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What Draws You To God?

When I was young, I came to know God as creator and eventually as savior, and those things drew me to Him. Those are good things for children to know about God. In fact they are good things for seekers, for new Christians to know, but they exist in the elementary things of which Paul speaks. Elementary I suspect for two reasons. The first, that they can sometimes be based in fear – if you don’t believe, God is going to send you to Hell. The second, that they are things about God; they are objective statements. Objective I suspect as faith concepts can be.

But I do not want to stay there. I no longer want to know God as creator and savior only. I want to know God; I want to know Him in His essence, His character, His love. But here again I do not want to stop at objective statements. “God is love” is nice, but it cannot satisfy. These again are a set of objective statements about God.

Much more do I want to know God as my God, on a personal and communing basis. I want to know Him as He knows me, moving and sensing, and abiding with me. I want to abide in Him, to know His desires, to know His loves, to know His attractions and revulsions. I want to know these things as though they are my very own. I want to, as much as a creature can, become God in this world. When I speak and when I do, I want to be able to say as Jesus did, that I only say and do what my Father tells me.

My assurance in this pursuit is that He wants me to know Him that well, and that He will provide a path for me to find Him and become like Him. He invites me into His world, into His mind, into His very life. He has shown me His likeness in His Son, and invites me to summon the courage to live the picture that Jesus paints for me.

This is no mere learning about, and it is more than conforming behaviors. No, this is much more. This is to know in such an intimate way that I can comfort as He would comfort; I extend mercy as He would extend it; I live in His life and as He would live. I want to know the will and the passion of God so that I join with Him on this earth.

God is my savior; He is my creator – my sustainer in fact. But He is so much more and He draws me to know Him far beyond my initial saving and forming. He draws me to know Him as He would be in this world.

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