Know Beyond Knowing

When I was in high school, I had a thought that God had to be more than a flannel graph character in the children's Sunday school lesson. God had to be bigger than asking Noah to build an arky-arky. God had to be more than Father Abraham and his many sons..stand up, turn around, sit down, amen! (remember those songs?)

I began to have a deep craving for the Divine. A longing to know God in a way that I hadn't known Him before. A desire to have His magnificent shadow pass over me--to feel His presence. I wanted to touch, taste, see, hear, and feel Him. It wasn't enough anymore to study the Bible and see maps of where Jesus and Paul had walked. I wanted more.

To be enveloped by Love, Himself, had to be possible. If it wasn't possible, why had I chosen to lay down my life: my hopes and dreams for a flannel graph character? I began crying out to the Father of Lights who gives good and perfect gifts, begging Him to reveal His presence to me. Nightly, I would kneel in my bedroom waiting for Him to come.

Then one night, He came. In that single moment, alone in my bedroom, I knew beyond knowing that God was real. Yahweh was more than a flannel graph character or a Sunday school song.  I knew beyond knowing that I was safe in laying my life, my hopes and dreams, down before Him. His presence invaded my life and I have never been the same.

Why should I share this...my sacred night...with you? Simple, many of you haven't had a sacred night with the King. Many of you have been roaming around wondering if God is anything more than a character in a book. You wonder if He is anything more than a man who once walked the earth, you wonder if He is anything more than a church service.

Close your door and come before Him. Ask Him to reveal Himself to you. Ask Him to meet you where you are in the center of all your doubts. In the center of all your knowing. He will come. He will meet you. You will know beyond knowing that God is real. You will know that His heart is love and it beats forgiveness. You have been mercifully loved. You have been extravagantly loved.  You have been gracefully loved.