Determined to know HIM

What are you determined to do right now, tomorrow, next week or with the rest of your life? 

Our determination is a direct result of our desires. 

What kind of desires do you think motivate a person who is determined to make a name for themselves? Or, person who is determined to be wealthy?  

The apostle Paul said he had a determined purpose. What was it and what desires motivated his determination?  Let's take a look...

[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly], and that I may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection [[a]which it exerts over believers], and that I may so share His sufferings as to be continually transformed [in spirit into His likeness even] to His death (Philippians 3:10 AMP).

Paul's determined purpose was to know the Lord Jesus Christ.  

What desires motivated his determination?

Paul said he wanted to "become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly..." 

Why?  Look at the verse again.

Paul wanted to know resurrection power in his life and to be made more like Jesus, even in His death.

In Galatians 2:20, Paul expounds on this experience of becoming, as the KJV says, "conformable unto His death."

I have been crucified with Christ [in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ (the Messiah) lives in me; and the life I now live in the body I live by faith in (by adherence to and reliance on and complete trust in) the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

Living dead to our selfish, fleshly desires is the only way to "come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection."

"The same power that conquered the grave lives in me," the song below says.  That's true for every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, but its only as we know Jesus more and more, allowing Him to make us more like Him, and dying to our fleshly desires that His resurrection power will become evident in our lives. 

There are areas of my life that need to be molded more and more in the image of Christ. The same is true of every believer - if we're honest. We have to remember that Jesus shed His blood to purchase our redemption AND our victory! 

Paul's determined purpose was to know Jesus - to know the wonders of His Person, the wonders of His power, and the wonders of that power expressed in and through his own life to the glory of God the Father. 


Determined to know HIM.


Father, thank you so much that "the same power that conquered the grave lives in me." Lord, give me a  greater desire to live in resurrection power and a greater determination to know Jesus and the wonders of His person.  In Jesus' Name, amen. 

{Daily Selah} is a mini-devotional, a pause to ponder about the Lord and how He wants us to live.