I don't want your offerings, I want you to know me personally

I don’t want your offerings, I want you to know me Personally

I don’t want your offerings – I want you to know me personally

Brendan Mc Crossan 18-12-2011

One

Good News Translation (GNT)

Hosea -6-6

What I want from you is plain and clear: 6 I want your constant love, not your animal sacrifices. I would rather have my people know me than burn offerings to me.

What I want from you is plain and clear God wants us to know him, not just to know about him but to know him on a personal level. He wants us to know him as Father not just Father but to know him intimate as God also, he desires to share himself with us his own children. All he wants from us is our true love. People are forever offering sacrifices, not animal sacrifices anymore, but sacrificing themselves to get something from God for example people fast, to get something from God or to try and please him but mostly because they want something from him and think this is the way to get it.

My wife knows everything about me and she knows how to get something from me because she knows me intimately, she knows what will motivate me to give even if I am reluctant to give something, for example. My daughter wants to borrow my car, so she asks me and I say, ‘no,’ so whatdoes shedo, shegoes to her mother and asks her to ask me, and her mother usually tells me to give her the car, saying, sure you don’t need it for a couple of hours and she usually reminds me of sometime when I was young, and the car is almost always handed over. Rose knows me intimately she knows how to move me. And this is the same with God when we know him intimately we know what will move him, and what will not. Because we share intimacy with each other we know each other’s thinking and way of doing things, and God wants us having an intimacy with him a close personal encounter a loving relationship, a bonding together, and so he offers us this relationship because he is in love with us, just like Rose and I are in love, having a deep meaningful relationship with each other, she knows me better than I know me.

When God says he wants you to know him that means he will draw close to you and let you into his personal feelings and emotions, and he has these in case some don’t believe that God has emotions and feelings. God will not disappoint you; he will let you get to know him better and better until you know a good portion of his thoughts.

What I want from you is plain and clear: 6 I want your constant love, How much plainer can you get than this, God is saying to you – ‘I want your constant love,’ ‘I just desire that you would love me,’ ‘I desire that you would be in my company often, talking with me and listening to me when I talk;’ sharing time out together, just even sitting there not even speaking, just enjoying being together.

Two I would rather have my people know me

God is saying he would rather that his people, {which is you,} would know him, and know all about him. He would rather you knew him than knowing about him, all through the Bible God’s word, God called out to his people to come and get to know him, not just come to him when they are in trouble, but to come spend time in his presence and that word presence is sometimes off-putting when we say come and spend time in his presence especially when we don’t feel his presence. There a big difference between knowing God and knowing about God, almost everyone on this planet knows there is a God but not everyone on this planet knows him personally. Spending time with God whether we feel his “presence” or feel absolutely nothing at all is what God desires from you and me. It does not matter if you don’t feel the “presence of God”, the important thing is to ignore your feelings and just sit with him thinking about him if possible, because that is the time Satan uses to fill your mind with every foul thought imaginable or thoughts that make no sense or lead you into day dreaming, and that’s all right, as long as you bring your thoughts back to the lord again, and don’t crucify yourself for wandering during this time, that’s normal. The fact that God accepts, is that you came to sit with him in the privacy of your room or at church or anywhere, even in a barroom, or in a little room at work; anywhere you find yourself in and have a little time for yourself and God, is acceptable to God and pleases him.

God is a God who wants to be known as Father, he wants us to realise he is our parent, and that he is deeply in love with us, he is concerned about every single thing in our lives and knows us through and through and wants us to know him the same way.

Not knowing God from lack of personal knowledge of him, not knowing his personal touch, the sound of his voice is heartbreaking to God, he wants us his children to respond to the sound of his footsteps in the garden; our hearts to respond to the sweet tender sound of his loving caring voice. The gentle caress of his hand on our life as he helps us through difficult times in our life, this is what God wants for us, to be loved so deeply that it aches to be away from each other for any length of time, God is love and love is God, and when we love God, God dwells in us; he actually comes and dwells inside of us; that is how close he wants to be with us. Do we want to be as close to him as he is to us?

The greatest thing for me is he wants me to experience his great love and for us to have a personal relationship with each other.

Hosea 4-1

Amplified Bible (AMP)

Hear the word of the Lord, you children of Israel, for the Lord has a controversy (a pleading contention) with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no faithfulness, love, pity and mercy, or knowledge of God [from personal experience with Him] in the land.

In this scripture you can see God pleading that we would have knowledge, a personal relationship with, and knowledge of him, getting to know him deeply, that’s what knowledge is, knowing God.

If we reject God’s offer

What happens when we reject God’s offer of a relationship with him. Because you reject him he will then in turn reject you, and those who have given you bad teachings will also be rejected by God.

Hosea 4-6

New International Version (NIV)

My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge {of me}. “Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God,

Sometimes this reads my people perish because of lack of knowledge, but God is talking about his people having lack of knowledge of who he is personally, if we know God then we have knowledge, if we don’t know him we have nothing but intellect, and one can never know God with his brain, his smartness or his knowledge, but only through revelation from God himself, only with a personal encounter with God do we get to know him. Andthatmeanstakingtimeouteverydaytofellowshipwithhim,andalsomeansthatyoumust read what he says and does in his word. His word is himself expressed in paper or on computer these days, but his word is the Bible the last will and testament of God himself, the new will of God in the New Testament. Every Christian needs to read the New Testament and focus mainly on the new and less on the old is my own personal belief; the New Testament is the new will Of God. The New Testament is everything God done for us through Jesus and far outweighs the old what he did for others, but the new is for me personally, and for Christians today.

