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"Three Dollars Worth of God"
And then I will declare to them, "I never knew you."
Matthew 7:23
How well do you think you know God? Have you settled for knowing less about God than He wants you to know? Do the following words penned by Wilbur Reese describe you?
I would like to buy three dollars worth of God, please. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough of Him to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don't want enough of Him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant. I want ecstasy, not transformation. I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack, please. I would like to buy three dollars worth of God, please.
The Church, the body of believers, is only as great as its concept of God. If you sense that your Christian experience is not what it should be, chances are that your problem is that you are not taking time to cultivate your relationship with the God who gave you life.
After Elvis Presley died, newspapers told of people who had almost made him god of their lives. One young man in Florida actually had plastic surgery to alter his face to look like Elvis. "Presley has been my idol since I was five years old," he said. "I have every record he has cut twice over, pictures by the thousands, even two leaves from a tree from the mansion in Memphis...." But the tragic words of his interview fell flat as he confessed at the end, "I never got close to him. I never saw him. I never knew him."
I wonder if you and I will stand before God on the Day of Judgment and confess: "I represented You, but I never got close to You. I never knew You deeply. I was busy about the work of Christianity, without getting to know the Father of it all."
