(tm) Day 28
Back to John Seventeen, Devotional
O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. (John 17:25)
The world is ignorant of the Character and purpose of God. Religiously inclined people seek God in one manner or another. But God never will be found or pleased through means of the varied efforts of the religious people of the world.
The ways of God are an abomination to the world and the ways of the world are an abomination to God. The world through wisdom or religious rites will never find God.
Christ knows God because He is of God and in God, and God is in Him. Christ always does the things that please the Father.
We of the elect know Christ has come from the Father. Our lifetime of trusting Christ has removed all doubt as to Christ’s Divine Nature and origin.
There was an individual who was raised as a heathen. His parents sincerely desired his good but they did not know the Lord. They never had received Christ as their Lord and Savior.
At the age of nineteen, while stationed in Hawaii during World War II, the Lord brought to him through some fellow marines the understanding of the Gospel. It was clear that the Gospel of Christ was superior to other philosophies and he wished to believe in it. But it was difficult to believe in the existence of God.
He prayed one evening that if there was a God He would grant him enough faith to believe God existed. The prayer was answered at some point during the night.
Then one day the Scripture came to his attention, "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself" (John 7:17).
The challenge was easy to understand. The task was to do the will of God as set forth in the Scriptures. God’s responsibility was to prove Christ indeed had spoken from the mouth of God.
He resolved to follow the Scriptures and see what happened, since it appeared there was nothing else in the world worth giving one’s life for.
That was more than fifty years ago. With many mistakes he has followed the Scriptures from that day to the present time. He now can say truthfully that he is convinced there is a God and that Christ came from God and is His only begotten Son.