Does God Want Us to Know Him?

What does it mean to know God?

It’s complex. Because God is complex.

All we can really know about God is what he chooses to reveal. It’s not as if we can sneak up on God and say, “Caught you!” He sees us peeking around the corner first.

But we don’t have to sneak.

God reveals himself to us because he created us to know him. He won’t leave us empty-headed about him.

And from what I’ve seen him reveal so far? He’s all good. He wants to be seen.

He wants to be known. 

Knowing God Is Having Life

Still, what does it mean to “know God”?

Knowing God is eternal life, per J. I. Packer in Chapter 3 of his classic book, Knowing God.

Jesus said this to God:

“And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

But what exactly does that mean?

1. Knowing God is personal.

Just like knowing a person is, well, personal, knowing God is personal. It is you relating to God, and God relating to you.

It’s not just knowing about God. That is theology. That’s like me knowing the President. I can study him and know about him. But I don’t have a relationship with the President.

Knowing God goes beyond the study of theology. It’s knowing the being, and being known by him.

It’s a two-way connection, not just one-way. 

“You can have all the right notions in your head without ever tasting in your heart the realities to which they refer; and a simple Bible-reader and sermon-hearer who is full of the Holy Ghost will develop a far deeper acquaintance with his God and Savior than more learned men who are content with being theologically correct.”
– J. I. Packer

2. Knowing God requires involvement.

Knowing God is more than holding facts in our head. Yes, knowing him requires our mind, but it goes beyond that, and also includes our will and our emotions.

Packer says, “To get to know another person, you have to commit yourself to his company and interests, and be ready to identify yourself with his concerns.”

A meal may look good, but until we sit down and eat it, we’ll never really know.

The same with God. Until we actually do life with God, it’s all theory. 

Also, contrary to what some teach, knowing God is emotional. To know God is to be emotionally involved with the things he’s emotionally involved with. If we attempt to think his thoughts and to act in his ways, we should also feel what he feels. (Even though we’re terribly limited in each of these.)

“. . . we must not lose sight of the fact that knowing God is an emotional relationship, as well as an intellectual and volitional one, and could not indeed be a deep relation between persons were it not so.”
– J. I. Packer

3. Knowing God is a matter of grace.

It’s only a gift of grace that we can know God at all. Grace starts first with God, not us. He initiates everything, including knowledge.

Because God knows us first, better than we know ourselves and long before we know him, he knows what we need. And he knows what we need to know. And gives it to us.

What we need to know—and see—is that God loves us. We are seen. We are understood. We are treasured.

“We do not make friends with God; God makes friends with us, bringing us to know Him by making His love known to us.”
– J. I. Packer

While it’s important for us to know God, of first importance is that God knows us.

Being known by God makes it possible for us to know God.

Knowing God is grace.

Knowing God is life.

[These thoughts are an updated post from Chapter 3 of Knowing God, “Knowing and Being Known.” I benefited from it. But I disagree with Packer in Chapter 4, “The Only True God,” for his refusal of any imagery to remind us of God.]

How do you know when you really know someone? What does it mean to you to know God versus knowing about God? Please share in the comments.

• Previous chapters of Knowing God: 
  Chapters 1 and 2, “The Study of God” and “The People Who Know Their God”
  “Why Do You Want to Know God?”
• Next chapters of Knowing God: 
  Chapters 5 and 6, “God Incarnate” and“He Shall Testify”
  “You Know God and Jesus. But What About the Holy Spirit?”

This week finishes our Knowing God book discussion with the group at Tim Challies. Overall, I highly recommend this classic (originally published in 1973) because author J. I. Packer reaches his aim in encouraging readers to not only know more about God, but also to know God.

“So many in our day seem to have been distracted from what was, is, and always will be the true priority for every human being—that is, learning to know God in Christ. . . .

If this book moves any of its readers to identify more closely with the psalmist at this point [Psalm 27:8], it will not have been written in vain.”

However, before we enjoy the good parts of the final chapter 22, “The Adequacy of God,” I have a small conflict with Packer (again) in the next to last chapter 21, “These Inward Trials.” It’s a recurrence of the issue I had with Packer earlier, “Does God toy with us in his wisdom?” from chapters 9 and 10.

First, our points of agreement. 

1. Packer says it’s worse to promise someone they’ll have no problems once they become a Christian than to warn them they’ll have too many. Agreed. We don’t want to overly glamorize the Christian life, denying that physical, emotional, and spiritual struggles continue as long as we’re here in the flesh.

“Such suggestions [the impression that normal Christian living is a perfect bed of roses, a state of affairs in which everything in the garden is lovely all the time, and problems no longer exist] are mischievous because they are false.”

