Knowing God - Excerpt

Faith In A God We Don’t Know

There is a belief I have seen among many believers in the church that worries me.  What I have noticed are a people who are willing to know of God, but unwilling to know Him.  They take what they read in their Bible and what they hear taught by others to create their own understanding of who they think Jesus is.  They build a view of Jesus in their minds; based off the knowledge they have accumulated and the understanding that they have, and make decisions using that.  They are willing to listen to people tell them how much their God loves them, but not willing to experience it themselves.  They see how God likes to bless His children, but see only the outward expressions of it.  They look for the scripture and the action that leads to the response they want.  If they want to be blessed, they pray like Jabez.  If they want security, they pray Psalm 91.  They have been told how to handle their situations by others, and as they continue to act in the methods they’ve been taught, they create a system for how God works and what it takes for His rewards.

Inevitable, their god will fail them.  Calamity comes along and they can’t understand how their loving god would let that happen to them.  For example, they can’t understand why they can’t find a job, because their view of God is someone who will take care of all their physical needs first.  They put everything into their family, believing that a loving God wouldn’t let something happen, so when it does they fall apart.  They make financial decisions based off a belief that God prospers His own, and find themselves overwhelmed in debt.  When their model of God fails, they don’t know what to believe.

Too many of us have created an idol of our own God.  An idol of our beliefs is as real as an idol of gold.  It is easier to create a god that covers our comfort and fits into what we want to believe, than to come to know a God that may not believe as we do.  Paul described people who do this as “holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power” (2 Timothy 3:1).  At a men’s conference I attended, I remember one of the speakers saying: “One day I realized that God and I were incompatible, and one of us had to change.”  Whether it be a golden Buddha, or a mental Jesus; when we put our faith in what we understand, we set our path to failure.  Faith must be in a person, and not a belief.

We Can Know God

What should be one of the most important truths of Christianity is that we can know God.  Let me be clear here.  I don’t mean the “spiritual knowing God” that we sometimes assign, where we know of Him, have fleeting impressions of direction, and have an occasional verse come to mind when we need it.  That is not knowing God.  I mean knowing Him like we do family.  The kind of knowing where we see them often, talk on the phone, send funny messages during the day, rely upon them for advice, and spend our time with them.  We too often think of God as that big entity way up there in the sky that we can never understand.  This view is not scriptural.

I am the good shepherd, and I know my own and My own know me. — (John 10:14)

Jesus taught that His sheep would know Him.  Surely, we can be as good as sheep.  How did the sheep know their shepherd?  They knew him by how he looked, his voice, his smell, and even the way he walked.  Jesus came to earth to show us the way back to the Father.  We can know Him, not just in knowledge, but in person.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me. — (Revelation 3:20)

The way has been set and our Lord is waiting for us.  God provided everything we need, which leads us back to a core truth. 

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. — (James 4:8)

We are as close to God as we want to be.

We have little to do with being saved, but everything to do with how close we come to God.  Salvation has opened the way, but we must walk into it.  In the end, we initiate the closeness in the relationship.  It’s up to us to really dig into God.  We must desire the relationship more than anything else.  We pursue Him as we would a lover.  If we draw near, God is faithful to come close as well.  He stands at the door and knocks, but we must let Him in.  God will rarely force Himself upon us. 


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