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Prayer Series 7: Know Him

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One of my favorite verses in the Bible is in 1 Chronicles when King David is announcing that his young and inexperienced son Solomon will become Israel’s next king, and he is communicating that God wants Solomon to complete the mighty work of building the temple.  After David communicates God’s plans for Solomon to the leaders of Israel, he exhorts his son and future king of Israel with this verse:  

"As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve Him with a loyal heart and with a willing mind; for the LORD searches all hearts and understands all the intent of the thoughts. If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will cast you off forever.” - 1 Chronicles 28:9

I love this verse because God’s heart for how we love Him, serve Him, and seek Him first is all here.  Also, David, a loving father with the experience of being the greatest king of Israel and a man after God’s own heart, in his final years chose to exhort his beloved son with these words of wisdom.  Bottomline is, this verse is WISDOM, and it starts with “KNOW the God of your father.” 

The Hebrew word for “know” is yada,` which means to be acquainted with, to know by experience, to recognize, or to consider.  It's a relationship!  If you really think about it, God knows more about you than you know about yourself.  He created you, He’s omnipresent and omniscient (He is always present and knows everything), He sees your outward actions, He even knows your thoughts, and He knows your tomorrow.  What I love about this verse is it goes even further and says God knows your heart and understands the intent of your thoughts.  Yikes!  He knows our deepest motivations.  He knows ALL.  Furthermore, what always blows my mind is that He knows each and every person in the world on this same level and loves each one.  WOW!

So, obviously, you can’t hide anything from God, and He loves you right where you are at today regardless of your sin, your state-of-mind, your intentions, or your attitude.  Further in the verse, it says “if YOU SEEK Him, He will be found by you.”  It’s up to us to seek Him.  He is and always will be right there and available, just wanting to spend time with us.  We are wired with a soul that thirsts to spend time with God as it’s in our original DNA - the “Lord God walked in the garden in the cool of the day” wanting to spend time with Adam and Eve, but they were ashamed and avoided His presence because of sin (Gen. 3:8).  We are sinful because it’s our nature and it’s so easy to avoid His presence because our sinful nature separates us from His presence – we are thinking more about ourselves, our comforts, our “need” for sleep, our busy schedules, what we need to do today, how to get ahead, etc. etc, etc.

God gave us free will - free will to seek Him or forsake Him.  It’s our choice, and it has eternal implications.  He just wants to spend time in relationship with us.  He already knows all of us, so we need to know Him to have this relationship.  He is good all of the time, He wants to teach us, encourage us, bless us, grow us, change us, make us more like Him, and help us glorify Him so others can come to salvation and know truth through our lives.  Understanding that we were made to have a relationship with God and that prayer is the method for how we talk to God, prompts me to consider my heart and approach to “knowing God”. 

Yes, the “components” of prayer we’ve discussed in this blog series so far are all important, including: praise, thankfulness, praying scripture, repentance, and obedience, and we should challenge ourselves to make a habit of incorporating them into our prayer lives on a regular basis.  But don’t approach prayer with a checklist either.  Check your heart.  What is the motivation of your heart and the intent of your thoughts?  Is it to know Him?  Is it to acquaint yourself more with God’s heart and will?  Is it so you can recognize and consider His purpose and plan for your life because His thoughts are greater? 

Here’s a practical example considering prayer before Bible study.  In Matt’s powerful Rocket Fuel study a few weeks back, he said the first step of Bible study is quieting your own spirit.  You can do this and should do this through prayer.  I don’t know about you, but my spirit is LOUD!  My mind is always swirling with the things I need to do today, the people I need to call/text, emotions, etc…  This is one of the reasons I study the Bible in the morning, because my spirit is naturally a little quieter.  I haven’t fully engaged in email, texts, social media, the news, my kids aren’t awake, and my fully-packed day isn’t in full swing yet.  It is so much harder for me to quiet my spirit for an afternoon or evening Bible study.  It can be done, but it’s harder.  Regardless, whenever you study the Bible, make sure you quiet your spirit through prayer. 

What does “quiet your spirit” mean?  Purpose in your heart and mind to seek God first and suppress your flesh through prayer.  Start with a heart to know God to get acquainted with Him, not the other way around.  Praise God for who He is, and take time to be grateful for all He’s done, putting yourself in a place of submission, ready to receive from the God of the Universe who is spending time with YOU.  Ask God to teach you, correct you, grow you, show you more of Himself, change you, reveal sin in your life, show you how to love others, prepare you for the day/week/months ahead, and for you to have an ear to listen and obey Him.  Whatever you do, don’t jump into a Bible study with a loud spirit that is focused on yourself to check “do Bible study” off your list.  God wants to spend time with YOU.  He wants you to KNOW HIM.  If you really wanted to get to know a new friend, would you say “Ok, you have 30 minutes. Make me feel good please”?  No!  You would make it a priority to spend quality time with that friend.

Remember, the purpose of prayer is communication between you and God.  Keep it simple, come to Him and SEEK Him with a motivation to KNOW Him.  He already knows ALL of you, so our place is to simply come to Him, to quiet our fleshly loud spirits, let His Spirit and presence in, just spending time with Him listening and meditating on His Word, with a heart ready to serve Him and not ourselves. 

