Knowing God



The reason we don't know the Father of heaven and earth

is that we don't know the Son.

 

And the reason we don't know the Son

is that we have not yet received the Spirit.

 

And the reason we have not yet received the Spirit

is that we have not yet asked for Him to be poured out upon us.

 

The church was born on Pentecost Day, when thousands of faithful Jews crowded the city of Jerusalem in observance of the "Feast of Weeks."  The Festival was one of three main Jewish feasts which required all who could to travel to Jerusalem to observe the feast.  Pentecost refered to the 50th day "after first putting the sickle to the corn."  It was the harvest of "first fruits," kind of like our Thanksgiving observance.  In the ceremony, the priests were required to wave a sheaf of first fruits before the Lord, and it was to occur on the 50th day after the Sunday following Passover. 

 

After His resurrection on Easter Sunday (the first Sunday following His Passover -- when the sickle was first put to the harvest), Jesus appeared to many disciples and His apostles for 40 days, showing them that He was indeed alive and not a ghost.  Then He told them to go back to Jerusalem to await the "Gift of the Father," and not to leave until they had received what was promised.  The practice of a novena in the Catholic church derives from the 9 days the disciples, including Mary and many women, spent in prayer, awaiting what was promised.  On the 10th day, the "Festival of Pentecost" -- first fruits -- the Spirit descended.

 

On that day, 3,000 Jews received the Holy Spirit and for the first time heard about Jesus.  When those 3,000 left Jerusalem several days later, they were on fire with the love of God and returned to their home towns speaking of all they had seen and heard in Jerusalem.  By the time Paul and the other Apostles began traveling -- as a result of the persecution in Jerusalem from the Jews -- there were already "Christian" communities planted as seeds in every village and town in the known world.  They were eagerly waiting more teaching; they were already studying the Scriptures they had known all of their lives to see whether Jesus was indeed the promised Messiah; they were gathering in prayer on the Lord's Day, as well as continuing to observe the Sabbeth in the synagogues. 

 

We tend to think that the Apostles spread the early Church; we forget that the Spirit of God gave birth to 3,000 Christians on the Day of Pentecost -- the "first fruits" of the Spirit of Jesus --  and sent them back to their home towns as missionaries, even before the arrival of the evangelists. 

 

"The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit" (Romans 5:5).

"How much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him" (Matt 5 and Luke 11).

"If you really knew Me, you would know my Father as well.  From now on, you do know him and have seen Him" (Jn. 14).

"Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father" (Jn. 14).

 

If we would be set on fire with the love of God like those 3,000 Jews in Jerusalem that day, if we would know Jesus as the Messiah sent from God, if we would know the Father of heaven and earth, let us, like the disciples, remain in prayer, asking for the Spirit of God to be poured out on us.  There is just no other way to know God.