oldkjv wrote:Benoni wrote:
What did you win a blue ribbon from your pator?
No a good felling inside that God has blessed me with understanding.
You have a long ways to go; but that is a good thing.
"Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord,... and then will I profess unto them, I never knew you." (Matt. 7:22-23). Know-- the Greek word is "ginosko" meaning: to know by experience. To have an intimate understanding and knowledge of another, based upon experience with them. When you have a deep communion with one, sharing the secrets of their heart, you come to know the nature and character of a person. This is far more than merely sharing surface opinions, like "it's a nice day," or, "looks like it might rain," "let's go for a cup of coffee and chat a bit." That's not coming to KNOW a person. But when you walk with them through deep trials, share their grief and joy, and become vulnerable because you are openly exposing your inner self to them-- then you get to really know someone.
When you KNOW HIM by experience, in the intimate knowledge of His love, of His grace, of His mercy, and He reveals to you an understanding of His plan and purpose, then other people can impute to Him all sorts of strange ideas of what "God is like," with doctrines that deny Him as He truly IS, and you can simply say to them, "You do not KNOW Him! He is nothing like you say. You charge Him with false motives and gross distortions of His character."
When there is nothing in common, no intelligent appreciation for the same things, no mutual understanding of things, then we are AS FOREIGNERS, of a different breed, a species that they cannot relate to, and they will look at you, and simply say, "I don't know you." You are a stranger.
Certainly HIS NATURE is foreign to the world, and as it becomes our nature also, we are to them as "pilgrims and strangers." But, John writes, "Now are we the sons (Greek, children) of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be. It is not yet made manifest! This WHAT suggests something unspeakable, contained in the likeness of God. There are marvels in Him which are yet to be revealed, beyond all we can ask or think. "We don't know what we shall become in the future. We only know that, IF REALITY WERE TO BREAK THROUGH, we should reflect His likeness, for we should see Him as He really is!" (Phillips translation).
Ah, no man can tell you today the real WHAT-- what we shall be. There are various speculations-- where revelation ends, speculations begin-- but the mind of man cannot conceive THE WHAT of God. He is so ALL GOD, and we are yet so human, that except for the small glimpses He gives of Himself to us, we do not know what we shall become. But this much we do know, BECAUSE WE ARE HIS CHILDREN, WE SHALL BE LIKE HIM. And when reality breaks through, "Then shall I know even as also I am known." (1 Cor. 13:12).
