“Nothing compares to the greatness of knowing You, Lord”. Mac Powell said it best when he said; “Those words that were spoken and written by the Apostle Paul apply just as much to our lives today as they did 2000 years ago when he wrote them. That in our lives no matter where we could go, or who we could meet or what we could see or what we could earn or be given to us or accomplish, there is nothing in our lives that well ever even come close to the greatness of knowing Jesus Christ our Lord.”
And as the familiar song goes, “I’ve heard all the stories; I’ve seen all the signs; Witnessed all the glory; Tasted all that’s fine; Still nothing compares to the greatness of knowing You, Lord! I see all the people; wasting all their time; Building up their riches; for a life that’s fine; -- I find myself just living for today; Cause I don’t know what tomorrow’s gonna bring; So no matter if I rise or fall I’ll never be alone, oh no; Because, Nothing compares to the greatness of knowing You, Lord!”
Sometimes it seems like our journey as followers of Christ is characterized by our ability to let go of things that were never in our control in the first place. Yet scripture encourages us to hold firmly to our faith. Ironically, we are unable to accomplish either goal in our own strength. It is vitally important that we have complete dependence on God for anything and everything.
Knowing our Lord Jesus Christ and knowing of Jesus are two different things. There are billions of people that know of Jesus, every demon that exists knows of Jesus and is terrified. Many people who call themselves Christians also know of Jesus and are content with just knowing of Him. But when we come to the realization that we need to put our complete dependence in Jesus Christ and live by His every word, it will have a profound impact on our lives.
There is nothing that this world could ever produce or imagine that could ever come close. . . to the greatness of knowing our Lord Jesus Christ. The reason for that statement could be broken down into one simple sentence; “Those who never know the Lord will not enter the kingdom of God”.
Matthew 5:20, “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven”.
Matthew 7:21, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
Matthew 18:3, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”
Matthew 19:23-24, “Then Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
Those verses are all great reminders that, contrary to popular belief there are people who will not go to Heaven. There are many who say, “Lord, Lord” but never experience the greatness of really knowing Him.
If we truly know the Lord we will also love the Lord. John 14:15, “If you love me, you will obey what I command.” How many of us do what we want instead of what Jesus commands and still claim to love Him? It was once said “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyles. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable!” How true it is though, we go to church and learn valuable Bible truths, then we walk out of church and from the very car we drive to the smallest thing at home, we take our own course of action and see the Bible truths we just learned as just ‘mere suggestions’. It ends up being a life of justification of why we act differently than the Bible teaches.
I guess it comes down to ‘where do we harbor what is great to us?’ Do we harbor it in Jesus Christ or in a house, a car, a person, a job or a host of other things that can become idols to us? The greatness that we harbor must be in the Son of God, Jesus Christ! There is greatness in knowing His son. That greatness begins with getting rid of looking out for ourselves and making sure we have everything we want and put that emphasis on knowing Jesus more intimately. It is a relationship, a bride and groom relationship. Now what relationship would be healthy if both parties just knew of each other? We want a healthy intimate relationship with Jesus Christ and the only way to have that is to rid ourselves of anything that is not in God’s will. It’s called radical amputation! These are things in our life that are luxuries, or just plain ‘not God’s will’ that we convince ourselves are ‘ok’ because we just want to have them. When we truly know the Lord we will have no desire to have these ‘questionable’ things. When we truly know the Lord we will not have to justify things and find scripture that ‘allows’ us to do or have something. Instead using the scriptures to back up our course of action to abstain from world influenced policies, forms of entertainment and convenience.
