What's In the Box?

When Robin and I were studying the Bible with our international friends, we had many different cultures come through the doors of our church building.  At first we had an influx of Koreans.  In our latter years it was mostly Chinese.

One day Robin and I came to class with a box and we asked our Chinese friends to guess what was in the box.  They held the box, shook it, and guessed.  I don’t recall what their guesses were, but because the box was so light, one of them guessed that there was nothing in the box.  No one could guess what was in the box.  Finally we opened the box and pulled out a picture of Xi Jinping, the President of China.  Everyone was surprised.  We then told them that the Bible was the Revelation of God and like the box, if we did not open it we could not know God.

I remembered this incident as John talked about the Spirit filled life.  What I think I heard John say was that prayer and knowing scripture were two things that were essential in combating temptation in our lives.  He said that if we didn’t know scripture we would not be able to see clearly how God is working in lives; we would not be able to know His will for us; we would not be able to see God’s fingerprints in the world around us; and we certainly wouldn’t know God.  (John, I apologize for paraphrasing you.  I can’t remember exactly what you said, nor am I saying it as eloquently as you said it.  Sorry.)

James 4:8 tells us, “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.”  John has been encouraging us to draw near to God.  But what I am hearing from John is not only will God draw near to us, but as we draw near to God, we will know how near God really is to us.