More of Him

A while back as I was in my quiet time and the big move was on my mind, I asked the Lord to just show me how to know Him more.  Not come to Him with requests, venting or anything else (nothing wrong with presenting prayers and requests, though!)...just how to KNOW Him better.  I realized that the toughest part about moving was leaving the people in our community of friends and neighbors....because we knew our friends and they knew us.  That's what makes a relationship a relationship.  It's not just an exchange of goods and services (though I LOVE taste testing chocolate chip cookies!), but it's knowing others and being known.  And so I wanted to figure out how to know God better.  To love Him more as I knew Him more.  More of Him.

And today it started to come together.... In Romans 4:20, it says of Abraham "..but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God."  That verse is in the middle of the passage describing how Abraham trusted God, believed in His word and how that all added up to righteousness.  It's a passage that always makes me slow down when I read it....it's a lot to chew on because I'm so not there...yet.  I read that on September 11th.

And today I read in Luke 11:33-36 "Your eye is the lamp of your body.  When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness."  Some might interpret this as the whole idea of how we see life in terms of 'glass half full or glass half empty'.  I want to take it a step further... it's 'having an eye' to see God in everything.  Some of my friends are gifted with 'an eye for fashion/interior design'...they see a space, a piece, a color...and they can put it all together to create beautiful spaces.  Just the same, when this passage in Luke talks about your eye being healthy, I think it means to have an eye that sees God and His faithfulness in everything.

And here it comes full circle...when our 'eye is healthy' and we see the hand of God at work in everything around us, we can't help but give Glory to God and just like Abraham, our faith will grow strong.  And that, I believe, is how we are to know Him better.  I'm pretty confident that our heart's desire to just know Him and actually doing it make Him smile.  I'm confident because that is what I'm missing most right now... to be known by folks where we are now living.  We're surrounded by plenty of people - Richmond is a big place!  But to be surrounded by folks and to be known by folks/friends is so different. If our desires and the way we crave to be in relationship with others is a semblance of how our God designed us to be in relationship with Him, then I'm going to keep my eye open to see more of Him.