Many times we are tempted to do things that are contrary to God’s will in the name of convenience, or to avoid persecution. James 1:2-3 “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance”. James is telling us that when, not IF, when we are persecuted for our faith in Christ, consider it pure joy. We are not to avoid doing what’s right or do something that is wrong, just so we aren’t persecuted. It’s called witnessing for the Lord and sharing our faith. When we truly know the Lord, we will understand that we cannot compromise our faith so that we do not get made fun of, receive a citation, or even get fired at work. A great Bible example is Daniel 3:13-15 13Furious with rage, Nebuchadnezzar summoned Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. So these men were brought before the king, 14and Nebuchadnezzar said to them, “Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the image of gold I have set up? 15Now when you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipes and all kinds of music, if you are ready to fall down and worship the image I made, very good. But if you do not worship it, you will be thrown immediately into a blazing furnace. Then what god will be able to rescue you from my hand?” Those three were promised death by burning if they did not bow to the image that Nebuchadnezzar had made. Think how easy it would have been to just bend their backs to avoid death. The reason they did not is because they had faith in God, the truly experienced the greatness of knowing God! Listen to the response that they gave to the king; “Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. 17If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. 18But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” They stood up for their faith because they knew God and were witnessing and proclaiming the greatness of Him. So before we sign that policy, passively agree, or compromise scripture to avoid persecution we must think back to the decision that Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego made and the mighty faith they had in a mighty God! They could have diluted what was really taking place and said “it is only bending our back, it is not worshiping”, But they chose not to. We could dilute our chance to witness for Christ and not compromise by saying things such as “it’s only a strap on my waist, I don’t depend on it for protection” when talking about a seatbelt. Or “it’s just so I can get a decent car, I would never claim insurance” when talking about insurance policies, all the while disregarding what we actually agreed to.
When we truly know the Lord, we will marvel over the greatness of it. Nothing can come close to the greatness! We will forget all the compromises that we previously made and give God the benefit of the doubt. When there is a doubt about something being scriptural or not, we may dwell on it for awhile and eventually convince ourselves to justify what we want instead of God’s will. That is a sign that we do not really know the Lord. The most important decision that we could ever make is to commit all, surrender all, and give up everything to the Lord Jesus Christ! There is nothing worth holding onto that is not in God’s will.
Knowing the Lord and living by the Word of God is so vitally important it
cannot be overstated! Psalm 1:7 “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.” It seems that more and more young people are throwing solid teaching to the wind and doing their own thing and calling it truth. Does what we do have to be justified as being right, or is what we do a witness for Christ and a statement of truth? If we spend more time justifying our actions and decisions than we do witnessing for Christ by our actions and decisions…. We do not know the greatness of knowing the Lord!! There is work in order indeed if that be the case.
No compromise, no luxury of convenience that is objectionable, nothing is worth sacrificing truly knowing Christ. We may feel like we know the Lord and say we love Him, but if there is an idol in our life or we habitually sin or we have or do something outside of God’s will, we do not really know the Lord Jesus Christ like we say we do.
1Corinthians 8:13 “Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall.” If our choice or possession or policy (that was originally doubted) causes our brother in Christ to fall into sin because he also does it, “get rid of it and never visit the thought of it again” is what Paul is saying! You see, it does not matter that it is only I that is doing something. It actually affects a lot more than just me if I make questionable choices. There are a lot of choices in the Christian life and in all of our decisions it is of dire importance that we give God the benefit of the doubt! We may lose possessions, money, friends, or anything but will be blessed because it was for the glory of the Lord! Matthew 19:29 “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” Humans by nature are stubborn. And when it comes time to choose between right and wrong, life and death, blessing or cursing, we stubbornly choose the worse of the two because it is camouflaged as truth! But if we are truly seeking God’s will and chasing after the heart of God with all we have, we will find it and we will be righteous through Jesus Christ.
Nothing compares to the greatness of knowing You, Lord! When we reach the place of truly knowing the Lord Jesus, there will be a revival in our life. We will no longer doubt what God can do for us. We will have complete faith for healing, protection and guidance. There is no end to what God will do for us when we truly know, love and worship Him!