God's Love for His Rebellious People; the Lord says, when Israel was a child, I loved him, and called him out of Egypt as my son.2 but the more I called to him, the more he turned away from me. My people sacrificed to Baal; they burned incense to idols.3 yet I was the one who taught Israel to walk. I took my people up in my arms, but they did not acknowledge that I took care of them4 I drew them to me with affection and love. I picked them up and held them to my cheek; I bent down to them and fed them.

God’s people today forget what he done for them through Jesus Christ

Look at the heartbreak he is expressing in this scripture. “I loved him,” ‘but the more I called the more he turned away from me.’ Have you ever had a child turn away from you, walk away refusing to answer your phone calls or texts or e mails? How sad a parent feels when that

Good News Translation (GNT) Hosea 11-1

happens to them, their heart breaks in two? God is expressing his feelings to us, he is expressing his heartbreak, can you remember picking your little child up and holding it to your cheek, feeling the softness and smelling their little baby smells, their little fingers clutching your finger tightly, and the joy you feel when they done that, held your finger for the first time.

I have eight children and I can remember those precious moments when I held each new born in my arms for the first time, everyone of them gave me that exact same Joy, they each gave me a time of wonder and awe, as I held them in my hands looking at their tiny little bodies and looking into their eyes swearing I believe they can see me, even though I knew they were too young; I held each one with affection and love my heart bursting with pride and joy, each a awesome blessing to me and each felt so soft and tender when I held them against my chest and felt their little faces against mine. Nothing will ever take away that feeling of joy I shared with each one.

God is sharing with us those same feelings that we experience when we hold our little children for the first time. 4 I drew them to me with affection and love. God is our Father and as a good father he describes his emotions when he got to hold us his child for the first time. I picked them up and held them to my cheek; I bent down to them and fed them.

Many days and nights I fed my children as they cried for the bottle of milk. I know in this one how God feels here.

Rose done it more often than me because I was working and she had the children all day long and I would usually do the night time feeding. I remember trying to get them to take all of their bottle and spent sleepless nights as they cried as I tried to bring up their wind, or when they were teething and I walked the floor for hours on end trying to get them to sleep again, and I saw most of my children’s first baby steps, and I helped them to walk, and God says. ‘I was the one who taught Israel to walk.’ He taught his children to walk, he watched over them like a mother hen guards her chicks, watching every single one noting where it is and if it’s ok. And then they walked away from him; oh the heartache of a child that goes away. I have two children away from home living in different countries, one in the USA and the other in Turkey, and I understand God’s feelings here, maybe you also have a child who is far from home and are longing to see that child again maybe even before you die, the longing to see your children home again never goes away.

As I write this I am crying because I know how much God is in anguish over his children who have gone far away from him and don’t even want to know him anymore, I am a father who loves all his children equally, I have no favourites even though they sometimes say I have, but I don’t I am concerned about each one of them individually, and love them equally, just as God is concerned about each of his children, he loves them all equal.

There’s a story in the Bible I never really liked, maybe it’s because I have heard it thousands of times, and that story is of the prodigal son; and it is in writing this little book I see for the first time the full significance of that story, but seeing it from God’s heart and from his side as the Father, who rears his sons and he walked the floor with his sons when they were babies and feeds them and teaches them to walk and then one day one of them degrades him by asking for his inheritance before his father died and that was a terrible thing for a child to do, it is the worst sign of disrespect one could do to a parent. God was saying he was the prodigal sons

father and it broke his heart to see his son walk away never to see him again possibly; and then one day he returns and his heart bursts with joy when he sees him.

God is not concerned that he slept with prostitutes or drank himself half to death; just like we do at times; his son has returned to him, what Joy this father feels, and this father in the story is actually God himself. And the father didn’t wait until the son walked right up to him; no he actually ran, a rather undignified thing for a father to do in those days, and he didn’t listen to his sons trying to say sorry he just hugged him and joyously order that the roast would be put on and the best wines and. Before the son could actually get out the words ‘sorry’ as he was speaking the father ordered a robe for his shoulders and a ring for his finger, the father had noticed his sons state of physical being and noticed he had no ring on his finger, he wasn’t listening to him revealing his sins, he was too busy being happy; and that is how God feels when we bring one son or daughter of his back to him. He puts a royal robe of righteousness on their shoulders and a crown of righteousness on their head; he clothes them in holiness and cleanses them in the precious blood of Jesus. His face beams with joy and excitement when his child returns, just like us when ours return to us.

God is real and his feelings about us are real and he desires that we return to him and have a great relationship with him, father and son or daughter loving and being loved. I don’t want your offerings I want you to know me personally.

Perhaps you could look at God in a different light now and see how much he does love you and how he longs to share himself with you.

I don’t want your sacrifices. I want your love; I don’t want your offerings – I want you to know me, and to know me is to love me as the song says. Amen