Tuesday, March 27, 2012

"S" Knowlege and "C" Knowlege

Chello people!

This post is just some thoughts that came to me during some quiet time at a Worship Team workshop a few weeks ago.

There's a song that came on during that quiet time that has really been speaking to me recently, One Thing Remains. The chorus goes:

Your love never fails, it never gives up, it never runs out on me.


And the bridge:

In death, in life, I'm confident and covered by the power of Your great love.
My debt is paid, there's nothing that can separate my heart from Your great love
.

It's an absolutely amazing feeling knowing that regardless of what you say, what you do, who you are, God loves you unconditionally. I'm not really a person that cries, but I can't even get through the chorus the first time without becoming overwhelmed to the point of tears.

I think part of the reason this song moves me so much now, is because while I know God loves me, I didn't KNOW God loves me. I'm only now properly coming into that realisation. Let me explain.

In French, Spanish, and Italian, there are two verbs for 'to know.'

In French:
Savoir and connaitre,

In Spanish:
Saber and conocer,

In Italian:
Sapere and conoscere

In each of the three languages, the verb starting with 'S' has to do with having a technical knowledge of something, while the verb beginning with 'C' has to do with being familiar with something/someone, or as one definition I've seen said, 'to know in one's heart.'

I think I'd been living life with the technical knowledge that God loves me, but didn't always know or feel that in my heart.

Now this may be wrong, but I'm willing to guess that there are many people that, feel (or have felt) like this. We know with an 'S' God loves us, but we don't KNOW with a 'C' God loves us. We say it, but don't live it, or we sometimes forget.

God loves, us, and that's a definite, but in thinking otherwise, we have a self-shaped block keeping us from experiencing and living in the fullness of God's love. We get in God's way.

Talk is cheap. We say that God loves, us, but how do we know?

Well, if you'll just take a little look over at John 3:16 with me you'll see. "For God so LOVED the world..."
Not saying you should do this, but to make that scripture more real and personal, in my bible, I've actually crossed out 'the world,' and wrote my own name. So now my bible says:

"For God so loved Marla-Joy, that He gave His only Son..."

You are SO loved, that Jesus died on the cross, taking on all your sin, so that you could have a new life, and a perfect love.

So yeah, God loves you. True story. (:

Until next time...

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Be overflowing

Hey people,

Well aware that there haven't been any posts in a while, humblest apologies.

This one is going to be a quick one, it's just something that came to me while doing the dishes yesterday.

Most of the washing up had already been done, and I had just begun to tackle a large baking dish. I placed it in the water that was already in the sink, but the water didn't reach the rim of the dish, so to get some water in the dish I turned on the faucet. The water I turned on was hot water, while the water in the sink was cold. And boom, revelation time.

Do you see it yet?

Look at it this way:

Faucet - God
Hot water - the Holy Spirit, God's blessings, giftings, etc.
Baking dish - You (God's vessel)
Cold water - your current situation, people around you, etc.

The hot water wouldn't change the cold water, it wouldn't make it warmer, until the dish overflowed.

You can't/won't change the current situation you're in or the people around you, until you overflow all that God has poured into you.

Having done science in Secondary school, I know that if the dish full of hot water had been left sitting in the cold water, eventually (due to energy transfer if I'm not mistaken), the water in the sink and the water in the dish would eventually become the same temperature.

The problem with that is, what's inside the vessel has become indistinguishable from what's outside of it.

I think this is a kind of 'Be in the world, not of the world,' kind of situation. As Christians, there should be something different about us. Philippians 1:27 talks about letting your manner be worthy of the Gospel of Christ - people should know by how we live our lives that we're Christians - and Romans 12:2, talks about not conforming to the pattern of the world - again, regardless of how long we are in the world, we should not become like the world.

As I'm typing this up another point comes to mind, and that is that the water only stays hot as long as there's a constant source of hot water. If the tap were to be turned off, after a while, the water would become warm > lukewarm > cold.

Outpouring of the Holy Spirit, spiritual renewal, God blessing you, these are not one-off things. You should be constantly spending time with God being refreshed and restored.

And that's it for now. May add a bit more to this as I have a chance to turn it over in my head, but this is the basic thought that came to me at the time. Be overflowing - a simple revelation, but hopefully it gets you thinking.