Knowing Him

When I was little, my dad used to sing to my brother and me before bed.  Sometimes he would have his guitar, too, but not always.  The songs he played and sang are still songs I love to hear, even the goofy ones.  He often played/sang "Amazing Grace," "I Come to the Garden Alone (In the Garden)," "Matthew (John Denver)," "Country Roads (John Denver)," "Rocky Mountain High (John Denver)," part of "Feeling Groovy," "Blind Man (Sat By the Road)," "Jesus Loves Me," "Battle Hymn of the Republic," and "I Want to Know You, Lord."

Yesterday, for the first time, though I'd always liked the song, I added "I Want to Know You, Lord" to my list of favorite songs.

I want to know You, Lord
Much more than I do
I want to know You, Lord
Much more than I do
Learn to seek Your face
And the knowledge of Your grace
I want to know You more

It wasn't because I heard it again.  It was because of Matthew 24:23-27 which warns about false Christs.

I got to thinking about how to identify false Christs.  I thought of John 10:1-18 which is all about Jesus, the Good Shepherd vs. False Shepherds.  I flipped over there and found this:

“1 Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber. 2 But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep. 3 To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 A stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers.”

I realized it all comes down to knowing Jesus.  It comes down to knowing His voice so well that no imitation can fool us.  It also comes down to knowing His ways and His teaching so well that anything not in harmony with them just seems wrong.  That is what the next section of John 10 was about:

"7 So Jesus said to them again, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. 9 I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and [a]have it abundantly.

11 “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. 12 He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, 15 even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd. 17 For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. 18 No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”

It's all about knowing Him.  Jeremiah 9 says that no one should boast of their might or riches or wisdom, but that, if anyone is going to boast, he should boast in the fact that he knows God and His ways.  Second Peter 1 says that we have everything we need for life and Godliness THROUGH the knowledge of Him Who called us by His own glory and grace.  Jesus, while praying to His Father, in John 17, says that the Father gave Him power to give eternal life to those He chose - and that eternal life is to know God.

Friends, WE MUST KNOW HIM!

This modern church of ours is asleep, seemingly unaware of God's priorities and not caring that the world around them is perishing in sin or that false teaching is creeping into the church.  Why?  It doesn't KNOW HIM to the extent that it makes a change in the lives of its people.  If you don't know someone, you don't know how they think or what they care about.  If you don't love them enough, even if you do know what they want, you don't care.  But if you know this Jesus, this Shepherd that laid down His life for the sheep, you WILL love Him and it WILL change you.

Know Jesus!  Know Him!  Know His voice!  Know His truth!  Know His love!  Know His priorities!  Don't be content with life as always.  Know Him enough that you really love Him.  Know Him enough that it changes you.  Love Him enough that you live for His priorities.

Yes, that will make you look weird to the rest of the world and much of the church.  But does it matter?  This life we live here is a tiny blip on the face of eternity.  We have eternity with God to look forward to.  Can't we stand being different and getting weird looks since we look toward a heavenly city?  Hasn't He called us to that?

Heb. 11:13-16
13 All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. 15 And indeed if they had been [l]thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not [m]ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.

Heb. 13:13-14
13 So, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach. 14 For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come.

Paul believed nothing was worth as much as knowing God.  He said in Philippians 3:

"7 But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of [d]knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, 9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; 11 in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead."

Is anything worth missing that?  Please, please, please - don't miss out on knowing Him - really knowing Him - so that you know His voice and aren't deceived, so that you have eternal life, so that you live for His heavenly Kingdom.

Make that old song my dad sang to me the prayer of your heart.


I want to know You, Lord
Much more than I do
I want to know You, Lord
Much more than I do
Learn to seek Your face
And the knowledge of Your grace
I want to know You more

~M.

Look at the Heart: Lessons from the Phantom, part I

Sometimes a book captures more than your imagination – sometimes it captures your mind and heart, speaking so clearly to your world that the themes in it stick with you long after you’ve forgotten the little twists and turns of the story.  That happened to me when I read Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera.

I devoured it in two and a half days, thoroughly enjoying the literary style, the depth of the characters, and the suspenseful plot.

Just as a side note, if you have seen a film/stage version of The Phantom of the Opera, you do not know the real story.  Every adaptation I have investigated has changed major aspects of the story and lost the things in the book that made me love the story.

Now, don’t worry, I shan’t make you listen to the whole plot and meet every character.  And, though I think it is a wonderful book – one that everyone should read – my goal here isn’t to give you a book review.  (Just take my advice and read it!)  What I would like to do it share the three themes I found in the book. 

