TUESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2012 - SOLVING THE KNOWLEDGE PROBLEM IN ME

WHAT BLOCKS OUR EXPERIENCE OF LOVING CARE?  What stands in the way of our experiencing this life of love with God – our fear and  unwillingness to respond to God’s love and enter into relationship with God.  We can know and be able to talk very clearly about how loving God is, but until we actually give ourselves to God and welcome God into every area of our life, we are only speaking facts and not actually experiencing life-changing relationship.  We will hope for it, but we’ll not know it as a sure and steady personal experience.

KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL IN ME:  It’s understandable that we would hesitate to enter into yet another relationship – particularly with the God who knows everything we’ve ever thought, said, or done.  Not even the courts know all that.  We might consider trying to clean up and live a good life but there’s that “knowledge of good and evil” inside us.

We remember bad things done by us or to us.  We feel anger, guilt and shame, often to an overwhelming degree.   We tried to cover pain for years with addictive behaviours because it was all we knew to do.  We had suffered injustice and so we felt we deserved pleasure stolen from us and we went after that in whatever convenient ways we found.  We didn’t question the impact of our choices on others in the same way we felt no one considered the impact of their behaviours on us when they harmed us.  We did what we felt we “had to do” to survive and have a little happiness.  Sadly, despite some momentary pleasures, we fell deeper and deeper into heartache and brokenness.

GOD’S SOLUTION FOR MY KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL:  God is aware of this mixture of the knowledge of good and evil in us.  We can’t go back to a condition where we only know good as God originally intended.  However, God still offers us a relationship of care and safety.  We can still make a choice today that will result in an experience of life for us that is good, perfect, and pleasing.

So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.  (Romans 12:1-2 MSG)