How to know Him…

Often when we think about knowing God, the first questions that pop into our mind concern classes and instruction. “Is there a book I might read? … A course I could take? … A retreat I should attend?” This is the way we’ve been trained to think in our time. But it is not the way one becomes a disciple.

The study of the Word produces much learning about God, and communion with God is experienced in the disciplined practice of contemplative prayer and meditation. There is a revelation of God to be found in the face of the poor and an experience of God obtained in corporate praise and worship. All these activities can—and do—teach us about God. But to know Him demands something other than study. To know Him we must be with Him. Jesus calls his disciples to be with Him. This means that we must be joined to Him—or, to use the language of a by-gone agricultural era—we must be yoked to Him.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. —Matt. 11:29–30 

To know God we must be yoked to Him. A yoke is a tool of repression; it inhibits the wearer from pursuing his own direction, and compels him to follow the master’s direction. A yoke trains its wearer to be obedient. And what was the yoke that Jesus wore? It was a yoke of suffering:

Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. —Heb. 5:8 

To know God—to genuinely and intimately know Him—we must yield under His yoke and learn obedience. We must surrender our own way and participate in His suffering. It is in a resistance to the things of this world that we come to know God more. We will suffer when we resist sin and temptation, yet we will learn how He satisfies our every need. We will suffer when we crucify our self-will and swallow our pride, but we will know Him in His tender provision and care. We come to know Him when we walk with Him in obedience together to the will of God. And obedience is born of suffering.

… that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. — Phil. 3:10–11 

We will not come to know Him by attending yet another service or by completing another course. Those events may help us know more about Him, but they cannot help us know Him. And this one thing alone is needful: that we know Him. In knowing Him we at last become His disciples. So let us come to Him and take His yoke upon our necks. Let us walk with Him on the difficult path of obedience. We may suffer, but we will know Him.

Knowing God…

“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way….”

We live in difficult times. Foundations are shaking; the rate of change outstrips our ability to forecast. It is a time of deception, a season of peril. There is a great spiritual hunger in the land among people who know no God and among people who name the name of God. In spite of the explosive growth of churches—small neighborhood assemblies and so-called “cathedral” churches—this hunger is not slaked. Have we turned away from God?

“For My people are foolish,
They have not known Me.
They are silly children,
And they have no understanding.
They are wise to do evil,
But to do good they have no knowledge.”

It is time for us to come to God. We must repent of following our own desires and plans and begin anew to seek the face of God. The decision must begin with us, since these days it may be that the blind are leading the blind…

“The priests did not say, “Where is the LORD?’
And those who handle the law did not know Me;
The rulers also transgressed against Me;
The prophets prophesied by Baal,
And walked after things that do not profit.”

The church has slipped into the miasma of the world. She has adopted the language of business and psychology; her ministers pursue careers and enterprise. Desiring numerical church growth, they employ the metaphors of marketing and marginalize the Word. Starving people are left to chew on the fodder of false spiritualities and errant teaching. God’s people are destroyed, and the church is rendered irrelevant and weak, with no message for the world.

Faith begins where God is known. Let us come and sit before Him. We do not see because we have not been looking; we do not hear because we have not listened. Let us wait on Him in patient, obedient silence. Let us begin again to read His Word to hear His voice. We must know Him to survive the times in which we live.

“Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the LORD; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole heart.” 

References, in order: Is. 53:6; Jer. 4:22; Jer. 2:8; Jer. 24:7