Desiring to Know God

I love when several things that I encounter in a day all point to the same truth about God. That’s what happened today.

As part of my devotional reading, while I played ball with the dog, I decided to read a couple of Psalms. I went to my old favorite, Psalm 116, which I’ve written about before. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say I’ve read this particular Psalm at least 50 times (probably closer to 100). Yet as I read this morning I saw a truth that I hadn’t seen before in verses 8 and 9, which say:

⁸For you, O LORD, have delivered my soul from death,
my eyes from tears,
my feet from stumbling,

 ⁹ that I may walk before the LORD
in the land of the living.

My focus has always been on verse 8, because God did deliver me from death, tears, and stumbling when He showed me the root of my major clinical depression. But this morning I noticed why He delivered me. It wasn’t so I could go about my business and do whatever I please. And it wasn’t so I could work hard to earn His approval. It was so that I could have a relationship with Him, so that I could “walk before the Lord in the land of the living.”

Later, after I had showered and dressed for work, I kneeled to pray as is my morning habit. But first I read a one-page devotion from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. (I started this devotional this year because I thought it didn’t have dates in it so it wouldn’t matter if I missed a day, but I discovered this morning that the dates are in the footer at the bottom of the page. Oops.)

Anyway, as I read the January 31 entry, I came across this sentence: “Christian workers fail because they place their desire for their own holiness above their desire to know God.” Ouch. As I prayed, I pondered where I might be doing good works to prove my own holiness. I asked God to help me focus on just knowing Him. I’m finding as that becomes my desire, the work that is before me becomes less of a burden. Instead, it becomes a blessing because I do it in His power and for His glory.

Finally, I was finishing up my children’s lesson for Bible Study Fellowship, reviewing my answers to the week’s questions to decide how to answer the question “What have you learned about God in this week’s study?” The study is about the suffering Christians face. My answer was that, “All of our suffering, comfort, and joy are designed by God to bring us into a closer relationship with Him, like the one He had with Adam and Eve before they sinned.”

This life really is about walking with God in all that we do, whether it be work or leisure, suffering or blessing. When we do it all with God, instead of apart from God, we have the abundant life Jesus promised. John 10:10.