Our Bible verse for today: “Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10 (NIV)
Our thought for today: “We need to know God as He really is.”
A.W. Tozer (1897-1963) was a Christian and Missionary Alliance Pastor. He was also a popular conference speaker, retreat leader, and the author of more than thirty books. His most important work was written and published in 1961 and was called “The Knowledge of the Holy”. It’s a small book written for the average Christian and it is intended to help us get a better understanding of God’s basic attributes, as well as what those attributes mean for us in a real and practical way as we live our everyday Christian lives.
It’s essential for us to know God as he really is; that’s a critical factor in living the Christian life well. Unfortunately, many Christians today have a distorted and inaccurate understanding of God. To a large extent our Christian culture has formed a god in our own image and to our own liking. Many people have ideas about God which bear little resemblance to the God of the Bible. Tozer writes, The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping men.”
Even in our day we are still technically a “religious” people. Even considering how far our culture has drifted from God, we still have lots of “religious” activity in America. In many towns there is a church on almost every corner. The airwaves are filled with Christian radio and television broadcasts. There are Christian bookstores. Bibles are easily available to anyone who wants one (or two, or ten, or twenty). There are Christian concerts, and Christian conferences, and Christian bowling nights. We have bumper stickers, fish symbols, a dashboard Jesus, and John-the-Baptist soap-on-a-rope. Quantity isn’t the problem. Quality is.
Tozer goes on, The words ‘Be still, and know that I am God,’ mean next to nothing to the self-confident, bustling worshiper in the middle period of the twentieth century.” What was true when Tozer wrote those words in 1961 is even truer today in 2018. Our knowledge of God is too often superficial and inaccurate.
This month we will take the time to get to know God as He really is. We will consider some of God’s most important attributes, we will talk about what those supernatural truths mean for us, and we will think about how they impact our everyday lives.
We need to know God as He really is. We won’t have full knowledge of God until the day we arrive in heaven, but the Bible reveals enough about Him that we can know Him now, much better than we do.
Oak Hill Baptist Church