Found Deficient in the Most Vital Knowing of All!
It is true! Jesus has been with me a long time and yet I do not know Him.
Do I know about Him? Do I know His voice? Is He not my Savior, my Deliverer, my Healer?
Have I not in some "measure" experienced Him also as my Wisdom, my Sanctifier, my Righteousness, my Redeemer, my Intercessor, my Lord, my King?
Yes, to all of these. But now I realize that the things I have experienced are only the beginning things about Jesus. I do not know Him (have not beheld Him) as who He is apart from what He has done for me. What a sad commentary on my life as a Christian.
I remember as a kid, that although I saw my teachers every school day, I could not in my childish mind imagine them with any life beyond the classroom, with a life beyond me.
"When I was a child, I used to... think as a child, reason as a child; but when I became a man, I did away with childish things."
1 Corinthians 13:11
All these years He has been coming to me! Is it not time for me to come to Him?
"And Jesus turned, and beheld them following, and said, 'What do you seek?' And they said, 'Teacher, where are you staying?' He said, 'Come and you will see.'"
John 1:38, 39
Jesus Christ has a life beyond me and He wants me to join Him there. He wants to "revive me and enlighten my eyes" that I may behold Him in His glory. He wants me to come and see!
"Therefore leaving the word of the beginning about the Christ, let us 'press on to perfection,' not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of instructions about washing, and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment."
Hebrews 6:1, 2
"...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of the faith..."
Hebrews 12:2
And for the first time I sense the urgency expressed in the commission from Handbook 2:
Now for a "brief moment," grace has been shown from the Lord our God, to leave us an escaped remnant and to give us a peg in His holy place, that our God may enlighten our eyes... to give us a reviving...
Many years have flown by, since He gave us the Revelation. And the words from an old hymn spark a sudden fear: "When on others You are calling, do not pass me by..."