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For some time now, I’ve been trying to establish the practice of making the Lord my first thought of the morning, as I am waking up. For a while, this was simply saying, “Good morning, Lord.” Somewhere down the road in this endeavor, I decided to address each person of the Godhead. Then I added, when I was speaking to the Father and to Jesus, that I wanted to know them and that I wanted to love them and serve them as I should.

I like this. It is joyful. It is just…right.

As I say these things to the Lord, it occurs to me what a privilege, what an amazing reality, the opportunity that I  have (for Christians, read “we have”) to get to know the Lord God of the entire, vast universe, a creation so enormous we cannot fathom the scope of it. He is the most powerful Being ever, who ever has been or ever will be. There is nothing—nothing—that He doesn’t know. He is perfectly pure and holy. Think of that. Not one spot of sin. Does that sound like you? There is no one as wise. No one as creative. His mercies never come to an end. Never. They are new every morning. This is the One I have the opportunity to know. There is no greater knowledge possible in one’s life on this earth. None. There is no more wonderful, astonishing personality to know during our few years on this planet. None. Think about this for a few moments: He upholds all things by the word of His power. This is the One whose depths—as far as my puny knowledge will allow me—I may plumb. When I see His creation—the animals, the birds, the insects, the cell, the nature of physics (what I can understand, that is) the stars, many times I just shake my head in wonderment and laugh out loud. And then I think, “If this visible creation is so amazing, what will heaven be like?”

And He, this wonderful One, by His grace, has made me part of His family. When He made Himself known to me, I became one of His sons. Jesus, by His sacrifice, made this possible.

What an incredible privilege. What a stunning opportunity. Why wouldn’t I want to do this? That’s a great question. Because I’ve got too many things on my mind? Because I’m too busy?

One of our problems as Christians in the United States isn’t that we have not received the knowledge of salvation. We have that available everywhere. It’s that our busy lives too easily become more important than He is. Please allow me to encourage you to pursue the knowledge of Him, both in your prayer life and in Scripture. What a privilege. What a joy.