Biography Of God: A Six-Day Devotional By Skip Heitzigनमूना

Coming Face to Face with God

You never know the moment you will come face to face with the question of God. Will it be when you're young or when you're old? Will it happen in the wake of tragedy or in the stillness of an unguarded moment? Will it come after a lifetime of religious service, in a season of stark survival, or during an ongoing battle of intellectual resistance?

Whenever or however it happens, the moment is coming when you must do business with God, either taking Him seriously by responding to His overtures, or pushing Him away into the background and turning up the volume of your own inner voices. No matter how smart or careful you are, how determined you are to chart your own course, at some point you're going to reach the end of yourself.

But when you get to that isolated place, accessible only to you, you're going to find that you're not alone. In fact, you'll learn that you never were. And in that place, you'll have to answer the question What if I've been wrong about God? As Blaise Pascal once insisted, you have far more to lose if you're wrong about God than if you believe in Him and He doesn't exist.

What if God does exist? What if He can be known? What if He already knows you, loves you deeply, and is pursuing you? What if your Maker wants more than anything to meet you? If you want an answer to those questions, you're going to need one thing: faith.

Hebrews 11 is a well-known New Testament chapter that's all about faith. It recounts a who's who of Old Testament figures, praising them for their faithful journeys with God through life, sort of like a Hall of Fame of faith. The chapter begins by providing a definition of faith: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (v. 1, ESV). Faith calls what is invisible fact and what is not readily apparent guaranteed.

Hebrews 11 also tells us, "Without faith it is impossible to please [God], for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him" (v. 6). This verse points to two great realities and two subsequent responsibilities. The two great realities are that God exists and God is personal. They go hand in hand with two great responsibilities: belief and pursuit.

Over the coming days, we're going to look more in depth at those two realities and two responsibilities. You'll discover that coming face to face with God to get to know Him, wherever you're at, is worth your time and effort.