Knowing God Intimately # 3

     We've been ministering on the subject of Knowing God Intimately. As we do press on to know Him in a greater way, His ways will become our ways. We should be taking on His character, and become more and more in His likeness.

     I. HOSEA 10:12

              A. There are 2 kinds of Christian lives: the follow, and the plowed.

                        1. Follow ground is uncultivated, unused, idle, and dormant.

                                  a. It's possible that it was plowed at one time, but because it remained untended, it hardened and became crusted until finally it needed to be broken up again in order to receive seed.

                        2. In the same way, the follow life Christian is content with whatever fruit he may have produced in the past.

                                  a. He is tolerant of those that are seeking God 1st. But he is unmotivated.

                                           i. He always complains about how things are and how things should be, but does nothing to make thing better.

                                  b. This is the person that has lost his passion for the presence of God in his life.

                                           i. He looks back w/ satisfaction at t glory that once was.

                                           ii. Yet, he lost that something on the inside of him that causes him to go on and press on with the things of God.

              B. The plowed life is the life that has remained prepared for the fresh activity of the Holy Spirit.

                        1. They are not content w/ inactivity, they want to continue going on in the things of God.

                                  a. He sees that he is to be a habitation of seeds.

                        2. God's Word is seed. And w/ the HS cultivating our lives, that cultivation produces the proper environment for that seed to grow.

                                  a. All of God's Words contain the power necessary to cause them to bear fruit in your life.

                                  b. But they need the proper environment and cultivation to grow, which is brought by the HS.

                        3. When you plant a flower seed in the ground, the color of its bloom, the size of the pedal, everything about that flower is contained in that seed.

                                  a. It's the same thing w/ God's Word.

                                           i. The seed might be, “By Jesus stripes you are healed.” (1PE 2:24: MAT 8:17; ISA 53:5)

                                                      ii. Within that seed contains the full manifestation of that seed.

      II. Only the life that is plowed and cultivated w/ the HS and the presence of God is eligible to see the miraculous groweth of God's seed. (His Word that is full of His promises and commandments.)

                  A. Diligently seeking Him is the open door to breaking up the hardened, unusable ground in your life.

                              1. Listen to what the Moffatt’s translation says of our text, (HOSEA 10:12)  “...Break up your fallow ground, by seeking knowledge of the eternal. ”

                                          a. The way you break up that fallow, uncultivated, unproductive land is by getting to know the Father.

                              2. The word “Seeking” from the Moffatt's translation or from the KJV “Seek the Lord.” The Strong's concordance says it means “specifically to worship”

                                          a. If you want to break up that unproductive ground in your life, spend time in God's presence, especially worshipping Him.

                  B. Turn w/ me to PSA 42:1–2.

                              1. There is a longing and a yearning of your inner man to know God and His ways more intimately.

                              2. (PSA 63:1–2 Says from the AMP) “Oh God, you are my God; earnestly will I seek you, my inner self thirsts for you, my flesh longs and is faint for you, in a dry and weary land, where no water is; (2) So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, to see Your power and Your glory.”

                                  a. ¿How far are you willing to go to quench the thirst that is w/in you?

                                  b. Those who are willing to seek God till He comes and rains righteousness upon them will experience the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a new dimension.

                                  c. The more deeply you yearn for God to pour Himself through you, the more deeply He will cultivate you.

                                           i. Fruitfulness is always preceded by cultivation. Seek Him until you experience the rain.

                                           ii. Then you'll truly be able to give testimony to what it says in (MATT 6:33) “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”

WOLCC Sun AM 4/5/92