How Well Do You Know the Lord?

“Your face, Lord, I will seek.” Ps 27:8 NKJV

At the end of a play, the leading actor held his audience spellbound as he recited the Twenty-Third Psalm. He did it as an encore, and it brought the house down with applause. Looking across the room, he spotted his old vicar and called on him to say something. To their surprise, he too recited the Twenty-Third Psalm. When he was through, there was silence. The audience dried tears from their eyes. At this point the actor stood beside his old vicar and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the difference is, I know the Twenty-Third Psalm but he knows the Shepherd!” Dr. Alexander Maclaren, the great Scottish preacher, attributed everything he knew to one habit: spending an hour each day alone with God. Sometimes he allowed others into his study, but they were never allowed to speak. Maclaren would sit in a well-worn armchair with his Bible lying across his knees. Sometimes he’d read its pages, but mostly he’d just sit with his hand over his face. During that hour he wouldn’t read the Bible as a student, or study it for sermons. One of his assistants noted, “He read it as a child would read a letter from an absent father, or your heart would drink in the words of a loved one from far away.” How well do you know the Lord? How well do you want to know Him? The answer is not in what you say but in what you do. What you truly desire, you pursue. The Psalmist said, “When You said, ‘Seek My face,’ my heart said to You, ‘Your face, Lord, I will seek.’”

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