2004-02-02 - It's a Fact

Encore 1998-10-06

Micah 7:3 a great man speaks the desire of his soul...

I recently learned that 63% of the eggplants sold in the United States are grown outside the United States. It changed my life. Well, not really, but it did get me to thinking. Why was I being told this? Does someone really think I care about the import rate of eggplants? I don’t even like eggplant.

My conclusion is that I get told a lot of things that I don’t need to know. Then I continued, in a logical manner, and asked, “What, then, do I really need to know? What is really important?”

John 10:14 “I know my own, and my own know me.”

Seems like the one crucial thing I need to know in this life is Christ. If this life is really a journey towards eternity, then to know Christ is everything.

It is easy to take the Christian faith and turn it into a cold formalism of do this, don’t do that. It is easy to have a daily quiet time with God, go to church weekly, prayer meeting on Wednesday night and simply go through the motions. Our faith is more that that, it is a relationship with Chirst, a personal relationship with Christ. It is to know Christ.

One of the benefites of knowing Christ is that in knowing Christ and growing in our relationship with Christ, we come to know ourselves also. Through Christ we come to know all that we need to know.

Desiring Christ and to know Christ is, (I am inventing a term), “holy wanting”. We all have desires, but to desire Christ should be our chief desire. Holy wanting is something that will change our thinking and actions radically.

It is as Christ says in Matthew 13:44, where he compares the kingdom of heaven to a treasure hidden in a field, which a man stumbles upon. He goes out, sells all that he has and buys the field. The man knew what he wanted he wanted the field and more importantly the treasure in the field. He was willing to part with everything in order to have that one thing.

So it is with us. Our desire should be to know Christ and to part with all that would in any way hinder this knowing or block our progress toward being in a relationship with Him.

Soli Deo Gloria,
T-

tim@cfdevotionals.org
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