Beholding God

 A verse that has been transforming me the past year or so is 2 Corinthians 3:18 “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” 

The Word transforms us by allowing us to behold God.  Studying sermons, books, and commentaries will never compare with humbly bowing before the Word of God.  This is convicting.  I don’t want to come to the end of my life and have piggy-backing off of someone else’s thoughts of God my entire life.  I want to know Him as much as I possibly can, and this comes from His Word…I’m not hating on good teaching and books!  Those are good too!  But, the Word has to be central for us. Here's a helpful illustration that I heard Matt Chandler say in a sermon.  I’ve listened to this particular sermon a few times over the last year, and it's greatly impacted my focus on the Word of God.  I recommend it to anyone!  You can find it here: http://fm.thevillagechurch.net/sermons listed as "The Authoritative Word" from 9/13/2009.

“I think you live in a day and age where there’s great teaching available all over the place. So you never really learn to feed yourself. You’d rather live vicariously through other people’s studies. Which is kind of sad because you’ll never love the Lord like the people who studied that, found that and wrestled with that will love Him. Like if I started talking about all of the reasons I loved Lauren, it wouldn’t make you love Lauren. It would make you maybe go, “Oh, I wish I had that.” But it wouldn’t make you go, “You know, I love her too. She’s amazing. I love her with my whole heart right now.” That’s not how it works. In the same way, you hearing me or some other guy talk about the grandeur and might of God is not necessarily going to make you love Him. You need to read and let the Holy Spirit engage you, chisel at you, work you over. May we repent of our laziness.”

To truly have the Word of God deep in our hearts, we’ve gotta wrestle with the text.  We must allow God to work in our hearts before finding the easy meaning from a trusted source.  Watch the Spirit lead you as you read.  Struggle through hard passages with prayer and perseverance with the ultimate goal of knowing Christ more.  This is a challenge to myself as well.  As Chandler says, "may we repent of our laziness."  And may we fight to know Christ more through concentrated prayer and dedication to studying the Word of God.