Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Tuesday August 5, 2008

Do you ever wonder why it is so hard to really learn much about God? I know this is true in my experience and in the experience of many men and women I have talked with about the subject. Often the imagined solution is to read more, listen more or to be in harmony with our quick fix age, attend a pricy seminar on "How You Can Know God and Everything About Him In Three Easy Lessons," "but wait!! You will get all of this for $50,000 and the rights to your first born, if you order in the next 10 minutes, God's operators are waiting for you to call."

I came across a statement on the subject of knowing God in the sense the deeply spiritual people have talked and written about by one the most intensely spiritual men of the last century, A.W. Tozer. Dr. Tozer said:

"Self is the opaque veil that hides the face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction."

Edison claimed that chance favors the prepared mind and it is a good idea to believe that God also favors the mind and heart that is prepared for more of Him. The Apostle Paul had one of the most prepared minds in history, and on a trip to persecute the people of Christ, the Lord dramatically arrested him on the road to Damascus and Paul nor the world around him were never the same. Yet in spite of this defining moment, Paul wrote years later:

"That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;" Philippians 3:10

The point of the contest being knowing Christ in the deepest manner possible, and this giant admitted that he was still a babe in arms despite long years of walking with Christ.

Many of those Christians we hold to be shining lights in a dark place experienced a truly defining moment in consisting of a fuller knowledge of the Lord which brought with it the settled understanding that the more they knew about the Lord, the more they wanted to know Him in the personal sense. We now call this an intense relationship.

The Bible teaches that the primary hindrance of knowing the Lord in contrast to merely knowing about him is ourselves. The SELF covers, blocks the view of Christ we are intended to have when walk with him. Part of the reason for this is the fact that we are bound and determined to protect our self, and when the Lord walks by we see only our version of our self, and we miss the glory of Him. We so desperately demand that God be conformed to our personal image.

Over the years I have read of the defining experience of Charles Spurgeon, Dwight Lyman Moody, Billy Sunday and how as a result of God ripping away the veil, they were changed and so was their work. Many is the time I have prayed for such an experience, but it has come to me that I really don't care that much about really knowing God, I just want the power so that I may be more successful. And so the old ugly head of SELF again places an opaque veil over the face of Christ.

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2008 Use with credit.

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