"My Utmost For His Highest" by Oswald Chambers is PERFECT to share today!
INTIMATE WITH JESUS
Have I been so long with you, and yet hast thou not known Me? — John 14:9
These
words are not spoken as a rebuke, nor even with surprise; Jesus is leading
Philip on. The last One with whom we get intimate is Jesus. Before Pentecost
the disciples knew Jesus as the One Who gave them power to conquer demons and
to bring about a revival (see Luke 10:18-20). It was a wonderful intimacy, but
there was a much closer intimacy to come — “I have called you friends.”
Friendship is rare on earth. It means identity in thought and heart and spirit.
The whole discipline of life is to enable us to enter into this closest
relationship with Jesus Christ. We receive His blessings and know His word, but
do we know Him?
Jesus
said — “It is expedient for you that I go away” — in that relationship, so that
He might lead them on. It is a joy to Jesus when a disciple takes time to step
more intimately with Him. Fruit bearing is always mentioned as the
manifestation of an intimate union with Jesus Christ (John 15:1-4).
When
once we get intimate with Jesus we are never lonely, we never need sympathy, we
can pour out all the time without being pathetic. The saint who is intimate
with Jesus will never leave impressions of himself, but only the impression
that Jesus is having unhindered way, because the last abyss of his nature has
been satisfied by Jesus. The only impression left by such a life is that of the
strong calm sanity that Our Lord gives to those who are intimate with Him.
AMEN! This is why Paul set all else aside in order to STRETCH himself into a closer and more intimate knowledge of the LORD JESUS! Philippians 3:10-14:
10 [For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly], and that I may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection [which it exerts over believers], and that I may so share His sufferings as to be continually transformed [in spirit into His likeness even] to His death, [in the hope] 11 That if possible I may attain to the [spiritual and moral] resurrection [that lifts me] out from among the dead [even while in the body]. 12 Not that I have now attained [this ideal], or have already been made perfect, but I press on to lay hold of (grasp) and make my own, that for which Christ Jesus (the Messiah) has laid hold of me and made me His own. 13 I do not consider, brethren, that I have captured and made it my own [yet]; but one thing I do [it is my one aspiration]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the [supreme and heavenly] prize to which God in Christ Jesus is calling us upward.
Once Jesus is your LORD and SAVIOR, there is NOTHING that anyone else can do to interfere with your intimate FELLOWSHIP with Him! Only you and I control that! How much do YOU want to KNOW Him? HE wants this MORE! AMEN! Here is Hillsong United with "Closer Than You Know":Shalom in Him!
