"The Knowledge of the Holy"

The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…

"The Knowledge of the Holy"

    

   This week's memory verse, also referenced in yesterday's message, speaks to a vital truth regarding the entirety of our lives.

   "The knowledge of the Holy is understanding" (Proverbs 9:10).

    To know God is to understand, declared Solomon.  This raises the question, to understand what?  The answer is everything.  To understand is to see the Lord as the reality and great fact of our existence.  Failure to understand such truth regarding our Creator and Sustainer means that we see nothing as it actually is.  Consider the blessings of life, the pleasant moments and experiences that bring joy to our hearts and smiles to our faces.  From whence do that come?  "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights" (James 1:17).  To receive our Lord's gifts, including "life and breath and all things," but to miss Him as the gracious Giver of such grace involves a sad blindness to the Blessing of every blessing (Acts 17:25).  Conversely, recognition that joyful experience "cometh down from the Father of lights" completes pleasant experiences by providing opportunity for the thanksgiving that reveals our understanding, our "knowledge of the Holy."  

    The difficulties of life also reveal whether we walk in light, or grope in darkness.  Knowing God in trouble, pain, and loss bestows an understanding of Him and of the reality of all things not available in more pleasant experience.  "We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22).  A fallen world makes difficulty a necessary component of our present existence.  The challenges come in all types of measures and modes.  For the believer, our Heavenly Father provides "a very present help in trouble" in all, thus offering understanding by knowing Him as involved and active in whatever hardship we may experience (Psalm 46:1).  As we frequently suggest in these messages, challenges offer knowledge of the Lord's hand, His working on our behalf.  However, they even more reveal the goodness of His heart as we trust His "very present" working to deliver us either from our troubles, or in our troubles. 

    We also do well to view our responsibilities in the Lord's light.  When our "I have to" becomes our "I get to," based on devotion to a life in which we "do all to the glory of God," such understanding transforms even everyday drudgery into eternal significance (I Corinthians 10:31).  Life is meant to be viewed as privileged responsibility, an awareness only fully possible in context of understanding God and His involved presence in our lives.

   Everything in our lives is best understood - is only understood - as we devote ourselves to the truth that "In Thy light shall we see light" (Psalm 36:9).  Let us apply the reality to all things, even as Solomon commanded, "In all thy ways acknowledge Him" (Proverbs 3:6).  Then let us marvel as more and more we discover that the God who "made all things" also dwells in the midst of all things to fulfill His eternal purposes.  This is understanding, the understanding of truth and reality where it can only be found, in the knowledge of the Holy.

"This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent."

(John 17:3)

Weekly Memory Verse

    "The knowledge of the Holy is understanding."

(Proverbs 9:10)