Psalm 18:1-3, “I love you, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call to the LORD, who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemies.” Are they just words in your life, maybe good suggestions for living, or are they the words that you live by? God has to be number one in our lives there is no other way to live.
What It is a lot easier for a person to pull you down than for you to pull them up! Give up those who could pull you down. It’s time to be real, be honest and do it for your sake and the glory of God! What about the company that we keep? Do our close friends represent a life that really knows the Lord Jesus Christ? You may have good morals but if you keep bad company you will soon compromise them because the Bible says so. 1Corinthians15:33, “Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.”
Philippians 3:8, Paul says, “I consider everything a loss in comparison to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ” Paul has come to the realization that next to the great privilege of knowing Jesus Christ, everything else is trash!
Luke 12 tells the story of the rich man who bragged about his riches and how he would kick back, relax and just take it easy. He planned to just live it up and enjoy all the things that he had accumulated. Verses 19-21 tell the rest of the story, "And I'll say to myself, 'You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry. "But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?' This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God." Wouldn’t we rather be rich toward God than to be foolishly focused on material possessions or distracted by a relationship that keeps us from enjoying all that is ours in Jesus Christ? A rich person in the Bible is sometime thought of as someone who is far from us. But when we focus more on our money, making it and spending it and our spiritual life lacks, we are included in the category that the Bible calls rich. At that point all the verses that make reference to ‘the rich man’ now apply to us. Time for changes indeed! A popular belief is that those ‘rich man’ verses only apply to Bill Gates and Donald Trump, but it is more of an attitude toward money and possessions than the amount that we have. Just consider! The very Creator of the Universe, The King of Kings, Almighty God wants to fellowship with you. He wants you to know Him and He wants you to enjoy the riches of His grace! Eph. 1:7, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace. Now what could be greater than that?
A major step in getting to know God more intimately is resisting temptation and not giving into even the subtle suggestions of the devil. Many things that we do that are questionable started out as mere suggestions from the devil, a.k.a. major temptation. The next step was easy because if it looks good to this generation, generally we go for it! This more than any other is a generation out looking for pleasure and fun. Looking out for ourselves and at all costs satisfying ourselves. In our pursuit for pleasure, we have turned away from our Glorious God, the only One who can forever satisfy us. In fact, He is a fountain of living waters in which He longs to quench our every desire. Yet so many of us have turned away from Him, and tried finding pleasure in worldly things. Money will never satisfy. Sex will never satisfy. Cars, big houses, a simple life, volunteering, alcohol, drugs, the American dream: nothing can satisfy us except God. In fact, all things except God are "broken cisterns that can hold no water." We are fooled by pleasures that don't last. The things that we spend our time on and consume are the water we drink. Just as Jesus told the woman at the well that He could give her ‘living water’, He is offering us that same ‘living water’. We seek after bitter water when we spend our time in addiction, luxury, money and a host of other potential idols. We must replace the consumption of the bitter dead water with the Living Water of God’s word and God’s Truth!
I think that shedding light on the Devil's deceitful tactics can greatly help us in resisting him. We must realize that sin is anything we try to satisfy the longing of our soul with other than God. It’s time we drag our sin out into the light where it will die because sin loves the darkness! The pleasures of sin don't last. Only God can satisfy the desires of our heart. You'll never be satisfied with just dabbling in sin, just sipping the cup of sin. Sin begins as a pet, but quickly becomes your master. It will never have lasting satisfaction! We become tricked into thinking that if we dive deeper into the worldly things we pursue for pleasure, they will satisfy us. Yet, pretty soon we are drowning. The sin took a firm grip of our life and we are left wondering what happened. We can't allow the Devil to trick us into thinking that anything other than God can satisfy our soul. Many times we justify the things of the world that we do saying, “I am not depending on these things to satisfy my soul”. But that also is a tactic of the devil to get us thinking that these things are not harmful to us. “I am strong, I can stand up to this, it will not master or affect me, I am firm in Christ”. They are all haughty self assured statements and we are setting ourselves up for a big fall if we believe that! Knowing the Lord also includes resisting the devil. We cannot be a friend of the devil and claim to be a friend of the Lord. Revelation 3:16, “So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” With God you cannot even be lukewarm you are either for Him or against Him.
