"Our Nearest and Dearest"

    God made human beings in His image for the purpose of internal relationship and fellowship with Himself.

   "I will dwell in them and walk in them" (II Corinthians 6:16).

   Created in His image, we possess the capability of personal association and communication with the Lord in a manner unlike any other being.  This includes angels, who are greater than us in ability and power, but lesser than us in relational capacity.  Scripture never indicates that the Spirit of God indwells the spirits of the angelic host.  He does inhabit us, if we have trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ.  To the believers of Corinth, the Apostle Paul wrote, "Ye are the temple of God… the Spirit of God dwelleth in you" (I Corinthians 3:16).

    Our capacity for fellowship with God, profound and available to us as it is, must be exercised if we are to experience its holy potential.  A.W. Tozer once wrote, "We will all know God about as well as we want to."  More to the point, Scripture declares to the children of God, "Ye shall seek Me and find Me when ye shall search for Me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13).  Relating to our Heavenly Father does not just happen.  We must avail ourselves of the means whereby the Lord becomes the person we know best.  To many, this seems impossible because we cannot see, hear, or touch Him.  Remember, however, the internal nature of relationship and fellowship with God.  He alone dwells within the innermost temple of our trusting hearts.  No one else can meet us there.  Thus, the possibility of our Father becoming our nearest and dearest companion can become actuality as we devote ourselves to this most amazing of gifts He gives, namely, the gift of Himself.

    Do we believe in such potential for ourselves?  We must.  Expectation, that is, the anticipation of faith based on the promises of God's Word, has much to do with whether we realize the glory thereof.  The Lord Jesus died to usher us into the living presence of God not merely as a relational reality, but in functional fellowship.  He gave to us His Spirit, His Word, His church, and His dynamic involvement in our lives to enable Heart to heart communion.  There, in the temple of our spirits, we may walk with the Life of our lives in loving and joyful devotion.  Angels desire to look into such wonder (I Peter 1:12).  Let us do more than look.  Let us expect and then experience the glory of a gift that came to us by way of a cost too terrible to imagine - "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?!" (Matthew 27:46).  Yes, in Christ and through His sacrifice, God gives to us the the gift of Himself.  Certainly we must respond, and in this moment, we may commune with our Nearest and Dearest...

"As for me, I will come into Thy house in the multitude of Thy mercy."

(Psalm 5:7)

Weekly Memory Verse

     Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.

(Ephesians 5:11)