REVELATION LEADS TO LIFE
Psalms 16:11 (NIV 1984) You have made known to me the path of life …
When the Bible speaks of life it has two main meanings. One is that of abundant life, fulfilling life; life how it is suppose to be lived, how God intends it to be lived. The other meaning is that of eternal life, life forever. In other words, what is being referred to here is an awesome life that we love living everyday, and one that never ends, and this is the path that God intends to make known (reveal) to us. “You make known to me.” This is a precursor. It is a condition. The promise that follows will not happen if God does not do His part by showing us Himself and giving us what the Bible calls the knowledge of God – a treasure worth our continuous asking (see Eph 1:17). Peter says that through the knowledge of God comes grace and peace (2 Pet 1:2). The most treasured possession we can have is the revelation of the knowledge of God in our hearts. Everything else is a sub-category, and it is the one thing we must go after with everything we are. Only God can reveal who He is to us, and this revelation has come through Jesus Christ, who is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being.” (Heb 1:3) This revelation will forge in our brains positive pathways that lead to an awesome life.
We gain this knowledge in multiple ways. Certainly we can read about who He was, what He did, and what He taught. This requires us to be students of the Word of God and is not an option if we want more understanding of who He is, but we also have a more intimate way of entering into this; we have the Holy Spirit in us, teaching us, revealing Jesus to the deepest places of our hearts (Jn 14:26; 1 Jn 2:27), and it is this revelation that protects us from the many deceiving spirits that are so obviously at work in our world. Without the knowledge of God we are only able to comprehend rules, principles, and duties, which by themselves suffocate life and make us rigid, harsh with others and, interestingly, susceptible to various addictions. Even Christians will go after worldly pleasures if they are only experiencing a lifeless religion of rules and the constant disappointment of the God they think they are serving. We are hindered in our experience of abundant life only to the extent that we are enslaved to the lies we believe about God and ourselves. It is the revelation of the knowledge of God that dispels these lies, and it is the revelation of the knowledge of God that frees us from the besetting sins and heart-wrenching spiritual bondage these lies have caused.
The false beliefs that we embrace move us to automatic action that results in bad habits and addictions, which means we are compelled to do things sometimes without right thinking, or sometimes in spite of right thinking. Our sanctification process involves us identifying the lies we have believed about God and ourselves and replacing them with the truth of the knowledge of God. Prayer and deliverance may be part of the equation, but the ruts of bad thinking that we have spent years developing do not get wiped out and replaced overnight; however, through the Holy Spirit revealing the knowledge of God we can change the we we think and thus change the way we live (2 Thess 2:13; Jn 17:17). Listen! The drab, dull, spiritually bound Christian existence that creates constant frustration and disappointment that so many of us are familiar with is NOT our destiny. It is NOT God’s intention, and we do NOT have to put up with it anymore.
