Want to be protected? Seen as one of God’s faithful ones? For knowledge to be pleasant to your soul? Keep reading!

6 For the LORD gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding.

God wants to have a conversation with us. He wants for us to talk to Him and for us to listen to Him. It’s all He’s ever wanted from the day He created Adam and Eve, “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day…” and a conversation ensued–albeit, not a very pleasant one. The point is that the LORD God came to talk with Adam and Eve. the whole point of the cross was for us to be reunited with Him again for fellowship. Wherever we got the idea that God barely tolerates us was NOT in Scripture. On the contrary! He loves us so much that He came to set us free from the consequences of our sin so that we can have Him live with us, IN us. So, how seriously are we taking our relationship with Him?

In John 17:19, Jesus said, “For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.” Sanctified means, “to make holy.” What that means to us is that we are made to be like Jesus. In fact, He sanctified Himself (only God can do that); it was His full intention to be set apart to die for us so that we could be truly sanctified by having the Holy Spirit come and take up residence in us. It is He who cleans us up, dresses us in a white robe, gives us the ring of sonship and the sandals of sonship, and He signs–and seals–our adoption papers. He is the reason that we are part of God’s family! He is God and He lives in us! One of my favorite verses is Colossians 1:27, the part that says, “Christ in us, the hope of glory.”

Are we really interested in Him guiding our lives? If so, then we will talk to Him, we will listen to Him, and we will heed what He says. As the old hymns says, “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”

Tomorrow, we will finish our study on prayer. We will look at how to pray for ourselves and for others.

Abba, it’s kind of scary to think about talking to You. You are King of the Universe, yet You live in our hearts. Turning to You in our minds brings us face-to-face with You! May we get comfortable with talking to You about anything and everything. Help us to obey quickly when we catch ourselves thinking about things that we shouldn’t be thinking about, because You are the one who brought it to our attention. Even this morning, I found another verse verifying the fact that You know me inside and out, Psalm 33:15, “He who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do.” The more we acknowledge You, the more we will notice how much You are a part of our lives already! Make us even more aware, Abba. Make us like Jesus. Amen.