Don’t Hand me down a second Hand God

There are many things that are useful as hand-me-downs: cricket bats, a brother or sister's clothing, bicycles, tricycles and Lego, books by the dozen and so much more. In the natural there is much that is useful when handed down. But in the spiritual, we can and must give our children a Christian heritage, but we cannot give them God Himself as a hand-me-down.

When dead religion is received by successive generations and simply perpetuated into the future, it becomes a relic not worthy of wasting time on, engaging in its folly. As has been said many times, those who ignore the lessons of history are bound to repeat them. What, quite honestly, is worse than flogging a dead horse, is to continue to do it for years without even being aware of the futility of the act.

It is impossible for me to have a relationship with someone through information that I have received second hand. I can never get to know that person at all. My relationship with God is exactly the same: it is mine alone, and no one else’s.

As I spend time with God my Father by His Spirit and through His Son Jesus, I get to know Him first hand.

^{John 10:14} “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—¹⁵ just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep^[1]

Our standard of knowing Jesus, is based on the depth of relationship that Jesus has with His Father.

So don’t hand me down a second hand god. It's not the real thing. How many of us are perhaps carrying around second hand gods like Israel so often did. Gods that we think we know, but have just made up. A god created in man’s image. Little totems to do our bidding. To follow us everywhere and scratch us whenever we itch. And to which we bow down momentarily when the going gets tough, to just get out of the pit we find ourselves in.

Owning second hand revelation is pointless because: 

•  It dims the True Light of the Gospel
•  It is stale and not fresh word
•  It's not from God's heart to mine
•  It's not spoken by His Spirit to my spirit
•  I end up knowing someone else's God, not mine
•   My spiritual hearing gets blunt
•  My spiritual vision becomes blurred

^{Philippians 3:10} that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Paul said that he wanted to know Christ and the power of His resurrection. He didn't say that he his goal was to know the Law better, or understand the end times from every angle. He wanted to know the person Who saved him. He wanted to keep growing closer to the One Whose heartbeat he felt daily, to Whom he had entrusted his very life. 

You see the point of the Old Covenant was that you did get your religion second hand, and from a distance, because otherwise you would have been burned. 

But the fullness of the New Covenant, the Gospel of Jesus the Christ, is for us to know Him face to face - first-hand. The meaning of this is truly so incredible that it is hard to describe in our "off the shelf" consumerist version of the Gospel that is common in our generation, but it is easy to see in stark contrast to the weakness of what is often passed along as the "gospel".

We want it off the shelf, but anything off the shelf has a sell-by date. The real gold that we dig deep for is longer lasting and brings genuine reward. Instead of just digging pits for ourselves, let’s dig for the gold of knowing Jesus though His Word and by His Spirit, and God the Father will be our portion, for endless days, 10 000 years and for evermore! – (in the words of Matt Redman).

There is no greater story, or any truth as true.