Today, I’d like to share the first of these with you.  But first, a short background on the story:

The Phantom of the Opera is the story of, Erik, a masked man, horribly disfigured from birth, and yet a genius, living hidden away in the cellars of the Paris Opera House; his tragic love of the beautiful opera singer, Christine Daae; his intense jealousy of the man Christine loves; and his desperate desire “to be ‘some one,’ like everybody else.”

The Phantom has many lessons to teach our world, a world so taken with appearances.  First, the flesh is truly a mask over our real self and has no bearing on who we really are.  Second, often, the emotions we appear to have and the person we appear to be, are nothing but a mask over what we truly feel and are.  And third, our needs and value as human beings remain, no matter what outer masks we may wear.

Today we’ll look at the first.  To the world, Erik appeared a monster.  Leroux describes his face as, “…Red Death’s mask suddenly coming to life in order to express, with the four black holes of its eyes, its nose, and its mouth, the extreme anger, the mighty fury of a demon…”  Elsewhere, he is described as a living man in a corpse’s body.  These physical characteristics made him revolting to look upon and, as a result, people rejected him, drove him away, and called him a monster.  And yet, Leroux goes on to say that Erik was able to do “things no other man could do; he [knew] things which nobody in the world [knew].” He had “extraordinary gifts of dexterity and imagination which he had received by way of compensation for his extraordinary ugliness.”  And his voice!  His voice was such that, when he himself was unseen, it was thought to belong to the “Angel of Music”.  But despite these gifts, “…he was too ugly!  And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind!  He had a heart that could have held the empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar.”

Is this tragedy not a trademark of mankind?  We so often judge based on outward appearances, failing to see the true person behind the ugly or beautiful face.  Even Samuel, a prophet and man of God, made the same mistake.  In I Samuel 16, we find the account of David’s anointing as king of Israel by Samuel.  When God sends Samuel to the home of David’s father, Jesse, to anoint the next king, He does not tell Samuel which of the sons of Jesse He has chosen.  He simply tells Samuel that He will show him which is to be anointed king.  When Samuel meets the oldest son of Jesse and, finding him a splendid young man, he thinks, “‘Surely the LORD’s anointed is before [me].’ ” But God says to Samuel, “‘Do not look on his outward appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him.  For man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.’ ” (Scripture from the ESV.)

According to God, it is the inner man that truly matters.  God isn’t picky about the appearances of people.  He doesn’t choose people based on a handsome face or reject them based on what might commonly be considered an ugly appearance. 

But, so often, we do just the opposite.  The Phantom was repeatedly rejected by the people who saw him.  A moment in the story of the Phantom particularly stood out to me.  At the point of this episode, Christine has been kidnapped by the Phantom and taken to his domain in the cellars of the Paris Opera House, where he hopes to make her love him.  Christine recounts her experiences: “‘After lunch, he rose and gave me the tips of his fingers, saying he would like to show me over his flat; but I snatched away my hand and gave a cry.  What I had touched was cold and, at the same time, bony; and I remembered that his hands smelt of death. “Oh, forgive me!” he moaned.’”  Even the kind-hearted Christine is unable to bring herself to touch Erik because of his flesh.  

I think this seemingly insignificant moment stood out to me because of its stark contrast to the conduct of Jesus.  During His ministry on earth, Jesus encountered countless sick people, including many with leprosy, a disease that slowly eats away at the body.  The Gospel of Mark recounts Jesus interaction with one of these lepers: “And a leper came to Him, imploring Him, and kneeling said to Him, ‘If You will, You can make me clean.’  Moved with pity, He stretched out His hand and touched him and said to him, ‘I will; be clean.’  And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.” (ESV, emphasis mine)  In the time of Jesus, it was considered very dangerous to touch a leper, because there was the danger of contracting the disease yourself.  Beyond that, it couldn’t have been a very pleasant prospect touch a man whose body was being eaten away, even as he lived.  But Jesus touched him.  Regardless of the danger of disease, regardless of the appearance of the man, He touched him and healed him.

What can we learn from the Phantom’s mask of the flesh?  First, hidden beneath a less-than-ideal appearance may be an incredibly talented person, with gifts we will never know of unless we make ourselves go beyond the person’s appearance.  Erik is not the only one whose ugliness conceals an unknown genius and brilliance.  Second, hidden under the mask of a pretty or ugly face is a heart that is the true determiner of who each person is.  And just as God judges based on the heart, we must do the same or else risk completely mistaking the people we meet.  And last, we must be willing to care for the person beneath the mask of the flesh.  Just as Jesus was willing to reach out to, touch, and heal the leper, we must be willing to touch the people in our lives whom we may not consider to be physically perfect.

To be continued…