Bringing Belief to The Stillness of Knowledge

November 18, 2013 Belief, Faith, Knowing, stillness No Comments

He that is made in the image of God must know him or be desolate.
~George Macdonald (1824-1905)

For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.  I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in My eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life. Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you. I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Do not withhold; bring My sons from afar and My daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by My name, whom I created for My glory, whom I formed and made.” Bring out the people who are blind, yet have eyes, who are deaf, yet have ears! All the nations gather together, and the peoples assemble. Who among them can declare this, and show us the former things? Let them bring their witnesses to prove them right, and let them hear and say, It is true. “You are My witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and My servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe Me and understand that I am He. Before Me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after Me. I, I am the Lord, and besides Me there is no Savior.
~ from Isaiah 43

Oh beloved, the hearts of the prophets strain to put enough strength to the words they write.  As the Holy Spirit pours torrents of truth through their spirits and into their minds and through their hands, an astounding thing begins to emerge on the pages.  G_d is real.  He is not just a concept.  He is not just someone in whom we believe.

And as we move into the words penned by the apostles, there comes only one gnawing desire for these bondslaves of their Beloved.  They want to know Him more and more. For, only in seeing ourselves as both completely full in Him and, totally desperate for more of Him, can we find the beginning of the infiniteness of our relationship with the Person of Jesus Christ.

G_d is a Person.

He is real.

We know Him.

And He is wonderful.

And it was not an easy road to knowledge, for at first we fought hard to believe.  Oh, how we wanted to believe.  As the rebellion in us was quelled, we were suddenly and completely aware that trust in ourselves was a really bad idea.  But, as a baby will scream and squirm and rave until he comes to trust his parents, we thrashed about at first.  We were looking for the source of the Voice who had called us out of darkness into this marvelous Light in which we are now standing.

As we thrashed around, we knew that we believed – but we are not satisfied.

There are three kinds of faith in Christ:

1. Struggling faith, like a man in deep water desperately swimming.

2. Clinging faith, like a man hanging to the side of a boat.

3. Resting faith, like a man safely within the boat (and able to reach out with a hand to help 
someone else get in).
~Dwight L. Moody


And so, somewhere along the way, we felt His hands moving around us, keeping us safe.  We saw His fingerprints everywhere.  Providence was laying a beautiful path before our feet – and guiding us along it.  And at first, we thought the path was to guide us through the tough circumstances.  However, the path did not make life easier.  Rather, our circumstances generally became significantly more challenging.

And then one day…  We round the bend on the clear path He has marked out before us.  We have been beginning to trust the path, for we know it is His.  We are looking down at our feet, and simply walking along.  However, one day, we come to a standstill for a moment – and we look up.

“Hi beloved.”

“Ahhh!  Its You!”

He simply responds with a huge smile, “Yes child. And Oh how I Love you.”

“You… You’re real.”

“Yes my friend.  Completely.  Utterly.  Totally.  Real.”

And we say, “I KNEW IT!!!!”

“Yes beloved.”

“And we?….”

In that moment, He says, “Yes.  Forever.”

And the belief we had in Him in the past simply fades away as we behold the face of the One we have been searching for.  However, what we come to see is that it is not in searching and walking and trying to find Him that we do.  Rather, it is in coming a to a complete standstill that we can finally allow Him to overwhelm us with His Presence.

Oh, it is not that He is some ethereal mist, so easily wafted away.  It is, rather, that His reality is so pervasive that one has to set one’s own internal focus to infinite to see Him clearly.  And the lens of our lives tends to jiggle too much if we even move a little bit.  But once we are still, we come to see very quickly that it is truly within Him that we live and move and have our being.

Do you believe in G_d?  Would you like to know Him instead?  Be still beloved.  He is right with you.  And He is simply waiting for you to wait for Him.

God is more truly imagined than expressed, and he exists more truly than he is imagined.
~Saint Augustine, of Hippo (354-430)

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About The Author

Makala Doulos

Mak is just a guy who is in Love with Jesus and his wife and kids. He writes about the amazing things that G_d is doing in our lives. May you be blessed and encouraged.