open up our eyes

Many of us who were raised in a Christian home remember the iconic christian worship song of the 90's, I Want to Know You More. To this day, I find myself humming it any time I hear a similar phrase. Today just happened to be one of those days. But as I pondered the words to the tune I was humming, I wondered just how many of us really get to know Him more. Jesus makes it pretty simple for us to approach Him. He even tells us from His own mouth, how to have the revelation of Christ:

John 14:21 "He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him." Websters dictionary defines manifest as..."readily perceived by the senses." So if it's really that simple to know God, what steps are we missing? Why are so many of us still not perceiving Him with our senses? Looking back at our friend Jesus' words' we observe... "he who has my commandments, and keeps them..." There it is. The key to knowing Him....keeping his commandments. 


Now hopefully if you have been a christian for more than a few days, you should understand that this does not entail keeping the 10 commandments hung on your wall as a daily checklist, (although it's not an entirely bad idea,) but it's an issue of the heart. We are to be living our lives as a constant act of obedience to Christ.
PAUSE: Notice though that this verse does not mention perfection. We all know that if we could actually achieve perfection, we would not need a savior and the entire gospel message would be void. So praise God that is not the requirement. RESUME: But as a similar encouragement from Paul we read, : "Therefore I urge you brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice...." (Romans 12:1)


So this is what it comes down to for us. How can we be obedient to God in our lives so that we can actually know him more? To be honest, obedience for me usually looks like this: My daughter poops all up her back, and now has it in her hair and armpits. I can choose to curse and be angry towards her, or I can pause and ask the Lord to give me grace to handle the situation. Next scenario, my husband comes home and informs me that we are having dinner guests within the hour as he takes in the scenery of an atomic bomb of toys in our living room and the unkempt, unshowered wife he fell in love with 10 years ago. I can either freak out and tell him he is crazy, or lovingly ask for his help and explain what needs to happen...


These might seem like trite, silly examples of obedience, but it is my reality. All  I want to say to you my friend is that we each have our own challenges in obedience. The pictures will look different, but each moment of obedience is monumental and vital to our knowing God. Open up your ears to the moments that God is whispering his plea to take your part in knowing Him more. Allow yourself to see your smallest choice of righteousness to be the biggest step to knowing your Lord. Join me in the song of worship that is played out through our life moment by moment, choice by choice, step by step. 

"Open up our eyes, open up our hearts to see. 
Show us who You are. 
Show us what we're supposed to be."