I am really encouraged to hear about others who have done similar things to what I went through many years ago. Like Frank, mine was my record collection. I have written about this in a book that I call "How I Almost Sold My Soul". It is the central theme for the whole story of how my records were my life and everything that I hoped to be, even though I was raised Christian. I had plans to be in rock music and my records were very important to me. Rather than reproduce the book here, let me just say that it was at a Kieth Green concert in 1977 that I heard God tell me that He wanted my records because He said I loved them more than I loved Him. He said that if I wanted to really know Him and His power in my life I would have to give Him the records. Later as I was struggling with this to put it mildly, He made me a promise that if I would do this, then He would be my teacher and teach me "things that pastors and teachers did not know". Well, I finally did it (I burned all the records) and began a lifelong journey of learning from God the very things that He promised me and how!   Along with it He showed me in the Word where the process is laid out and it happens to be the same place that I was just posting on which was brought up this week by Pastor FM Riley, in 2 Peter 1:   2 Peter 1  1.  Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ:  2.  Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,  3.  According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:  4.  Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.  5.  And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;  6.  And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;  7.  And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.  8.  For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.  9.  But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.  10.  Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall:  11.  For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.   The very first step in getting to know God is adding to your faith VIRTUE. This was what I was doing when I burned my records. This is what each of you: Kelly, Linda, Frank have also done when you each turned lose of your own "kingdom" and the promise of God is when you add to your faith virtue, you can then add to your virtue KNOWLEDGE! And to that knowledge you can add self control etc. There are many who try to add to their faith knowledge and it will not work. You cannot bypass the virtue. (Jesus said except you do the virtue, you cannot be My disciple, that is you can follow Me but you won't learn anything) To do so produces people like the Pharisees of Jesus' day who believed on Jesus but they would not CONFESS Him - that is, they had faith enough to believe, but by an act of their own will, they chose not to side with Him because they knew that if they did they would lose their Pharisee position and that was more dear to them than knowing God was. So they thought that they could merely BELIEVE in Jesus but not go to the EXTREME of actually putting Jesus first, since everyone knows that this is not a requirement for salvation blah blah... You can believe on Jesus and still run your own life the way you want to and even call whatever you are doing as if it were for God. For example you can be a lifelong "teacher" or preacher of the word and show everyone the marvelous things that you have studied all your life and impress everyone. But if you are doing it of your own choice and are not under Jesus' and the Holy Spirit's leading than what have you really got? You are like the Pharisees. You have knowledge that puffeth up.     1 Corinthians 8  1.  Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.  2.  And if any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.  3.  But if any man love God, the same is known of him.   See, it is all about knowing God and being known by God. Peter shows to all of us how to get that . But God will not force us to participate in it. We must do so by our own free will choice and no one can blame his neighbor if he has chosen to not participate when the day of judgment comes and we each stand alone to give an account of what we did with our lives.   Thanks for listening,   Barry Amundsen