Devotional from Savannah Moore
In the past few years, I’ve had quite a few friends and people I admire walk away from faith in Jesus. However, when they describe why they no longer feel compelled by Christianity, I can’t help but get the sense that they have not seen the Lord as He truly is and fully experienced the fullness of His grace and loving-kindness for themselves.
As part of my own journey, I have had to wrestle long and hard through a lot of different serious issues and questions. At times, I have found myself asking, what would it take for me to abandon following Jesus? Why do I still believe?
The one thing I always come back to as the foundation for my faith is that I know Him. I have tasted His goodness and salvation. I have experienced Him in such a personal and real way that enables me to have the kind of faith that is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1) and the fruit that has come from His Spirit within me reassures me that I really do belong to Him.
Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me” (John 10:14). Later, in John 14, he tells his disciples, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth…You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you…you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you…If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”
So if you want to know God and feel known by God, if you want unshakable confidence no matter what life throws at you, then you “ought to love one another…if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit…So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:7-16).
If this is something you long for, Romans 5:5 describes God’s love as being “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit,” and Jesus promises, “how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:23). So if you feel you may not know God in this personal way or simply want to experience His love on a deeper level, I encourage you to pray and ask God for an encounter with His love through His Spirit.