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God Is The Treasure Series
Contributed by Billy Noel on Sep 25, 2009 (message contributor)
Summary: In order to worship God properly we must have a correct view of Him, He must be a treasure to us
The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes, by molecular biologist Dean Hamer.
Hamer says. "I think we follow the basic law of nature, which is that we’re a bunch of chemical reactions running around in a bag."
This Psalm was written in a time of urgent need; it opens in the form of a prayer in verse 1, but then is changed to a meditation in verse 2
The Psalmist declares the He has privately vowed allegiance to God
He is determined to have fellowship with God and that He would separate himself from those who would practice idolatry
I. God is our Portion
The Psalmist says “You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.” V.2
Psa 73:25 Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.
a. Deliberately choose Him
He is our satisfaction
He is my portion; He is my future, my destiny
He is the sum of all that make up my life
He is for me refreshment and sustenance
b. Deliberately Possess Him
It is not to own Him as we own a piece of property, art, car, house etc.
The highest form of ownership in this case is to let Him minister to us
It is when we allow Him to minister to our thought, to our
emotion, to our moral and intellectual growth.
A disciple who gets the thoughts of a great teacher into his mind, and has his whole being saturated by them, may be said to have made the teacher his own.
A friend or a lover owns the heart that he or she loves, and which loves back again; and not otherwise do we possess God.
We read in the Bible frequently: the Lord is the inheritance of His people, and His people are the inheritance of the Lord.
He possesses me, and I possess Him
God is my guest and I am His
Let me ask you a question: Do you ever think about Him?
There is only one way of getting God for yours, and that is by bringing Him into your life by frequent meditation upon His sweetness, and upon the truths that you know about Him. There is no other way by which a spirit can possess a spirit, that is not cognizable by sense, except only by the way of thinking about him, to begin with. Everything else follows that. That is how you hold your dear ones when they are away from you.
That is how you hold God, who dwells in the realm of the unknown world
There is no way to ‘have’ Him, but through the understanding accepting Him and keeping firm hold of Him.
****It is hypocrisy to profess to know Him and never think about Him
c. Deliberate renunciation
To choose is one is to renounce another
If we choose others must be renounced
If Good is to be your portion you must empty your heart of all else
You must choose between earthly possessions and relationships and God
The truth is the before I can renounce all other things I must choose Him
d. Deliberate conviction
There must be the intelligent conviction that God is best
At the foundation of my choice of a relation there must be a determination that I will allow nothing to come between me and my God
I must determine that He alone is my delight and desire
The Christianity that only trusts Christ for deliverance from the punishment of sin, and makes religion a kind of fire insurance A. McClaren
Treasure hunters will gladly rid themselves of treasure of less value for gold