn't afraid he couldn't do what she wanted him to do. That wasn't her fear. It wasn't that he didn't have the power or authority to achieve that. But she just wasn't sure of her relationship with him, whether he would or not accept her in her interruption of his day.
And so when we return to our devotional encouragement, Paul says, I know whom I believed, not in whom I believed or about whom I have considered, but him. He knew God. He had a close relationship with God, which is what we've talked about.
One of our goals in prayer is the dynamic nature of our conversation with God. As His true children, we long for, we want to get to that spot where we can say, I know "whom," I have trusted, and I'm going to, I'm going to entrust everything to him. In our closeness, we can give Him that blanket authority. Our genuine, honest relationship with Him provides our hearts peace and joy. For me, that is the most moving.
My heart and soul are humbled to know that I'm on the path to knowing him well; I have to confess that I don't know him that well yet, except by faith, to entrust everything to him. My heart is sometimes not utterly steadfast as I think about what's going to happen or the future. But it is enough that I entrust it to him.
As we grow, you and I grow together in our prayer lives. We will get to that spot where we know him so well we can say what Paul said; I know whom I believe.
If you would like to share any devotional thought that has engaged your soul, you can send them to freefangeprayer@gmail.com, or contact us at frponprayer.com, our website.
I would love to read and share your devotional thoughts. As you share, we might share your heart on the podcast. If you give permission, I would love to thank you and give you credit.
"Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, 25 to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen."
Jude 1:24
