Revealing the Father's Heart

Although God's presence is everywhere on the earth, there are times when it is more noticeable than others. Most Christians have experienced those occasional "goosebump experiences," but I believe that it is possible to have a knowledge of God's presence all the time. But how? God says that He will "never leave us nor forsake us" but he also says to "seek and you will find." I believe that the first key is knowing that he is always with us. If we realize that nothing we do will push Him away, we can keep the eyes of our heart fixed on Him. I do not believe that it is possible to get "out of fellowship with God." This puts too much emphasis on what we have done in order to "get into fellowship" with God. Saying that we have to read our Bible so much or pray this much turns us into religious Pharisees. The second key to knowing God's presence is to get hungry for it. It is one of those strange paradoxes that while God is a

The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge... (Proverbs 1:7) Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease, where there are tongues, they will be stilled, where there is knowledge, it will pass away. (1 Cor. 13:8) Fearing God was primarily focused on in the old covenant; people feared God because the Law gave them an impossible standard to reach. According to the Bible, fearing the Lord is the beginning of all knowledge, but love is the conclusion to it. Love, not fear, is what stands no matter what and will be left at the end of the age along with faith and hope. Based on this, our total focus should be on knowing this love and sharing it with others. The idea is not to see how much we can love God but to know how much He loves us. God's kind of love is such that we cannot love Him with our own love so in order to love Him, we must realize how much He loves us!