Trying to know God better
During my church homegroup the other night I was thinking a lot about my need to know God better. We spend a lot of time worry about “things” but if we worried about the one thing that was important, getting closer to God, then the “things” we worry about would take care of themselves. I guess it was a “consider the lilies” type of moment for me. (Matthew 6:25-34)
I’ve been reflecting since on Rob Bell’s book Velvet Elvis and what he says about binding and loosing which I wrote about on my blog (you can read it here). I talk about the importance of wrestling with God as Jacob did. It prompted me to try to make more of an effort in my prayer and Bible study times, in the words of another member of my homegroup to “expect God to be there”.
I looked again at the whole passage in Matthew 16 where Jesus tells the disciples about binding and loosing. I was struck that before Jesus talked about giving them the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven he asked the disciples “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God”. Jesus wanted to know that the disciples knew who He was and what He was all about before he gave them the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s the same with us we must know Jesus, be familiar with who He is, what He has done and what He promises to do in our lives before we can be effective witnesses for him.
