Bible Reading: Romans 1:18-20
The truth about God is known to them instinctively. God has put this knowledge in their hearts. Romans 1:19
The big day has arrived for the family to head down to the local electronics megastore to watch Dad and Mom spill their wallets on a brand-new computer. It’s the one everyone wanted: the XL Hyperflash 6000 Super-Plus. This box comes equipped with enough bytes and gigs and megs to keep a computer geek happy for at least six weeks. It can play CDs and DVDs in HD. It can communicate by phone, fax, and e-mail in sixty different languages and dialects, including pig latin.
A few simple modifications let it run every appliance in the house. It can turn all the lights on and off, take the blender for a spin, flip TV channels, boost your parents’ electric blanket up to ten, and nuke burritos in the microwave.
Of course, the Hyperflash 6000 also comes loaded with tons of software-like the Encyclopedia Galactica (the entire knowledge of humankind plus a few alien races), Games-a-Gazillion, and a program for accessing your school’s grade records.
Computers are technowonders. They arrive at stores with fully functioning brains. Operating systems and a big selection of software are installed at the factory, so all we have to do is pop open the carton and hook up the hardware. Within minutes we can be playing games, e-mailing friends, or writing the world’s next best-selling novel.
But the most advanced computer ever created-or yet to be created-will never beat our brains. The gray, spongy “hardware” crammed inside our cranium isn’t much to look at, but the factory-installed “software” is fantastic. Every movement we make, every task we complete, starts in the complex system God built into each of us. God equipped us for life even before we were born.
At the core of our internal operating system is a unique feature we rarely stop to appreciate. It’s a built-in capacity to know and relate to our heavenly Father. He put it into every human being. Why? Because God wants us to know him as our loving Father. The God who called us into his family wants us to know him thoroughly. Even our marvelous brain couldn’t comprehend God unless he gave us that ability. And he did!
And when we turn to him in faith, it’s like he activates that inner program and lets us know him even better. Anybody with half a brain would go for that deal.
TALK: God created you with a built-in capacity to know him. How much of that capacity are you using?
PRAY: Thank God that you can know him—and tell him you want to know him better.
ACT: Make a list of the things you know about God and things you would like to know. Try to find the answer to one of those questions today!
