The Pursuit Of God

"If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them"  (John 13:17).
"You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain..." (John 15:16). "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing"  (John 15:5).

Of course, I realize that my title was also the title of a famous book by A. W. Tozer, but I must borrow it to make my point right off the bat.  Is knowledge about God a requisite for knowing Him? Can we afford to be ignorant but good people?  What good does it do to know a lot "about God?" You must turn this knowledge about God into a personal knowledge of God.  Because to know Him is to love Him!  If you really study Psalm 119 (probably written by the Bible scholar Ezra), you will come to the realization that the psalmist loved the Scriptures and they were his meditation all the day long.  But loving the Bible does no good if we are not applying our knowledge. When God opens our eyes and enlightens us we are responsible to share our insights or pass them on if we want more, and thus be good stewards and faithful witnesses to His light.

This is not an attack on learning or the thirst for knowledge per se, which has its own reward and we should thank God for our enjoyment of it.  If one studies law, he should pray God turns it into His glory in some ministry so that all that study is not wasted.  The pursuit of knowledge and the pursuit of God are two separate goals unless the knowledge is to the glory of God. We are not just to be philosophers or lovers of knowledge, but lovers of God.  "Whether you eat or whether you drink, do all to the glory of God" (1 Cor. 10:31).  This is being purpose-oriented.   We may enjoy history, for example, but unless it is to the glory of God and put into practice it is bunk as far as the kingdom of God is concerned.

The reward of knowledge is in the putting it into practice ("...knowledge puffs up, but love edifies" and "to whom much is given, much is required"), like the ultimate reward of studying medicine is in the healing of people not getting educated.  We enjoy a lot of things in life, and we should thank God for them, but we are not rewarded just because we enjoy them (e.g., eating, drinking, reading, sports, politics, and even sex). God blesses us all with common grace to enjoy and have a capacity for life--"...who gives us richly all things to enjoy"  (1 Tim. 6:17). The subject of this post is the pursuit of God and being rewarded at the Bema by Christ, not how much we enjoy the blessings of life.

To delineate the problem with many believers, what they are guilty of is balking at the deeper things of God while leaving the so-called doctrine or dogma to the theologians or clergy. Erasmus said that doctrine is the bugbear of the Church and many believers today have followed suit--thinking it is just philosophy.  Actually, theology is the Queen of the Sciences!  They have come full circle from the Reformation, in that they blindly follow the clerics and don't become like Bereans, who search out matters for themselves and study their Bibles.  An understanding of sound doctrine is necessary for a sound life; one cannot live a sound life apart from sound doctrine.  On the other hand, you can know all the doctrine and get a degree in it, or great kudos, and not have a sound life to be practicing what you preach or know.  You could say that doctrine is necessary, but not sufficient (you have to use it as a means to an end, not as an end per se) because there is more than just knowing or being familiar with doctrine.

We are all theologians in that we come to our own basic understanding, interpretation, or viewpoint of Scripture.  The question is, is how good of a theologian are we and do we subscribe to false doctrine.  What we believe has a definite impact on our behavior (orthodoxy or right doctrine influences orthopraxy or right ethics).  We cannot ignore basic and sound doctrine because that is not an option for the believer who wants to walk close to Christ.  We make so many mistakes simply because of our ignorance and Paul repeatedly says he would rather not have us ignorant.  Now it does say in 1 Timothy 2:9 that an elder must hold to the deep things of God with a clear conscience--he is obliged to have the lowdown on doctrine and be able to correct those who contradict it.

The believer must be cognizant that he has decided to be a disciple or "learner" while being enrolled in the school of Christ and dedicated to His curriculum all his life--the search for God and truth never ends and one should never be complacent and think he knows it all, but always positive and receptive to learning more and never even getting tired with the milk of the Word, even when we crave the meat or solid food and have been weaned from our spiritual infancy. "As the newborn baby desires the pure milk of the Word" so are we to never get bored with Scripture or be blase and apathetic, which Christ calls lukewarm and is odious to Him in Revelation 3:19.

Our knowledge of God does no good remaining just "theory" or knowledge that isn't applied.  In other words, we don't pursue knowledge as an end in itself or, you could say, for its own sake.  Yes, it is a sign of spiritual health to be interested in spiritual matters, and in the 17th century it was the hobby of a gentleman to be conversant with theology or "God-talk;" however, one can get spiritual "intoxicated" with the deeper truths and become unbalanced and losing focus of the basics of our faith, especially the marching orders of Christ, the Great Commission

But knowledge about God should ultimately lead to knowledge of God and a closer relationship with Him, because "knowledge puffs up [making us feel superior and important, as it were]"  according to 1 Cor. 8:1.  I  have it said by friends that they want to take a college course on the Bible to learn it in more detail.  I have to ask them "Why?"  Do they feel led by the Spirit to do this or do they just have a desire to be "informed" or in the know about spiritual matters?  If they have been called to teach it may be necessary to prepare for a life-long study of the Scriptures, but to do do it for its own sake, as an end in itself, if vain in God's eyes and will accomplish nothing.

