I am going to make a very shocking statement, and I mean every word of it: I really do not know God! That is, I don’t know him in the way he wants me to know him.
How do I know this? The Holy Spirit told me. He whispered to me, lovingly, “David, you really don’t know God in the way he wants you to. You really don’t allow him to be God to you.”
In the Old Testament, God took a people unto himself—a people no richer or smarter than the rest—only so that he could be God to them: “And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God” (Exodus 6:7). God was saying, in other words, “I’m going to teach you to be my people—so that I can be God to you!”
Indeed, God revealed and manifested himself to his people over and over again. He sent angels. He spoke to them audibly. He fulfilled every promise with great deliverances. Yet after forty years of miracles, signs and wonders, God’s estimation of his people was: “You don’t know me—you don’t know my ways!”
“Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways” (Psalm 95:10). God said “In all of this you never really let me be God! In my forty years of wanting to teach you, you still never knew me—you still didn’t know how I work!”
God is still looking for a people who will let him be God to them—to the point that they truly know him and learn his ways!
Scripture says of Israel “Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel” (Psalm 78:41). Israel turned away from God in unbelief. And likewise, I believe we limit God today with our doubt and unbelief.
We trust God in most areas of our lives—but our faith always has boundaries and limits. We have at least one small area that we block off, where we don’t really believe God is going to undertake for us.
I limit God most in the area of healing. I have prayed for physical healing for many, and I have seen God perform miracle after miracle. But when it comes to my own body, I limit God! I am afraid to let him be God to me. I douse myself with medicine or run to a doctor before I ever pray for myself! I’m not saying it’s wrong to go to the doctor. But sometimes I fit the description of those who “sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians” (2 Chronicles 16:12).
I ask you: Do you pray for God to bring down walls in China or Cuba—but when it comes to the salvation of your own family, you don’t have an ounce of faith? You think, “God must not want to do this. My loved one is such a tough case. God doesn’t seem to be hearing me in this matter.”
If this is true, you are not seeing him as God! You are ignorant of his ways! God’s desire is to “do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us” (Ephesians 3:20).
The seventy elders of Israel ate and drank in God’s very presence on the mount. Yet the Lord said of them, “You never got to know me or my ways!”
The disciples spent three years in God’s presence—with Christ, who was God in the flesh. They sat under his teaching and were with him night and day. Yet, in the end, they forsook him and fled—because they did not know his ways!
Jesus says that God does not hear our prayers and praises simply because we utter them over and over, for hours at a time. It is possible to pray, fast and do righteous things, and still not reach the place where we hunger to know him and begin to understand his ways. We do not learn his ways in the prayer closet alone, although everyone who truly knows the Lord is very intimate with him. You cannot know God’s ways without spending much time with him in prayer. But prayer must include quality time in which we let God be God to us—laying every need and request in his hands and leaving them there.
Be the first to react on this!
David Wilkerson (1931 – 2011)
Founder of Times Square Church in New York City with over 100 different languages spoken in the congregation. Wilkerson wrote many powerful books such as: The Vision and Cross and the Switchblade. His ministry was prophetic as God called him to be a watchman to the Church in North America. He gave clear messages on repentance to the Church.Wilkerson also founded Teen Challenge where there are hundreds of centres for Christ-centered drug recovery and addiction recovery. He also organized and spoke at pastors gatherings in many countries where he gave prophetic strong messages to encourage pastors and leaders.
Recommends these books by David Wilkerson:
The Vision and Beyond, Prophecies Fulfilled and Still to Come by David Wilkerson
Knowing God by Name: Names of God That Bring Hope and Healing by David Wilkerson
God's Plan to Protect His People in the Coming Depression by David Wilkerson
David Wilkerson is an American Christian evangelist, most well-known for his book The Cross and the Switchblade. He is also the founder of Times Square Church in New York, an interdenominational church.
Wilkerson is well-known for these early years of his ministry to young drug addicts and gang members in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s. He co-authored a book about his work with the New York drug addicts, The Cross and the Switchblade, which became a best-seller, selling over 50 million copies in over thirty languages since it was published in 1963. The book was included among the 100 most important Christian books of the 20th century.
For over four decades, Wilkerson's ministry has included preaching, teaching and writing. He has authored over 30 books.
David Wilkerson is the founder and president of World Challenge, Inc., a nonprofit organization incorporated on September 22, 1971. Reverend Wilkerson, the author of over thirty inspirational books, is perhaps best known for his early days of ministry to young drug addicts and gang members in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. His story is told in The Cross and the Switchblade, a book he co-authored which became a best-seller. (The story has been read by over 50 million people in some thirty languages and 150 countries since 1963. In 1969, a motion picture of the same title was released.)
For over four decades, Reverend Wilkerson's evangelistic ministry has included preaching, teaching and writing. Throughout that time a distinctive characteristic of his work has been his direct efforts to reach the neediest members of the population with help for both body and soul. Even now, the almost 70 year-old minister often goes out alone or sometimes with an assistant to walk through the streets of New York City, along Broadway and Eighth Avenue or down 42nd Street and nearby "Crack Alley" on 41st Street. His mission is always to seek out the lost, the disoriented, and the addicted , to tell them of the power of the risen Christ to set them free.
David Wilkerson, born in Hammond, Indiana on May 19, 1931, was married in 1953 to Gwen Carosso. The Wilkersons' two sons are ministers, and their two daughters are married to ministers. They have 11 grandchildren. The Wilkersons served small pastorates in Scottsdale and Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, until Reverend Wilkerson saw a photograph in Life magazine of several New York City teenagers charged with murder. Moved with compassion he was drawn to the city in February 1959. It was at that time he began his street ministry to what one writer called "desperate, bewildered, addicted, often violent youth.