Primary Need– To Know God

What were we made for?
To know God.

What should our life’s goal be?
To know God.

What is the eternal life that Jesus gives?
Knowing God.

What allows man to be fully human?
Knowing God.

This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.  — Jesus, John 17:3

But whatever things were gain to me, those things
I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of
the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
—Apostle Paul, Philippians 3:7-8

The Privilege Of Knowing God

It is a tragedy that many people go through life without ever becoming acquainted with their Creator. To overlook that relationship is to miss the purpose for our existence and the greatest privilege available: knowing God. Even Christians can undervalue the honor of getting to know Christ more intimately.

Paul’s all-consuming passion to know God caused him to count everything else as worthless in comparison to that tremendous blessing. Though believers can accept Christ as their Savior, faithfully serve Him, and anticipate being with Him in heaven, many have no hunger to know Him right now. How can we be satisfied with simply being saved and have so little interest in the most gratifying relationship available to us? Pursuing Christ with passion requires sacrifice—spending time with the Lord, surrendering our will, and knowing Him through suffering. Although salvation is a free gift and the rewards are invaluable and eternal, intimacy with God is a costly process.

Our culture floods us with distractions that can fill our minds and hearts, leaving us indifferent about developing a deeper relationship with Christ. Some people even substitute learning facts about the Lord for knowing Him relationally.

Find what is hindering your passion for God. Consider ways to carve out time each day to be alone with Him. As you go about your routine, seek His guidance and listen for His voice. You, too, will eventually count everything else as rubbish compared to knowing Christ.

Quotes from J.I. Packer, author of Knowing God

Whatever else in the Bible catches your eye, do not let it distract you from Him.

Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life’s problems fall into place of their own accord.

The healthy Christian is not necessarily the extrovert, ebullient Christian, but the Christian who has a sense of God’s presence stamped deep on his soul, who trembles at God’s word, who lets it dwell in him richly by constant meditation upon it, and who tests and reforms his life daily in response to it.

Confidence that one’s impressions are God-given is no guarantee that this is really so, even when they persist and grow stronger through long seasons of prayer. Bible-based wisdom must judge them.

How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? The rule for doing this is simple but demanding. It is that we turn each Truth that we learn about God into matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God.

The Life of true holiness is rooted in the soil of awed adoration.

He that has learned to feel his sins, and to trust Christ as a Saviour, has learned the two hardest and greatest lessons in Christianity.

Jesus defines eternal life as knowing God (John 17:3).
What are the ways? In how many different ways can we know God, and thus know eternal life?
Here are some thoughts.

  1. The final, complete, definitive way, of course, is Christ, God Himself in human flesh.
  2. His church is His body, so we know God also through the church fellowship, instruction, worship, etc.
  3. The Scriptures are the inspired record of God’s revelation.
  4. The Spirit of God is His active presence here on earth.
  5. Scripture also says we can know God in nature see Romans 1. This is an innate, spontaneous, natural knowledge. I think no one who lives by the sea, or by a little river, can be an atheist.
  6. Art (beauty) also reveals God.
  7. Conscience, trained properly is the voice of God.
    {5-7 are natural. 1-4 are supernatural. 5-7 reveal three attributes of God,
    3 things the human spirit seems to be drawn to: truth, beauty, and goodness.
    God has filled His creation with these three things.]
    Here are six more ways in which we can and do know God.
  8. By Reason— reflecting on nature, art, or conscience, one can come to know some things about the nature of God.
  9. Experience, life, your story, can also reveal God. You can see the hand of Providence there.
  10. The collective experience expressed in literature, also reveals God. You can know God through others’ stories, through great literature.
  11. Mature believers reveal God. They are advertisements, mirrors, ‘imitators of Christ’.
  12. Our ordinary daily experience of doing God’s will will reveal God. God becomes clearer to see when the eye of the heart is purified: “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”
  13. Prayer meets God—ordinary prayer. You learn more of God from honest confession of one’s concerns, failures, thoughts, etc.

 

Questions for Reflection, Application & Discussion

How often each day are you intentionally thinking about knowing God?

Which of the Scriptures or Quotes from J.I. Packer jumped out at you? why?

Are there any of the 13 Thoughts about how God may reveal Himself that may be especially helpful for you this week?

Paul wrote “For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him.” (Colossians 1:19 NIV) and (although there is some debate but most scholars identify Paul as the writer of Hebrews) “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, Whom He appointed heir of all things, and through Whom also He made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word.” (Hebrews 1:1-3 NIV).

We come to know God essentially and most clearly by knowing the Son!  Reading the gospels must always be primarily about how one can understand and get to know Jesus better.