I'm not for ignorance, but I am against knowledge without purpose and end in mind, (knowledge is the means to an end).  You can be so preoccupied with the Word, actually doing nothing but reading it all day like a monastic monk and not apply it:  "Be ye doers of the Word, and not hearers only." We must not only intake but have output to be healthy.  Just like inhaling and exhaling for our bodies. The proof of the pudding is in the eating they say; what kind of believer we are depends upon our attitude toward Scripture.

You must contemplate why you are pursuing knowledge and you must also distinguish knowledge of God from mere knowledge about God.  You can literally know a lot about someone and not really know them at all on a personal level, too, as an analogy.  The goal is a relationship with Christ and a closer walk with Him.   According to Colossians 1:10 we are:  "Bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God."  See how they correlate?  Putting our knowledge into action reinforces it and cements it into our spirit and makes it good for something--not just theory or philosophy.  Two extremes to avoid are having Bible fatigue on the one hand whereas we get bored and it has lost its zing and being engrossed in the Bible in an academic approach on the other hand, like just having the desire to know all the answers.

One doesn't have to be privy to some secret, arcane, or academic knowledge to know the Lord (in fact you may know very little and know the Lord quite well), and make the same mistakes as the Gnostikoi in the Apostolic age who claimed that knowledge was the secret of salvation and they were "in the know" (gnosis means to know).  We are responsible for what we know or had the opportunity to know (no one can claim ignorance--there is no excuse for not knowing God) and God distributes gifts according to our abilities and His purposes, not ours.  Some may have the gift of knowledge, for instance, and God may entrust them with much knowledge, wisdom and understanding.  Much knowledge is a byproduct of a productive life, not the goal itself.  Just like one may acquire a knowledge of trivia unconsciously and know more than he realizes.

Knowledge per se is not the measure of a believer's productiveness, because we are rewarded according to what we sow, not what we know!  Just imagine someone saying he wants to study medicine but has no plans to practice medicine, or one who go to law school for the heck of it and doesn't want to practice law!  We must be practicing theologians putting our faith into action!  They say that if you can't do, you must teach;  that is one option and that is probably why we have preachers professors, and even scholars who are heavy on the learning and light on the application.
  Soli Deo Gloria!

The Self-improvement Craze

Prayer by Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr:  "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."  Used by AA and known as the "Serenity Prayer" (AA believes you must come to an end of yourself and realize you cannot help yourself before God can help you).

"Woe unto him who strives with his Maker"  (Is. 45:9). Remember, He is the Potter, we are the clay.

God raised Jesus from the dead and is still in the resurrection business; changing lives is His domain!

William Ernest Henley, the author of Invictus, claimed to be the master of his soul and captain of his fate, and thanked whatever gods may be for his unconquerable soul--what a humanistic outlook!


The twentieth century saw the self-improvement and positive thinking takeover of Christian thought as the pop culture.   It sold and people bought it; well, it worked and some most people believe that the test of an idea is whether it works (pragmatism), not whether it is true (for example, yoga works but is a dangerous undertaking for the Christian to dabble in).  Evil can work and even be efficient.  However, Christianity works, because it is true; it isn't true because it works. The cliches "Don't knock it if you haven't tried it," and "Try it, you'll like it," and "It works for me!" are invalid to believers--don't experiment! God even makes the wicked to prosper if they go by the rules and are wise, but that's not the gospel.  Things may work as applied from the Bible, but that's not the essence of Christianity--our commission is to preach the gospel message, and this is applicable to everyone.

If you can market your dogma to the unbeliever it is not the gospel, because only His sheep will hear His voice and not that of a stranger.  There are many false prophets out there telling people what they want to hear, and whitewashing the bad news that we are sinners in need of salvation, not that we are good enough to be saved.  The gospel has bad news too--we are lost in need of a Savior and we must get them lost first before we preach the good news of salvation by grace through faith in Christ.

We must "look to the rock from which we were hewn and the quarry from which we were dug" (Isa. 51:1).  We are simply clay in God's hands and He is our Potter.  Thinking that Christianity is a philosophy and just a matter of getting a good attitude is a recipe for disaster and failure.  We are setting ourselves up for calamity when we think that we are ultimately in control of our lives and what happens is that we give ourselves the glory and credit for our success.  Our future is in God's hands (cf. Psalm 31:15).  If you think about it, you can achieve it by faith.  What we should say is with William Carey: "Expect great things from God, but attempt even great things for God!"

What we have to come to realize is that Christianity is not a system of rules and regulations, a catalog of dos and don'ts or a standard of achievement to reach.  It isn't a matter of being "in the know" or "knowing the scoop," as it were, but of knowing a person and having a relationship with Him who can change your life.  "Victory in Jesus!"  This is the lowdown:  We give God control of our lives and He transforms us into new creatures, not just improves upon the old self.  Self-improvement is no improvement because we want God-improvement.  We don't just wake up every morning and resolve to be positive but to love Jesus more and walk closer with Him as He guides us in the way. The better we know Jesus, the more we will love Him and the closer we will follow.

