Knowing God Lesson 10

      John17:3(Amp) says, "And this is Eternal Life, it means to know, to perceive, recognize, become acquainted with, and understand You, the Only True and Real God, and likewise to know Him, Jesus, as the Christ (the Anointed One, the Messiah), Whom You have sent."

     Knowing Him as God and knowing Him as "Father," is knowing the difference between the first and last covenants.  Many believers still only know and see God by the way He dealt with those under the Law and first covenant.  We must go back to God's Original Intent when creating mankind in the Garden, in order to know Him as Father.

     1John4:16-18(Amp) says, "And we know (understand, recognize, are conscious of), by observation and by experience, and believe (adhere to and put faith in and rely on), the Love God cherishes for us. GOD IS LOVE; and he who dwells and continues in love dwells and continues in God, and God dwells and continues in him. In this union and communion with Him Love is brought to completion and attains perfection with us; that we may have confidence for the day of judgment with assurance and boldness to face Him, because as He is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in Love (dread does not exist), but full-grown, complete, perfect Love turns fear out of doors and expels every trace of terror. For fear brings with it the thought of punishment, and so he who is afraid has not reached the full maturity of Love, is not yet grown into Love's complete perfection."

     Those who only know God by the old covenant don't see Him as Father God.  Many take for granted that He is Father and expect Him to deal with mankind like He did before the new creation family.  Old covenant people were spiritually dead, so God had to deal with them by and through the flesh.  Jesus has made God's new creation family again in the Image and Likeness of God, Who is Spirit.

     When God first created family in Adam, Adam was made in God's Likeness, according to John4:24(Amp), which says, "God is a Spirit (a Spiritual Being), and those who worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth (reality)."  No one knows how long the Father walked with His son Adam, before Adam's sin brought spiritual death to God's family and separated them from God.  When sin of temptation entered into Adam and Eve, they became separated from the Life in the spirit and they fell into spiritual death.  They were separated from God Himself.

     God is Love and needed a way to share His Love with His family, in order to fulfill Love's very Nature.  We see this in Gen.2:18(Amp) that tells us, "It is not good, sufficient, satisfactory that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper, suitable, adapted, complimentary for him."  Adam was made in God's Own Image and Likeness and having God's Love in him, needed someone to love and be complete.  We have now become again, created in and by Him.  We're the recipients of His Love and not His wrath.  Jesus commanded us to, "Love one another as He has Loved us."  This is the new commandment to the Church.

     God's Church (family) isn't supposed to be separated by ritual and the external things man's ideas of the Church fabricate.  Jesus prayed in John17:23(Amp), saying, "I in them and You in Me, in order that they may become one and perfectly united, that the world may know and definitely recognize that You sent Me and that You have Loved them even as You have Loved Me."  God's Church should give and demonstrate God's Love to one another.

     Love is a Spirit, for God is Love.  The natural man functions in a small portion of Love.  If mankind walked in the fullness of God's Love, then there would never be divorce.  God's angels respect and obey Him in His Great Power, but they don't have the capacity to love.  We're supposed to know Him and His Great Love.  God is Love, so if we don't understand this Great Love, then we will have difficulty knowing His will and His heart.

     We can't make someone love us.  We must respond to the great Love the Father has for us, in order to have it work in our lives.  John3:16(Amp) says, "For God so greatly Loved and dearly prized the world that He even gave up His Only Begotten Son, so that whoever believes in, trusts in, clings to and relies on Him should not perish (come to destruction, be lost), but have Eternal Everlasting Life."

     When we don't understand God's kind of Love, we withdraw from His desire to Bless and heal us.  We don't approach Him and spend time with Him, when we don't understand His Love.  1John4:16(Amp) says, "And we know, understand (recognize, are conscious of, by observation and by experience) and believe (adhere to, and put faith in and rely on the Love God cherishes for us. GOD IS LOVE."