"Come to Me, all [you] who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” - Matthew 11:28

 

“Be still, and know that I [am] God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” - Psalms 46:10

Posted by Lindsey Pintar with 1 Comments
Tags: come, jesus, jesús, know, obedience, praise, prayer, relationship, repentance, seek, thanksgiving, word
in Ben Young

Mix Tape Vol. I Track 6 - Came to My Rescue

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Well, the time has come. We’ve reached track six of my worship mixed tape! As the last installment in this series, it’s only fitting to cover one of my all time favorite worship songs, a song that I was introduced to at C4, and a song that has been an anthem for our church since the very beginning. That song is Came to My Rescue by Hillsong.

This song is the cry of my heart as it speaks to the heart of true submission to God, a desire to have God be glorified in all aspects of my life.

Of course I could tell you all about the song myself, but I felt it more fitting to bring in a guest on this one, someone who has been here since the beginning and knows the heart and drive behind this song firsthand. That guest is none other than our very own worship leader, Matt Wallenburg. 

I know he’s not a “guest” to you, but he is a guest to the blog...so just roll with it.

The following was written by Matt back in October...2017... So I’ve been waiting a long time to post it. It’s full of heart, passion, and the Lord, so sit back and enjoy (Might I suggest clicking play and letting this song play as you read on?). 

“The song Came to My Rescue was written by some of the musicians with Hillsong who had a desire to convey a simple heart of gratitude for what God has done. It stands out as one of my all-time favorites that I learned under my beloved mentor Sam Park before Matt Korniotes asked me to lead worship for C4 in early 2011.  
 
Nearly my whole adult career has been in project management of some kind or another between engineering and the military, and at that time I knew that the beginning phase of this ministry was the same as the beginning phase of any project- it sets the foundation on which everything else is built going forward. Any future adjustment or correction to the foundation requires ripping down anything that has been built on top of the foundation. 
 
Which is why during the first days I was praying hard about how God would establish this brand new worship ministry and make it what He wanted, not what I had a vision for or what I was comfortable with. 
 
I have led worship since I was 14 and experienced so many different ways to lead. With a completely open-ended decision to make, I sought that the Lord would establish something new and fresh in me that was appropriate for the work He wanted to do at C4. I didn't want something that was right for the previous ministries I had served with, but a fresh outpouring that was tailored for the specific work that the LORD was wanting to do with our newborn fellowship. 
 
The structure that God brought from that time of seeking Him is a story all on its own, but out of that time of prayer came a very clear vision that God wanted me to simply remind His kids of who He is and about what our response should be because of that. 
 
Yes, I know that's a generic statement that describes how all worship should be, and every Christian knows it; at the same time, we get so caught up in trying to do what's right, trying to understand God, and the complexity of living for Him in a world that opposes Him, that our worship gets cloudy. Routine and religion set in as we try to figure things out, and the simplicity of being kids reaching up, out of our mess, for Daddy, becomes something we look down on. What God wanted for C4 had to be simple and so very clear, and it had to stay that way. We would start with singing songs that reminded us of who God is and what He has done, and then as the worship set progressed we would intentionally put ourselves in a position of humility before Him as a result of those truths we reminded ourselves of. 
 
Came to My Rescue fits that vision so perfectly. The writers of this song had the same heart that I had when they wrote Came to My Rescue. Since it so appropriately describes our position in the Lord, it became our first anthem as a new fellowship, completely unifying Matt K and myself around the fundamental importance of that sort of powerful simplicity. 
 
Here’s what the song says:
 

Falling on my knees in worship

Giving all I am to seek Your face

LORD all I am is Yours

My whole life I place in Your hands

God of mercy, humbled I bow down

In Your presence at Your throne

 

I called, You answered 

And You came to my rescue and I 

Want to be where You are

 

In my life be lifted high

In our world be lifted high

In our love be lifted high

 
Look at how intimate the language is. Nearly every line of the song mentions both me as the rescuee and God as the rescuer. 
 
It can be hard to find worship songs where our response isn’t all about us and what WE say we can and will do. So much of our worship response is about the things we'll do for God, but this one is simply about us being and leaving the doing to our Savior. The only thing we’re called to do in this song is fall on our knees and place our lives in His hands. Through that He is glorified and lifted high in our lives. 
THAT is salvation, folks!
 
Paul says in Galatians 3:3 (though really the whole book of Galatians addresses this point so wonderfully), 
 
"Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?" 
 
We are saved when we realize that there is no hope for us fixing ourselves and that we have a critical need that nobody but Jesus can fill. The best that we can ever do and the greatest thing that we can give to God is to simply exist in Him and lift up to Him our broken, messed up hearts. That is worship. That is our response to Him when we first allow Him to take His place as the Sovereign King of our reality, and it remains our only real response as we walk through our long journey of faith. 
 
I never develop anything more to give to God as a Christian. 
 
I never become anything better than a pitiful wretch incapable of anything good
 
I AM a pitiful wretch in whom the Spirit of God dwells.
 
I am confident that Came to My Rescue will always be an anthem for me personally and for C4 as a family no matter how long we follow the LORD because our position never changes. The only thing we can ever do is kneel and place our lives in His merciful, capable hands and accept the rescue that He has performed.”
 
Well, there you have it folks. Came to my Rescue, an anthem for our church, and an anthem for our hearts. I pray you’re blessed by this song as you listen to the words. Close your eyes, pray to God, and call out for Him to be lifted high in your life!
 
God Bless! I’ll see you next time!
 

CCLI #4705190
©2005 Hillsong Music Publishing

Replayed with CCLI License CSPL0596

Posted by Matt Wallenburg with
Tags: god, jesus, jesús, love, mixtape, rescue

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