Background or Foreground

“And he is before all things…” Christ is to be first in line, at the head of the pack, if you please. I’m fearful that He is in the background, rather than the foreground, in many of our lives. The former word meaning, “the distant part of a scene; behind or subordinate to something.” The definition of the latter is “nearest the viewer.” It can be said, and rightly so, that scores of Christians today are like the prophets of old who “…stood to view afar off.”

Our relationship with Christ is to be “up close and personal.” What lover wants to court from a distance? You have to be close to Him, if you’re going to cling to Him. Saintly Brainard said, “I want to be so close to Jesus that I can hear His heart beat.” John the Beloved would have said, “Amen” to that statement, for, you remember it was he who leaned his head on Jesus’ bosom. When will we learn, familiarity is not intimacy.

The best way to get close to God is to make over His Son.

Check the Price Tag

"Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine.” The reserved, conservative, religious Jews could only surmise that these Spirit-filled disciples had gone over the edge. They had become fanatical. Someone defined the word, when used in Christian circles today, as meaning “someone closer to God than me.”

There is a cost to being filled with the Holy Ghost. The lives of John the Baptist, Stephen, and Paul, along with a host of other humble believers, as well as Jesus, testify to this fact. As a preacher of old used to say, “There is no Pentecost without plenty-cost.” The price tag on a powerful race car is much more than that of a mope-along four cylinder.

All Christians want the power of God until they check the price tag.

A Book and It's Author

Recently my wife and older son Andrew drove form our home in Northern CA. to the Los Angeles area. The purpose was to hear and meet an author my wife had been reading after; our son had recommended him to her. The book is entitled, “What’s So Great About Christianity?” The author’s name is Dinesh D’Souza. She was so taken up with the book she would not be satisfied until meeting the writer. She was thrilled when introduced to him by our son.

Is this not the way it should be in the Christian life? We begin by reading the Word of God; and then we are so impressed, we long to know the God of the Word. How sad to see so many Believers today talking about and quoting this Divine Book, who do not know, or have an intimate knowledge of, the One who wrote it? They stop short, spending their entire Christian life in the outer court at the Laver (type of the Word) rather than continuing on and entering the Holy of Holies, where the Glory was. Every time God rends the veil of their lives so they can enter in, they patch the veil back up.

The purpose of knowing God’s Word is that it will ultimately lead one to knowing Him. Toward the end of David’s life he wanted to show his son Solomon the importance of this great find, “And thou, Solomon my son, know thou the God of thy Father.” This was also Paul’s one great desire. As an old man, he tells the Philippians of this longing, “That I may know him…”

The end of all learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love and imitate Him. (John Milton)