Day 243, or August 31. How well do you know Him? Our thoughts today come from Daniel chapter
11 verse 32. But the people who know their God will firmly resist Him.
And now the big picture surrounding this verse. The book of Daniel closes with several more
visions that God gave Him. It seems they refer to both imminent events involving Persia and
Greece as well as the end times. Daniel has been a faithful man of prayer and is now probably
over 90 years old. And now today's action step. In these days
of social networking, we can be led into thinking that we really do know some celebrities we're
in contact with. We don't. We just know about them. I always smile when people ring in on
radio phone-in shows and say something like, "Do you remember me? I rang you about six
months ago." Usually the celebrity is too well mannered to tell the truth, and there
is a short awkward silence before the programme continues. Just because you know a lot about
someone it doesn't mean you actually know them. I remember being scolded on a bus in
London for not recognising a woman who obviously thought she knew me. In the ensuing conversation
she told me that I had conducted her mother's funeral a couple of years earlier. I felt
awful that I hadn't recognised her. She went on to say that unfortunately she was unable
to attend the funeral, but her family had appreciated how the service had been conducted.
I thanked God silently for a sermon illustration, and shook her hand before leaving her when
I got off the bus. She thought she knew me, but she only knew something about me, and
then only second-hand. If we only know about Jesus and maybe then only what others have
told us, and know nothing of his work in our lives, then we are treating him as an interesting
historical character. There's so much more for us, and there's no time to waste. Start
a conversation with him now, and respond to what he says as you consider his word.