Nets and Harvest

I’ve been reading A.W. Tozer’s Pursuit of God. There is this one excerpt I keep circling back to.

He writes, “It was Canon Holmes, of India, who more than twenty-five years ago called attention to the inferential character of the average man’s faith in God. To most people God is an inference, not a reality. He is a deduction from evidence which they consider adequate; but He remains personally unknow to the individual. “He must be,” they say, “therefore we believe He is.” Others do not go even so far as this; they know of Him only by hearsay. They have never bothered to think the matter out for themselves, but have heard about Him from others, and have put belief in Him into the back of their minds along with the various odds and ends that make up their total creed. To many others God is but an ideal, another name for goodness, or beauty, or truth; or He is law, or life, or the creative impulse back of the phenomena of existence.

These notions about God are many and varied, but they who hold them have one thing in common: they do not know God in personal experience. The possibility of intimate acquaintance with Him has not entered their minds. While admitting His existence they do not think of Him as knowable in the sense that we know things or people.”

As this has been percolating in my heart and head, I keep asking myself, “what’s the difference between believing in God and knowing him?”

In Matthew 10: 26-27 Jesus says, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” His sheep know his voice. There’s intimacy there. When my mom and dad call me, I don’t need to look at the caller ID. I know their voices. Similarly, as a parent I can distinguish the cry of one of my children in a crowd.

But how do we develop that intimacy? The WORD is what keeps coming back to me. Get this… In John 1:14 it says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” This is in reference to Jesus’ birth. Jesus is the word! It’s the incomprehensible majesty of the trinity.

Hebrews 4:12 says the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any two-edged sword. That it penetrates dividing soul and spirit, joint and marrow, and it judges the thoughts and attitudes of our hearts.

I accepted Jesus into my heart when I was five. I can remember everything about the night my parents came into my room, and my life forever changed. I grew up in a Christian home. We went to church every time the doors were open. I graduated from a Christian University, but I never consistently read my Bible.

I didn’t start seriously reading the Bible every day until a year ago. It grieves my heart to tell you this, but I was 38 years old! And I don’t think I really knew him before then. Going to church on Sundays, listening to Chrisitan music, having an experience with God here and there is NOT enough!

Friends, I now KNOW his voice! His Word is alive! Every time I open my Bible I’m overwhelmed by his goodness. How he talks directly to me. Words jump off the page. Then he connects them to something I previously read. He’s tucked truths down in my heart that he brings back to me when I need to hear and remember his words.

So, what does it mean to be a Christian? A believer? I feel like the gospel these days gets watered down to simply grace. His undeserved favor over our lives, and thank God, he gives us so much of it!  But I think it’s more than that.

In each of the gospels when Jesus is calling the first disciples, he tells them to leave their nets, to follow him, and he will make them fishers of men. I think there is something here. When he calls us by name, just like he did with Peter and Andrew, he asks us to turn and leave our old lives behind.

Repentance is what I heard when I read these passages. He wants us to leave our old lives, habits, sins, and ways, and follow after him. Because it’s in that obedience he begins to transform us into his image.

In 2 Corinthians 3: 16-18 it says, “But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

The root word of discipline is disciple. It means student. I think the way we become a true disciple of Jesus is through the discipline of becoming a student of his word. It’s through his words that we’re transformed. It’s where he corrects us, helps us grow, and leads us.

And I’m beginning to believe it’s the secret to the abundant life Jesus told us about in John 10:10.

But catch this, because I’ve missed it far too often in my own life! The abundant life doesn’t mean our lives are perfect, void of struggle and hardship. It means, in the midst of life’s messiness; we have an abundance of his fruit! His love, joy, peace, …Galatians 5:22-23.

Friends, he wants us to know him. It’s in knowing him that we step into his fullness. Don’t miss it. He created you for more. He’s called you into his wonderous light because he wants to do something in you and through you. Are your nets mended and ready for a harvest?

Romans 10:17 “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

Deuteronomy 10:12 “and now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.”

“Repentance doesn’t save you, but it is evidence that you’re saved. “

“A moment of confession followed by a lifetime of conversion.”

“Salvation is God’s gift for us. Sanctification is God’s will for us. “

~ Pastor Barry Stagner

“Holy does not mean “super-spiritual” it does not mean sinless perfection, it does not mean spiritually superior or obnoxious. Holy means a life, a heart, a mind, and a body that is genuinely separated to the Lord. To be Holy is a life lived apart from the thinking and heart of this world, this flesh, and the devil, and lived apart to the Lord.” ~Anna Tweedy