Surely I have composed and quieted my soul; Like a weaned child rests against his mother, My soul is like a weaned child within me.

Psalm 131:2

When we think about knowing God, we typically think about our relationship with God.  It is good to know God and to be known by God relationally, however, to know God also means to know everything that He has revealed about Himself.  To know what God has revealed about Himself means that we need to know the Biblical doctrine of God because God has revealed everything that He wants us to know about Himself in the Bible.  American Christianity is attached to the cliché, “It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship.”  I disagree with this statement because Christianity is actually both, in fact the completeness of our religion demonstrates that Christianity is the only complete religion in the world.  The relational aspect of the Christian faith is unique and of utmost importance, however when we limit it to subjective emotion, we can find ourselves questioning our faith, doubting God, even wondering if we have eternal life.  This may be why many Christians leave the church, experience burn-out, backslide into habitual sin, or never exhibit any measurable signs of spiritual maturity.  We need to recognize that we are beings in constant change, while God is immutable, meaning that God does not change.  This is of paramount importance because the winds that drive our sails through life must be filled by the truth of who God is, rather than our experience of God.  If we seek emotional highs as a validation of our faith, at times we will find ourselves drifting aimlessly in the oceans of the world, awaiting the next surge of emotional energy to try and gain some control of our vessel.

To grow any relationship, an investment of time is required and knowing God is no different!  When we spend time with God through word and prayer, we grow in familiarity which grows our intimacy, our love grows through knowledge of Him, our trust grows from knowing His character, and as our trust grows, we grow in vulnerability towards a life of surrender, the sum of which is how we walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).  Knowing God to be unchanging becomes an anchor for our faith when we come to know and believe the character of God as He has revealed Himself as good, faithful, holy, loving, kind, just, and has sought to redeem each one of us through the blood of His cross.

If you are seeking to know God or know Him better, then I have some great news for you!  God has called you to know Him by giving you and I the gift of faith, so let your desire to know God more intimately be a testimony that God is already engaging you!  Scripture tells us that no one seeks God on their own (Romans 3:11-12), we are hostile towards God in our nature, cannot please God and are unable to do so (Romans 8:6-8) unless we have faith (Hebrews 11:6).  In our natural state, we are spiritually blind to the truth of the Gospel (2 Corinthians 4:4).  In fact, we are not only blind, but we are dead (Ephesians 2:4-5), but God brought us to life by His love, and gave us the gift of salvation by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:6-9).  Then by His kindness, after bringing us to life, sealing us for eternity (Ephesians 1:13-14), leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4).  Your desire to seek God has grown from His call to you, which is incredibly comforting for those who may not feel especially close to God.  Whether we have grown up in the church or made a claim of faith later in life, we all go through periods of questioning.  This is why it is important to be aware of what fills your sails, because the wrong source can toss a person overboard when the waters of the world get rough.

In this awareness, we also need to know that it is God who has initiated, who calls, who sustains, who leads, who protects, and who has governance over our lives.  We begin as infants in the faith, but as we grow up in our faith, we will begin to recognize God’s hand in all of our lives, provided that we have wandered into rebellion of any sort.  From the human perspective, the entirety of the faith process is a waking up to God, and by faith growing in clarity, knowledge and intimacy over time.  In his book, ‘Love Alone is Credible’ Swiss Theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar gives us a metaphor to this awakening which I will summarize.  Imagine a new born baby coming into the world and the process by which they awaken to their Mother, themselves and the world:

When a woman has a baby, she will spend many hours per day expressing her joy for her new child.  As she smiles upon her new child for many weeks, eventually the child smiles back.  Parents always look forward to that first smile from a new born child, who smiles because Mom smiled first. This is not unlike our experience with God who first loved us so that we could love.  Something intimate is formed in the new-born baby by the Mother’s smile, and an association is formed in feelings of joy, happiness, security, and comfort.  The young child is developing a dependence on Mom, and the ongoing nurturing of Mom strengthen the relationship to the point that the baby may be upset when Mom is not around, or even when being held by Dad.  The bond is undeniable, and that is the bond that we have with God when we are born-again and become children of God (John 1:12) known as our Union with Christ.  Eventually, the child will learn to crawl, walk, talk, and though many things will identify them, the child has a preeminent identity in Christ (Romans 8:15-16).  As the child moves towards adulthood, many identities will be embraced or thru st upon the child, but their is a preeminence to our original identity as a child of Mom.  The spiritual dynamic of our Identity as a child of God should always be preeminent in all that we do.  So, I am not a dentist, rather I am a child of God who practices dentistry, I am not a brother, but rather a child of God with siblings, I am not a college student, I am a child of God who is in college, I am not a business owner, but rather a child of God who owns a business, and so on.  We are part of the eternal family of God, that is who we are because He first loved us, and as He smiled upon you and me, we learned to smile back.

The analogy of the new born baby is powerful because many of us, myself included, came to receive our faith in God later in life, after our hearts and minds had already been shaped and influenced by the world.  We are born-again, a new creation, and the old things have passed away.  These are all spiritual realities that we receive by faith and we need to live into them in our daily lives.  We do this by practice, in order that the seed of the gospel takes root and it grows in the soil of our hearts, a process that deepens as we practice our faith.  There are people who will hear the gospel and give intellectual consent to it, but it never is any benefit to them because the knowledge was not united with faith (Hebrews 4:2).  This now becomes our goal, to grow our faith in God, in the finished work of Christ, and in the guiding voice of the Holy Spirit, in order that we grow up to be strong trees with deep roots, producing fruit in the right season (See Psalm 1).  So the obvious question becomes “what do we practice?”  We practice our faith through the daily exercise of spiritual disciplines such as reading our Bibles, praying, meditating on the Word of God, quiet prayer to listen, and the sacraments.  I advocate journaling though I do not consider it a spiritual discipline, though many do.  I just think it is a good idea to write down what God is teaching you, and I also advocate keeping a ‘Book of Remembrance‘ to record and look back on how much God has blessed you.  The sum of these practices do work in us in the formation of Christ (Romans 8:29) on our journey to become holy (Hebrews 12:14).

In regards to reading, we need to be reading our Bibles daily, ideally several times a day.  American Evangelist, Billy Graham said that he read 5 Psalms a day, all 150 Psalms every month, so that amounted to reading the Book of Psalms 12 times a year.  As his job was to read the Bible and talk about it, he could afford the time, but many of us do not have that luxury.  However, it is important for every believer to read at least One Psalm a Day.  The Psalms are rich with theology and reveals God to us in profound way.  To know God, to know the character of God and the attributes of God, I would recommend getting a Psalm a day into your reading, prayer and meditation habits.  The Psalms were originally written as song, not only for the purpose of worship, but also as a tool for memorization in ancient Israel, in order that the Israelite would know God.

In Psalm 139, we learn about the sovereignty of God, His Omniscience (139:1-6), Omnipresence (139:7-12), and His Omnipotence (139:13-18).  Lastly, we also see our response in awe of God (139:19-24).  That is to say that God has all knowledge and God is everywhere simultaneously, and by these two attributes of God, working with all of His other attributes, God is sovereign over all of creation.  We will unpack Psalms 139 next.

 

Prayer: Eternal God, heavenly Father, you have graciously accepted us as living members of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ, and you have fed us with spiritual food in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood.  Send us now into the world in peace and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart, through Christ our Lord. Amen!