Christianity is not a creed or doctrine, but a relationship and it is just like knowing your kin--it doesn't satisfy just to study them and know their rules--you have to take the challenge and get to know them personally and apply your knowledge.  We turn our creed into deeds and put it into practice (as we bear fruit in every good work, we increase in the knowledge of God, according to Colossians 1:10). We are commanded to "grow in the grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ" in 2 Pet. 3:18.

We have the power of choice and do indeed make choices all the time and are responsible for them; the problem is that we make bad choices and cannot take control of our lives--we must let God take over and cease trying to save ourselves.  Ovid said, "I know the better ways and I approve them, but I follow the worst"  We are infected with sin as a virus and our old sin nature or old man is still much alive and active after our salvation--we must do less trying and more trusting.  God wants to approve and say, "Great is your faith," not "You sure try hard."  We can get an E for effort, and fail in God's perspective because we gave ourselves the credit.  We have the power to make choices, but that doesn't mean we have an absolute free will--we cannot be what we want to be like God who is what He is and can be what He wants to be.  We cannot say that we will henceforth never lie or never have a lustful thought if that is our easily besetting sin. "Who can say I have made my heart pure, I am pure from my sin?" (Proverbs 20:9).  We all have a sin that easily overcomes us and besets us according to Hebrews 12:1 and is exhorted to set it aside and walk in faith as we learn that God can set us free. We are not born free but must be set free in Christ.  We are no longer under sin and sin has no dominion over us as believers according to Romans 6:14.  Instead of turning over a new leaf every day and resolving to do better, learn to walk closer to Christ and let Him make you the person He wants you to be.  It is not about putting a new suit on the man, as they say, but putting a new man in the suit.

We are forgiven from the penalty of sin at salvation, but we learn to overcome the power of sin and it's influenced in our walk.  There is no overnight transformation into perfect people because we are all works in progress and God isn't finished with us yet.  He isn't finished until He sees Himself in us like a silversmith refining silver looks for his reflection to know the silver is pure.  However we should be are of this:  God says in Philippians 1:6:  "Being confident of the very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ."  God never gives up on us--it is us who give up!   God can always use us for His glory because that's what He saved us for:  (cf. Isaiah. 43:7) and we are a blessing to others:  "So will I save you and ye shall be a blessing" (Zech. 8:13).  Our trials and tribulations are not only met to teach us but to be a light to others and give us the wisdom to encourage them.  There is no one philosophy that we can ascribe to our faith because it is more than a philosophy--it is a relationship (this has become a cliche but must be stressed). We all need the attitude check and change to grace-orientation because the best attitude is gratitude.

Christ didn't come to make bad people good, but to make dead people alive.  He made us the way we are and has a purpose for doing it in His outreach.  You may develop a great personality and a wonderful disposition and still be a failure as a believer, hardly knowing your Lord. We can be a success in one domain and a failure in another--no one succeeds in everything.   Remember that Paul was choleric, Peter was impetuous but sanguine, and Jeremiah melancholic, but God used them the way they were.  John the Baptist was sure eccentric, but God never told him to go get some help! Christianity is about transformation, not an improvement! God meets us where we are and accepts us, but we will not stay that way after He works on us.

The problem is that we have an innate nature that God has to deal with and we are subject to that nature just like a dove eats seed and a vulture carrion by nature--we cannot change our nature, but God can change our character and still let us have personality and individuality.  Point in fact to heed: we act according to our nature, not contrary to it,  according to our depraved and fallen will (we all even fall short of our own ideas).  It is not about getting a balanced, well-adjusted, and respectable life, but one of touching others in their time of need. God loves us the way we are and we don't have to change to be more acceptable--and so we should accept one another too--we are not cookie-cutter Christians.  The way you are is the way God made you, believers shouldn't have a problem with that.
I've heard it well said:  "God doesn't make junk!"

In the final analysis, it is not a matter of willpower, but of faith--not trying, but trusting! "Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit" (cf. Zechariah 4:6).  Religion is a do-it-yourself proposition and lifting yourself up by your own bootstraps--thank God there's hope for the weak and needy. The goal of our salvation is God-confidence, not self-confidence.  In the final audit of our lives at the Bema or Judgment Seat of Christ, we shall be asked whether we learned to love and trust Christ and apply what He taught us, not given a personality inventory checklist.  Progress is what God wants, not perfection.

There is rhyme and reason behind the madness:  All things work together for good for them that love God, to them that are called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28).  The catch-22 is that we must see how bad we are to be good, and we don't know how bad we are until we've tried to be good!   We must come to Christ on the lowest possible credentials crying for mercy to us as sinners who cannot save ourselves and need Jesus--this means dying to self not becoming self-confident that we can be all we can be and do anything we put our mind to; the people furthest from God are those who are self-sufficient and don't see their need, loving their own sin too much to recognize it.  Soli Deo Gloria!