Take Every Thought Captive预览

Would you want to be an abiding guest at a house in which you are unwelcome? Where someone shuts the door on you? I can’t help but feel that, for some of us, Jesus has been trying to knock on the door of our hearts. He wants in. He wants greater access. He wants to take us deeper, but our fascination with other things, our distractions with busyness, our affections regarding who we think we have to be, or our declarations and feelings about who we are not have shut down our attention to Jesus.

We cannot afford to take our eyes off Jesus. Without experiencing Him, we will not receive the expanding and exploding fullness of Him in our hearts. We will get busy with many things. We will get scared when God starts to lead us into the depths of His love, and we’ll shut down our welcome to God and shut a door in His face.

This is how a heart goes from deceptive to receptive: experience, surpassing mere knowledge, changes the thoughts of the heart, which changes the mind. The Greek word ginosko, used many times in the Bible, is all about knowing through experience. Ginosko translates as “to learn, to know, to perceive, to feel, to become known, to understand, to become acquainted.”

Through experiential, ginosko knowing, we come to truly know God and ourselves—beyond what we thought we knew. Ginosko knowing transcends what we thought we had to believe, what doubts held us back, what people demanded we think, and what assumptions we made up in our minds. It makes a theory into a reality. It makes truth solid. It makes the Word of God alive. All this transfigures us from who we thought we were into who God says we are.

We don’t just seek to know God to gain Bible knowledge, learn some trivia, or look religious. We know God to be changed into His image. We are after a ginosko knowing of God that’s true and deep. Experiential knowing brings about the transformation that make us become more like Him. Think more like Him. Talk more like Him. Walk more like Him. Love more like Him. Reach the devil-oppressed more like Him. Heal more like Him. See more like Him. Lay down our lives more like Him.

All of it is in Him, through Him, and by Him—by knowing Him. Really, deeply, intimately, relationally knowing Him in every part of our lives. Take a look at how God encourages us to experience Him:

May Christ through your faith [actually] dwell (settle down, abide, make His permanent home) in your hearts! May you be rooted deep in love and founded securely on love, that you may have the power and be strong to apprehend and grasp with all the saints [God’s devoted people, the experience of that love] what is the breadth and length and height and depth [of it]. (Eph. 3:17–18 AMPC)

Let’s pause here. Did you hear what I heard? Through Christ’s residential indwelling, we become founded securely in His love. This is how separating ourselves from the world happens. We become so established in God’s love—we gain so much experience of it—that we get disconnected from everything else. Our minds cannot be left the same in the wake of experiencing God’s love. When we are filled to overflowing by the power of the Holy Spirit, streams of living water flow everywhere, out of us.

This power is not a figurative power; it is transforming power. But notice what is needed—what we are required to carry—to access this love-power. FAITH. We have to have faith to enter God’s love, to receive His love, to believe His love, and to radically experience His love.

So, do you believe God wants to meet you?

Today’s Declaration: I give God all my attention and am not thrown off by distractions!