Wednesday, January 28, 2009

What does God know about YOU?

What Does God Know about You? (Part 1)
by Rick Warren

Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Hebrews 4:13 (NIV)

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One night I was standing in front of the refrigerator. I’d gotten out of bed to make a midnight refrigerator raid even though I was on a diet. And I stood there with the refrigerator door open, thinking, “Just one bite ….”

You know how it goes. You get into a debate with yourself: “Go ahead; it won’t hurt this one time.” “No, I’m on this diet.”

It’s in moments like these that Satan feeds us a devilish excuse, “No one will ever know.”

You may not be standing in front of the refrigerator. You may be at work, or filling out your income tax form, or some place your parents wouldn’t want you to be. But you go ahead and do something questionable because we all can get caught in the false belief that “no one will ever know.”

But God already knows!

The Bible says nothing in creation is hidden from God (Psalm 147:5) and that God knows everything about you (Psalm 139). This means there’s no question God cannot answer, no problem that confuses him. He’s never surprised. He’s never shocked. He never says, “Oh, really?!” God knows everything; it’s something theologians call the omniscience of God.

The fact that God knows everything about you is good news, not bad, and today we will look at two of five specific areas where knowing this will make a difference in your life.

God know your faults and failures. I find it uncomfortable to realize I don’t have any secrets from God, because there are things about me I’d rather God not know. But the Bible says, “My sins, O God, are not hidden from you; you know how foolish I have been” (Psalm 69:5 GNT).

So we’re foolish when we do something wrong and then try to sneak it past God, to stuff it in a closet and lock the door. God knows what’s behind the locked door (Proverbs 5:21).

Everything you think, everything you see, everything you do, everything you feel, God knows all about it. He already knows all you’ve done wrong and he still loves you!

You’re not fooling God when you keep your sins hidden (1 John 1:8). He’s not shocked by your sin; and when you admit it to him, it doesn’t ever, will never, change the way he feels about you. He loves you unconditionally, and that means you don’t have to fake it, you don’t have to pretend.

God knows your feelings and frustrations. Some of you think, “Nobody knows what I’m going through, nobody feels the pain I’m experiencing.” God knows. He knows your feelings and frustrations. He’s seen the crisis in your soul. There’s no hurt that goes unnoticed by God. Psalm 56:8 says, “You know how troubled I am; you have kept a record of my tears” (GNT).

Often when we’re hurting, we feel very isolated and lonely. Maybe there’s been a death in the family, a divorce, maybe we’ve gotten fired, and we start to think, “Nobody understands the way I feel; nobody feels the pain.”

But God knows, and “The Lord is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him” (Psalm 103:13 NLT).

God not only sees, he cares. He knows the causes, the reasons, the things that brought you to this point. He understands because he made you, and he sees the hurt in your heart like nobody else can.

Because God knows our frustrations and despair, we can give those feelings to him: “Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about what happens to you” (1 Peter 5:7 NLT). Cast them all permanently on God, once and for all. Don’t take them back. 
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