"What Ocean?"

    "In all thy ways acknowledge Him" (Proverbs 3:6).

    Fellowship with God begins with the simple fact of His presence in "all thy ways", and our simple acknowledgement of the fact.  

    Simple?  It should be.  But it is not.  The unholy axis of the devil, the world, and the flesh (including our own) align to complicate our awareness of the reality in which we "live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).  As the fish responded when asked about the ocean in which he swam, "Ocean? What ocean?"  We miss so much because of all the nefarious effects that sin has on ourselves and the environment in which we live, darkness and blindness constitute the greatest challenge.  Creation teems with the living and true God - "the whole earth is full of His glory" - but even the most devoted believer misses great measures of the sea of God in which we all have our being - "If any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know" (Isaiah 6:3; I Corinthians 8:2).

    If we are to set forth on the journey of acknowledging our Lord in all our ways, or to continue thereupon, we must avail ourselves of the gifts He provides that expose our hearts to truth and reality.  We open our Bibles for illumination upon the sea of God in which we live, even as the Holy Spirit once moved upon the dark depths of the waters (Genesis 1:2).   Every page of Scripture shines with the light that reveals, "The Lord is.  The Lord is here.  The Lord calls us through His Son and by His Spirit to know, love, trust, and obey Him."   We also seek the fellowship of Christ-honoring, Bible believing Christians who encourage and challenge us to acknowledge our Lord - "that we may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ" (Ephesians 3:19).  In such light, we then choose to anticipate the realized awareness of our Father's presence and working in all our ways - "My expectation is from Him" (Psalm 62:5).  Indeed, our human capacity to envisage the future exists primarily to enable our anticipation of Divine involvement.  Thereby our Lord prepares us to acknowledge His loving presence and activity.

    We could not acknowledge the Lord in all our ways if He did not first completely immerse Himself in them.  He does, or rather we are immersed in the sea of God.  "Whither shall I flee from Thy presence?" questioned the Psalmist, who answered his own inquiry with the affirmation that in all things, "Thou art there" (Psalm 139:7-8).  Let us avail ourselves of the gifts given to open the eyes of the blind, and to keep them open.  We will miss much otherwise.  We will miss much regardless.  But we don't have to miss all, and our Father offers to us growing awareness, leading to growing anticipation, and resulting in growing acknowledgement of the wondrous and holy Environment in which we live and move and have our being…

"The path of the just is as the shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day."

(Proverbs 4:18)

Weekly Memory Verse

    The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of them."

(Proverbs 20:12)