RUN LIKE A CHAMPION

I’ll never forget the night I came to know Christ. I thought, It just can’t get any better than this. I had come to know the God who created the universe. My heart was thrilled to experience firsthand His love and power in my life. I was enthralled with Him. Life took on a new meaning. I saw it through a new set of eyes. Yet that was just the beginning of what would become an incredible journey that would take me into a revolution, the aftermath of a genocide, and into war-torn nations with the message of God’s love, grace, and forgiveness. It would be the beginning of a journey into intimacy with God.
A man or woman of God is born in one moment, but grows into usefulness over a lifetime by getting to know God intimately. Too often, Christians have the attitude that once a person is born-again, they have arrived. The truth is, the journey’s just begun. Salvation is not the finish line; it’s the starting place. We come to know God in salvation, but we must grow in sanctification if we are to become the man or woman He wants us to be.
Moses met God on a mountain in the Midianite desert. God revealed Himself to Moses, but that was just the beginning of Moses’ relationship with God. He would need to get to know God intimately. After Moses encountered God on that fateful day, he began to have some logical questions about his new relationship. There were three ways in which Moses began to grow in his intimacy with God.
First, he came to know God as being omnipresent. God told Moses, “I will be with you” (Exodus 3:12). Moses needed to know that no matter where he went, God would be there. God would be with him when he stood before Pharaoh and when he stood before the Red Sea. He would be with him in the wilderness and in the city. He was with him on the mountain and would be with him when he descended into the valley.
When the Romanian revolution took place, a wonderful cry exploded in the hearts of the people. They had been systematically brainwashed all of their lives with atheism. But in one divine moment, God came and revealed Himself to the people, and 200,000 people in the country’s second-largest city began to shout, “Dumnezeu este cu noi!” which means, “God is with us.”
When Jesus came to this planet, one of the names given to Him was Emmanuel, which means, “God is with us.” When God reveals Himself to His people, He always wants them to know that He will be with them, no matter where they go.
But God also revealed Himself to Moses as eternal. God is everywhere all the time. Moses asked God a logical question, “What’s your name?” If he was going to go back to the children of Israel, he should know the name of the One who was sending him. God’s answer communicated His very nature. He said, “I am that I am” (Exodus 3:14). He didn’t say, “I was that I was“ or “I will be what I will be.” At that moment with Moses, God was, “I am that I am.” Today He is “I Am,” and tomorrow He is still, “I Am.” He doesn’t grow old. He’s the same “yesterday, today, and forever.”
Finally, Moses came to know God as perfectly faithful. God said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers — the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob — has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation” (Exodus 3:15). What God had done with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He would do with Moses. God had been faithful and true to His promises to their forefathers, and He would be true to Moses.
Moses became God’s man, not because he was a great man, but because he had come to know a great God — the God who is everywhere, all the time, and completely faithful. This same God of Moses is the God of every true follower of Jesus, the Christ. The making of the man of God doesn’t begin with the man, but with the God who makes him. It’s the man or woman with the mark of God’s character on their soul who is useful in His kingdom. Such a mark is branded on our heart by intimacy with the Savior.