Never forget that God is a fountain of living water and He longs for us to come and quench the longing of our soul in Him.
King David was “A man after God’s own heart”, in other words he sought after the heart of God. King David had things in perspective in what he had to say about God: "Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth." (Psalm 73:25) "On You I wait all the day." (Psalm 25:5) "In Your presence there is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore." (Psalm 16:11) "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart."(Psalm 37:4)
David did not desire anything on earth. His sole desire was for God. The one thing he asked for was to be in the presence of God. David knew that in Christ alone is where we find the fullness of joy.
We can't help but talk about what we are in love with! Be it a boyfriend or girlfriend, a video game, a favorite band, sports, money or Jesus Christ. What do we spend most of our time talking about? Is it sports, money, or a person? That is a sure indicator of what we really love. Only 2% of professing Christians share their faith regularly, talk about forgetting our First Love! Are we in that 2% of Christians? Do people point out that we are a Christian when we are around them, or do our language, tolerances, actions, and our disposition reflect more of the world than Christ? It’s time for a spiritual inventory.
Hebrews 11:25-26 “[Moses] chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.” Take a lesson from Moses, he knew that sin was unfulfilling and fleeting. Although it promises great things it will always leave us hanging in the end. As you might say to a friend, “Don’t leave me hangin”, it is impossible to say that to sin, although we say it every time we accept that it will make us contented.
Knowing our Lord, Jesus Christ is more than just frequenting church and doing good deeds. It is an intimate relationship with Him. "Have you discovered Jesus Christ as your treasure which you value more than everything else? The answer to this question is life changing, "because where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matt. 6:21). Every professing Christian will say ‘yes’ to that question, but statistics show that that is not true. “Only 2% of professing Christians share their faith regularly.” We talk frequently about what we are in love with. What do we talk regularly about?
In closing think about this: There are actually things that can and will keep a lot of people on this earth, out of heaven. These are people who professed and believed that they were saved and going to heaven. What will go wrong then, that they not make it to eternal life with Jesus Christ? They didn’t choose to know Jesus on a personal intimate level. They knew of Jesus and claimed they loved Him and that he was their personal savior. But when everything comes to an end there will be those who chose life and those who chose death. It is all a choice and our choice must be in Jesus Christ. When we think about the seriousness of our decisions and that they could land us in hell, they take on a whole new meaning. It is not just ourselves that we affect with unwise unscriptural decisions either. There are people, young people who look up to us and take everything we do as right and acceptable. How horrible would it be if we misled a young Christian with a decision that was not in line with scripture? Matthew 18:6 “But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” You see, it could be a decision now that we know is wrong but will change it later. That decision could lead a young Christian down the wrong path. A son said to his father, “Dad I know this is probably not the best thing but this is how I want to do it for right now”. That son was soon to leave the truth of God and build his faith in God around what suited him best. We must be strong, standing firm, not wavering for our own sake, for the sake of those who look up to us, but ultimately for the glory of God!

“Nothing compares to the greatness of knowing You, Lord!”

Lord grant us the ability to throw down our idols, to break off unscriptural fellowship, to put you first, to realize that everything we do affects us in one way or another. Dear Lord, the truth is that nothing compares to the greatness of knowing You, help me to hold that at the forefront of my mind, to use it as a weapon of truth. Sure Lord, I know that there are a lot of things that I could do or things I could have, but when in comparison to the sheer magnificence of You and the fact that those things of the world would not bring glory to You, they are worthless. Lord let us all come to the realization that nothing will ever compare to You and nothing in this world is worth compromising our faith in You.

My thoughts

JF

June 10, 2004