Sticking Closer than Our Skin

UV 932/10,000 Sticking Closer than Our Skin And thou, Solomon my son, know thou the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind: for the LORD searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts: if thou seek him, he will be found of thee; but if thou forsake him, he will cast thee off for ever. I Chronicles 28 v 9 Like Solomon we are to be wise children of the Lord God, our spiritual father and the God of our fathers of faith. Unlike Solomon whose many foreign wives led him to stray from the God of his father David, We need to serve Him with a perfect heart or a whole heart and not a divided heart, not with a reluctant mind but a willing mind. The only way to stay out of sin, stain and pain in this world is to stick closer to Him than our own skin. What He has revealed of Himself in and through His Word is sufficient for us to know that the immediate and ultimate purpose of life is to serve Him wholeheartedly and with single-minded focus. This is what is meant by personal knowledge of God. This kind of single-minded focus on the locus or the source of life and love –the God of our fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will cure us of our monkey mind that cannot focus on any one thing and turn it into what I call a “ monk mind” or a mind that is focussed on the Lord and devoted to serving Him in all the imaginations of our thoughts and plans. When we seek Him with all our hearts and all our minds, He will be found of us in every dimension of life, in our personal lives, our families, our workplace, our travel and all of our interests. Apart from our personal knowledge of God, we need to have KNOWLEDGE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. The Lord knows us even more deeply than we can know Him. He searches our hearts to know our current state of heart and mind. He checks if we are ready to serve Him with an undivided heart and a fixed focus. He knows our every heart beat and every minute thought, every motive behind every action and word. We cannot hide from Him anything. When Adam and Eve disobeyed the Lord they hid but He could see them in their nakedness. Even today He sees each of us in our total nakedness. He hears our whispers and the murmurings of our hearts. He knows what are our needs and what are our priorities in life. He knows the intimate details of our lives that are not known to any other living person. This is the reason that the Lord alone has the prerogative to judge people as He alone knows the totality of our situations. Our knowledge of God draws us close to the Lord. Our knowledge of the knowledge of God makes us tremble with reverence. It keeps us from getting side-tracked and cures us of our double-mindedness. This is what cured Jacob of His deceitfulness and turned Him into a believer in the goodness of God. This is what kept his favourite son Joseph focussed on the God of his father even through his journey in the desert from pit to prison to palace. He recognized that the hand of His God was with him in every station even as He was to be with His own Son Jesus in each station of the cross. This is what made him flee from the adulterous advances of Potiphar’s wife for he feared the consequences as he had knowledge of the knowledge of God. Just as Jesus walked the stations of the cross, each of us have to cross different stations of our lives, knowing, believing and trusting the Lord. If we forsake Him in thoughts, words or deeds, He too will forsake us forever. This knowledge of the knowledge of God changes us from being fickle men like the disciples in their early days to faithful people like the disciples in their later days. Prateep V Philip