Advice for daily living

Shortly prior to his death, King David gave his son Solomon something which is indeed applicable to the life of every believer: to love God and thereby acknowledge Him! This applies also to us because nothing is more important to a person and a Christian than striving after this. The reason is clear: God is Truth and HE loves, knows and understands us. It is a love and an understanding that goes very deep and touches our very souls. It is more than that which we can expect or hope for from our parents, friends, children, colleagues, husbands or wives. God's loving understanding is clearer, deeper, more binding, more truthful and more complete than what any human being can give to another. Our hearts, thoughts and feelings, our innermost souls, make us the persons that we are. God understands everything, even that which other people can't understand about us or that which we sometimes don't even understand about ourselves! There is no hesitation, no conjectures and no room for interpretation, when God analyses us and calls the things by name. We stand there and are known upto the most minuscule part of our innermost being, to the eternal God. And that also against every earthly comprehensibility or logic. And due to this, we should also trust God in everything, instead of trusting other people to really know us. Paul wrote in Galatians “But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?” (Galatians 4:9) The belief therein, to be known by God, should lead to practical consequences in our lives. To trust is not only a feeling, but a deed – an act of faith which requires our complete being. This should reveal itself in prayer, in the community and in our spiritual learning.

God sees and understands everything, but the LORD wants us to ask Him to reveal our innermost being to us and lead us on the right path. We should know and believe gratefully that God reads us as a book. In Psalm 139:23-24 we read: “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” It is not as though God doesn't know everything and we need to first ask Him to search our hearts and see if everything is still in order. We must know and believe that it is so. We need not fear this. Something completely good (namely God) must reveal our innermost hearts and then also communicate it to us. God did it! Even with this, everything has its time (Ecclesiastes 3:1). It has nothing to do with arrogance, but only with the truth. Doubt cannot acknowledge truth from within nor from without. Life has its origin in God. And not only that which is visible and recognisable is meant by this. Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6). Whoever has the foundation of his life, his soul and his heart based on this and brings it before God as such, will find transquility, grace, love and peace. Even then, when we don't understand everything, the truth of God sets us free because we recognized in Jesus Christ the revelation of God (John 8:31-32). Whoever believes this, may also have the certainty, that God leads us and hears us when we pray (Psalm 4:4). What is more soothing, healing, and life-enhancing than to be understood, acknowledged and loved like this?

Jörg Bauer