Dear Friends,

Its been a good week, I had a lot of late nights and am a bit tired, however I'm happy. Its a bit strange actually because I haven't lived an exemplary life or done everything perfectly.....sometimes I forget to pray, but I feel happy because I feel loved by God. Its the most wonderful feeling in the world. I don't deserve His love, but I know I certainly am receiving it...............and I hope that you too can know this love.

Anyways, here is an interesting question to ask yourself....how can I get to know God? Well firstly we must ask ourselves what it means to know someone. Whenever we read in the paper about movie stars or celebrities it can be easy to think that we "know them", but actually we don't, we only know "about them." And so sometimes as we read the Bible we can grow in our knowledge of God....or as we attend church we increase our knowledge but that doesn't necessarily also mean that we "truly know God" as He wants us to know Him. So How can we know God?

The Bible tells us many interesting things......."seek and you shall find", or elsewhere it says to "draw near to God and He will draw near to you", and in another place it says "I shall be found by those who look for me." In other words, to really know God we must do some kind of searching for Him. As I have thought over this the last few years on and off I have come to the conclusion that we are all walking on two journeys............one journey is an outward journey and one journey is an inward one.

The outward journey is a journey of activity.......it involves things like attending church, serving our fellow man, helping the poor and giving to missions. It will mean sharing the gospel at the right moment and living a life of humility, submission to God and service.............in essence it is the second most important commandment......to love our neighbour as ourselves.

The inward journey however is a journey of quietness.........it is a journy which is embodied in most important commandment........to "Love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our mind and all our strength." In this second journey we devote our time, attention and worship to the Lord through time spent with Him. I like to personally spend time sitting at HIs feet like Mary did in the Bible and just listen. Sometimes I hear His voice and other times I don't, but I always know that I am growing closer to my Lord everytime I draw near to Him.

Today let me encourage you to realise that you must seek God by drawing into Him and not in many activites. You must still be active and serve one another and help your fellow man, but this will not help you find God.......you must draw aside and know Him intimately for this.

The Lord be with you
Cheers
David