That I May Know Him 

Now that summer is in full swing, some of my usual busy-ness and activities have slowed down. At first it was hard to adjust to having a lot of extra time to myself, but already a week in, I have really begun to relish the luxury of more time to spend reading my bible and journaling about how the Lord speaks to me through it.

Today, a wonderful coincidence occurred -well  not really a coincidence; whenever God wants me to get something He usually says it to me more than once. And that’s what happened this morning, I read the same thing twice, once in my daily devotional reading from My Utmost For His Highest (MUFHH), and again in my epistle reading for today (as assigned by my daily bible reading plan).

The scripture verse quoted  in the heading of today’s reading (July 11) from MUFHH is Philippians 3:10: “That I may know Him,” and in the text Chambers reminds us that the determined ministry of the Holy Spirit is to help us realize Jesus Christ in every area of our lives. Every phase of our actual lives has a counterpart in the life of Jesus. Jesus “real-ized” His relationship to the Father in every thing He did, no matter what He was doing, or how menial the task.

At first I struggled to understand what it meant to realize Jesus in every area of my life. But if I look to Jesus as my example, I see that He was conscious of the Father’s presence in everything, and He talked to Him continuously. Whether He was alone on a mountaintop, performing miracles such as the raising of Lazarus, feeding the multitudes, or teaching His disciples, He was always conscious of and acknowledged His Father’s presence with Him.

Chamber’s asserts that, “The aim of the spiritual saint is that ‘I may know Him’,” – and nothing else.

As I went on to read my epistle reading for today I was delighted when I realized that it was the very passage from Phillipians 3 that O. Chambers had expounded on in my devotional reading. I laughed out loud realizing that I had been set up. This is what God wants me to learn today – or at least remember, since this is not a new revelation for me. But God wants to take me deeper as I realize His presence during my morning quiet time.

Philippians 3:8-14: I count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord…and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection…Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me…forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

And so I am reminded, the goal is not to be successful or effective or even useful in what I do for God or for others. It is simply, to know Him. And, like Paul, I determine to forget what lies behind: the failures and shortcomings and mistakes of yesterday, and instead to concentrate on pressing forward towards the goal of knowing Him in every circumstance today.

And so I respond to the upward call of God in Christ Jesus and I strain towards the goal of realizing Jesus in everything I do. Even the apostle Paul didn’t do this perfectly, and so I can rest in the knowledge that success is not the goal, only knowing Jesus as I try.