The Gift of God

A. Rev. 21:3. Whatever secondary blessings flow from God, we ought to seek none of
these as diligently as we seek God Himself. We must be the kind of people who seek
God primarily for His sake, because He is our God and we long to give ourselves to Him.
1. Selfish manipulation of God will kill your relationship with God. It is totally self-defeating. If all you want from God are the things God can give you, you will miss the greatest Gift of all. God's greatest gift to those who seek him is himself.
a. We must learn to think of God as both the Giver and the Gift. To the Samaritan
woman at the well in John 4:10, Jesus said, "If you knew the gift of God, and who
it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would
have given you living water." What is the living water which only God can give?
Paul tells us in Rom. 6:23, that "the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our
Lord." Jesus spoke to the heart of this matter of eternal life when He prayed in
John 17:3, "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ whom You have sent."
b. God gives us life by giving us Himself. Other blessings may flow from a right relationship with God, but that relationship itself is God's greatest gift to us. If we "have" God and His Son, we have the highest thing to which we can aspire. 2 Jno. 9, says, "He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son."
2. Most of us don’t really appreciate the glory and grace of a God who would give Himself to someone like us. But it would take a really hard heart to not be moved by the words of Jesus in Jno. 14:23. “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."
a. Only God could make that come to pass. Our prayer should be simple and honest, “God, of your goodness, give me yourself for you alone are sufficient for me. I cannot properly ask anything less, than to be worthy of you. If I were to ask less, I should always be in want. For in you alone do I have all I will ever need.”
b. Acts 20:32.

Spur - 06/29/03 pm