THOSE WHO KNOW THEIR GOD
(8-minute read)
What do people who know their God look like. Will we be able to recognize who they are among us? Consider a father’s unwavering hope for his child to land a professional ballet contract while supporting her through a process that seems to have no end in sight. Yet, he continues to provide her with the leadership that she needs to keep her aspirations alive. What about a young widower facing the reality that this new year will not be the same as any other as he battles the waves of grief and the new norm that arbitrarily show up in his life.
Those who know their God do not live problem-free lives. But they are ordinary people like you and me who acknowledge their need for God. They enjoy a relationship with God where there is honesty and humility about their human limitations and personal aspirations balancing precariously on their trust in His unchanging love. They are people who know that their knowledge of God grows only through challenges and that itself is the greatest reward compared to the outcomes they are hoping for.
They are also people who allow God to operate in every area of their lives, while remaining responsive to the Holy Spirit without restraint. They may be perplexed by the unpredictable course that life takes them on but their relationship with God transcends getting what they want in the here and now. They live with an eternity that God has placed in their hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
So why do believers need to be reminded again and again that we need to put in conscientious effort to know God our entire lives?
Matthew 23:12-14 makes it clear, “And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.”
Whether we are ready for it or not, the modern world is evolving at an unprecedented pace within the span of a single lifetime! The enemy loves nothing more than trapping self-reliant Christians to cherry-pick Scriptures and isolating themselves from the local church to create their own narratives of faith (like how the serpent seduced Eve by appealing to her intelligence). Relentlessly, the enemy of our soul and the robber of our destiny will distract Christians with the here and now of life so we will have no headspace to be responsive to the Holy Spirit and to people God cares about. We let ourselves be complicit playing into the Enemy’s hands when we let our own priorities replace God’s perspective of the realities and relationships in our lives.
Daniel 11:32 has a prophetic word (that means, a word for something that has not happened yet) for God’s people during a time of disturbing political turmoil and a long uncertain future (not unlike today’s geopolitical climate). “He (the ruler, the elite power bloc) will flatter and win over those who have violated the covenant. But the people who know their God will be strong and will resist him.” (paraphrased).
In dismal times, this prophetic word delivered a glimmer of hope for God’s people: they were to carry a posture of resoluteness to resist every attempt of the Enemy to bring them down. The heart of the matter is that we must build ourselves up before crises enter our lives to take us down and defeat us. Like the father and the widower mentioned earlier, we may be perplexed by adversities but we will not doubt God’s goodness.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO KNOW GOD?
The intrinsic rewards for those who know their God is both personal and permanent. It is personal because we cannot know God vicariously through others - by name-dropping, or riding on someone’s coat tail. Knowing God is also not about storing mental archives of Bible verses, other peoples’ testimonies, or stories we have seen or read on social media.
The Hebrew word for ‘know’ is ‘yada’. It is a knowledge that is intimate and relational, and that goes beyond intellectual knowledge. It involves an on-going experience of living in the presence of God – knowing He wants to be in our celebrations, our fears, our despair and He is our “very-present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1). God is not pleased with only getting our occasional updates on life. It is imperative that we demonstrate putting in consistent effort and considerable investment in knowing Him through all seasons of our lives.
To know God is to KNOW HIS HEART
Inside God’s heart is not only love, joy, hope and desires, but also aches, pains, grief and anger. To ignore the Holy Spirit’s prompting of discontent, injustice and hurt by brushing them aside and calling them ‘negative emotions’, we downplay what the Holy Spirit wants to show us and His call to action. This is the greatest tragedy of deception among believers: to think that God’s heart has only feel-good emotions.
The truest heart of God is the core and essence of who He is; revealing His will and purposes.
Psalm 103:8-10 describes God as someone who is not blind to our sins, nor is He emotionally dull. He has a richer range of emotions and a greater depth of knowledge than we can imagine. To love God and not invite or accept His corrections is just wrong because “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. (2 Timothy 3:16 NLT).
“Come close to God and He will come close to you.” (James 4:8a NLT). God's love is reciprocal yet it is not a call to isolate ourselves from forming meaningful relationships with others. Living without intimate friendships where we make ourselves known in honest conversations may give us the illusion of being in control and being blameless. But God is not deceived because healthy relationships that mimic His love are critical for Christian growth.
Believers who are friendless are living in a spiritual crisis. Pray and ask God to show you something about yourself that you are blind or immune to. Do not try to downplay what He will show you. To know God is to obey Him. When God shows you what is on His heart, it will be life transforming!
To know God is to KNOW JESUS
Jesus and the Holy Spirit are not third parties in our relationship with God. We cannot say we know God and not accept His Son, Jesus, and His Holy Spirit as full members of this relationship.
To the Pharisees, Jesus said, “If you knew Me, you would know My Father also.” (John 8:19). Those living in Jesus’ time and the first-generation believers might have struggled to understand the Triune God existing as the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, but we have no excuse to exclude any member of the Trinity in our relationship with God.
Jesus clearly told his disciples, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through Me. If you had really known Me, you would know who My Father is.” (John 14:6-7).
We don’t need a priest or any medium to reach God. We need only Jesus.
To know God is to BE STRONG & DO GREAT EXPLOITS
The enemy will subtly bring containment into our lives by leading us into a false sense of security and safety till we are immobilized into inertia. This happens when we begin to normalize fears that hold us back from overcoming personal shortcomings, relational failures, resistance to change and reluctance to obey God. We give the avoidance of risks and all bad behaviour polite names and convenient labels, and we stick around believers who are none the wiser.
Daniel offered us a fine example of someone who took risks to protect his relationship with God. At the beginning of his career in royal courts, he asked not to be served the usual royal menu, but instead be put on a vegetarian diet (Daniel 1:8). And then later on, at the peak of his career when it is written, “Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom”, he took another risk on his career, and even on his life, by ignoring a royal edict and continued to pray to God with full visibility to outsiders (Daniel 6:10). In the end, God not only saved Daniel from the lions in the den and secured his career, but also catapulted His own renown through King Darius who “wrote to all the nations and peoples of every language in all the earth” about God (Daniel 6:25-28). Talk about evangelistic broadcast!
Let’s not be secret Christians who shy away from opportunities to witness for God. Instead, step into situations where Jesus will become known to others. We are not boasting about our own success, but God’s victory in our vulnerability and ultimately, God’s success stories.
This is a summary and reflection based on a virtual BIR Session held on 25 January 2025.
