"If you want to catch the attention of the King, treat his daughter well.…"
Bill Johnson, Face to Face with God
Although Bill Johnson was referring to increasing your favor with God by treating your spouse well, what spoke to me was the first part of this quote: "If you want to catch the attention of the King." Who doesn't want to catch the attention of the Lord? If you asked any Christian in the world what the want from God they will quickly ramble off a list of various things. Some of these would include Gods favor, His blessing, His mercy, His grace, the assurance of salvation, increase of spiritual gifts such as the prophetic, maybe an increase of faith, people always want to see the miraculous, and they always want to see signs and wonders, the list goes on and on and on. There is nothing wrong with any of those things, some I believe are more important than others because some of those will help you love others better where as some are just for you. But what if I told you there was a catch? What if I said it was going to cost you something? "In Christianity" you'd ask. "I thought it was free? I thought all it took was faith in Jesus and then you get to heaven?" Yes, that is true, however Jesus specifically said a few things about being a follower of Him, and one of which was to pick up your cross daily and follow Him, so there has to be more of a cost then we realize.
My point is, I've realized something in my personal life. The normal way, the regular path, the step by step, easy going, going through the cookie cutter program isn't going to work for me. There is nothing wrong with those things for some people, nothing at all really, we all grow in various ways, we are all molded and shaped and formed by life, through the church, and through various things in life. And that is all fine and dandy, but it's not good enough. And it's not good enough for one reason, "I want to catch the attention of the King!"
Please don't get me wrong, I don't want Gods attention because I want Him to love me more, He already loves me and I can't manipulate or earn more of His love. He actually loves us all the same, sinner or saint, male or female, white or black, His love is the same for us all and it never fails. However, His favor is not the same for everyone and each one of us starts with a different measure of favor and we have the choose to increase in His favor or to sit idle. For an example of this just read the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-25, the most important verse in the parable for me is the part where Jesus says "Well done, good and faithful servant, you have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much." The servant was entrusted with more because he was faithful with what the Lord had given him. His favor had increased.
There have been many times in my life where God has given me a larger portion of His favor. I could name times and places in my life where the favor of God opened doors in my life that I couldn't have opened on my own. The World Race is a similar period in my life, my team has had favor for our entire race. We've lived in beautiful places and we've had the opportunity to bless so many people on our journey over the last few months. Reaching the lost is the purpose of my life, and as a Christian it is my obligation and responsibility to love everyone around me bringing as many to the knowledge of Gods love as possible. It is possible to look at what I have done the last three months and even what my team has done and know that we've done well and succeeded in loving as many people as we could that God sent our way. However, to me I see the shortcomings that I've made personally and things that could have gone differently if my life was in a better position for God to entrust me with more of Him. Now I know some will say, bro, the glass is half full, you're doing a lot already and you're reaching people that God sends your way. I agree. However, if Jesus really lives inside of me the things around me must change. When Jesus went places, miracles happened, people experienced God first hand, and God demonstrated His love for His people in power. They had encounters with the living God, and if the same spirit that rose Christ from the grave is in me(Romans 8:11), people should experience the same love and supernatural power. What I'm saying is my standard should always be Jesus in any situation, its truly the saying "what would Jesus do?"
Last night we were at the friday night market here in Muizenburg, South Africa. Its was a wonderful evening filled with good food, live music, and the chance to talk and meet people. The musician last night was an amazing and talented man in his mid thirties who could play the harmonica and sing like no one I've ever heard, he was extremely gifted. I asked God for a word for him and felt I had enough to share some love with him. The man was raised a hard core atheist and in his sarcasm made reference to the only things that are real are the things you can see unlike God. I wasn't shocked by this, and told him lastly about the anchor tattooed on his forearm. I felt like there was something that was holding him down recently and it didn't half to, he looked at me and said thats funny that you mention that, I'm going through a divorce and now that you mention it its been an anchor for me lately thats held me back. We parted ways, yet I left the encounter asking God why He didn't show me or tell me more about this mans history prophetically? There have been seasons where God would speak to me and tell me things people where going through and I could demonstrate Gods power through Him sharing things with me about them prophetically.
When I say prophetically I'm simply stating that the Lord speaks to us on behalf of others. People aren't always in position to hear from God and so we as Christians have an opportunity to hear God on their behalf, God always has something to say to someone and He'll speak to us and through us if we are positioned to receive the message. Don't take my word for it, you can read about prophecy all throughout the bible, and in fact nearly everything Jesus said was prophetic. It was foretelling about future events, Jesus always knew people, He knew their hearts, their minds, and the bible records even their thoughts(Matthew 9:4) at times because He was in tune with His Father and His Father spoke to Him clearly.
My point in all of this is that in order to hear Jesus clearly, in order to be in tune with His Spirit and to available as a vessel to be used by Him in every situation we have to be in position ready and willing to obey. How we align ourselves into position is through immediate and direct obedience and by pursuing God regardless of the cost. A.W. Tozer was labeled by a man name Samuel Zwemer as "a man who burned the midnight oil in pursuit of God." If I want to catch the attention of the King, and I want to increase in favor to be used by God in a mighty way then I need to position myself in a place to catch His attention. I once tweeted a wise proverb God spoke to me last summer, "Those who do the things that others won't, will see the things that others don't."
I feel like I need to get the attention of the King in my life. This isn't done by elevating myself above my peers and trying to be a super christian. That is not what I'm saying, you see in the kingdom, it's backwards, if you want to be first then you're last! I've realized that in order to get the attention of the King and in order to be entrusted with more of His favor I need to pursue Him intimately regardless of what anyone else is doing. I recently read that "the only thing more important than knowing God is to be known by Him." As you remember in Matthew 7:23 Jesus said "depart from me, I never knew you." Jesus didn't just die to remove all our sin, He died to restore the intimacy between man and God which was lost after Adam and Eve ate from the tree. He died to restore us back to the image of love we were created in and to have an unhindered relationship with our Father. The veil was torn so we have access to God. We have access to boldly walk into the Holy of Holies and stand before our Lord. We now have the ability to enter His presence and form a relationship with Him. God has always desired intimacy with His people, and He's opened the door and given us the opportunity to pursue Him! It's an amazing thought isn't it?!
Its amazing really, the God of the universe wants me. He wants you! He wants to know me and He wants to spend time with me, talk to me, and He wants me to show Him to others wherever I go. So I'm setting up things in my life to get Gods attention. I'm going to put my time and energy into pursing Him even deeper than I have been before, and most importantly I'm going to spend my time becoming known by Him. The King is going to have my attention, and through giving Him my attention I'm going to get His. I'm not looking to do anything less than to change the world, my life is to short to aim small, God is to big for me to pray small prayers, and if He says I have nothing to fear then why would I? I'm taking a new leap in a direction of intimacy with the Lord, a new direction of spending time with Him, and being known by Him. I hope to never come out on the other side for there is no end to my relationship with Him.