2. Second, we agree that it’s wrong to pile on guilt when new believers do have troubles even after being saved. It’s cruel to equate their struggles with “‘defeat’, as a a relapse caused by failure to maintain ‘consecration’ and ‘faith.’”

But where I disagree with Packer is the source of our struggles.

While yes, God does discipline those he loves (Hebrews 12:6), just as all responsible parents discipline their children to help them grow up, Packer still doesn’t convince me that God intentionally “fills our lives with troubles and perplexities of one sort and another [to] ensure that we shall learn to hold Him fast.”

Jesus promised us each day has enough trouble of its own (Matthew 6:34), making no reference that God will need to intentionally pile it on even heavier just to make us crumble quicker.

Jesus also said that if we, as human parents, won’t give our children a snake if they ask for a fish (Luke 11:11-13), how much less will God do so.

So while I agree with Packer that God wants us to “learn thankfully to lean on Him,” I disagree that God wants us to “feel that our way through life is rough and perplexing” just so we’ll see him as our strong rock.

I know he’s my refuge without having to believe he’s the one chasing me into it.

To close, here are some beautiful truths from Packer from the final chapter that we can all agree with.

“In saving us, God went to the limit. What more could He have given for us? We cannot know what Calvary cost the Father, any more than we can know what Jesus felt as He tasted the penalty due to our sins.”

* ~ * ~ *

“Have you been holding back from a risky, costly course to which you know in your heart God has called you? Hold back no longer. Your God is faithful to you, and adequate for you. You will never need more than He can supply, and what He supplies, both materially and spiritually, will always be enough for the present.”

* ~ * ~ *

“The idea of Christ condemning us is absurd. He died to save us from condemnation, by bearing the penalty of our sins as our substitute.”

* ~ * ~ *

“Your faith will not fail while God sustains it; you are not strong enough to fall away while God is resolved to hold you.”

* * *

Your thoughts?

All chapters:

• Why do you want to know God? (chapters 1-2)
• What does it mean to know God? (chapters 3-4)
• You know God & Jesus. But the Holy Spirit? (chapters 5-6)
• Is reading the Bible worth it? (chapters 7-8)
• Does God toy with us in his wisdom? (chapters 9-10)
• Why doesn’t God give up on us? (chapters 11-12)
• When we don’t believe in grace (chapters 13-14)
• Is God mad at you? (chapters 15-16)
• Praise God for his jealousy? (chapters 17-18)
• What does God wants from us? (chapters 19-20)
• True priority of our day – To know God (chapters 21-20)

We often ask ourselves:

• What does God want me to do?
• Which way is best?
• Which choice should I make?

Discerning God’s will is not always easy.

First, we have to believe God does have plans for us. Then, we have to believe we can find out what they are.

But as J. I. Packer points out in Knowing God, even when we believe the former, that God does want to guide us, we often have trouble believing the latter, that we’re capable of receiving the message.

Why? Packer gives 6 reasons why we may miss hearing from God. I’m flipping them onto their positive side for . . .

 6 ways we can hear from God:

1. Think it through
   “God made us thinking beings, and He guides our minds as in His presence we think things out.”
2. Think ahead
   “Weigh the long-term consequences of alternative courses of action. ‘Think ahead’ is part of the divine rule of life no less than of the human rule of the road.”
3. Listen to advice
   “There are always people who know the Bible, human nature, and our own gifts and limitations, better than we do, and even if we cannot finally accept their advice, nothing but good will come to us from carefully weighing what they say.”
4. Question yourself
   “We need to ask ourselves why we ‘feel’ a particular course to be right, and make ourselves give reasons. . . . We also need to keep praying, ‘Search me, O God, and know my heart.”
5. Use caution with others
   “Outstanding men are not, indeed, necessarily wrong, but they are not necessarily right, either! They, and their views, must be respected, but may not be idolised.”
6. Be willing to wait
   “God is not in such a hurry as we are, and it is not His way to give more light on the future than we need for action in the present, or to guide us more than one step at a time. When in doubt, do nothing, but continue to wait on God. When action is needed, light will come.”

But even if we do these things, will we always know the exact decisions to make? Of course not.

I agree with Elisabeth Ellliot,

“If you are thinking that you know the will of God for your life and you are anxious to do that, you are probably in for a very rude awakening because nobody knows the will of God for his entire life.”

But along with Packer, I do believe that even though we won’t hear every little answer (go right, turn left), God does bring us out of darkness into light despite ourselves.

And even when we get off track (which we all do), we can trust that God will not only get us back on course, but that he will take our mess-ups and weave them into a greater plan.

So ultimately, what does God want from us?

Not to frantically think we have to find the correct answer to everything, or to have total assurance for every decision we make.

But to believe that he has it all under control.

Trust him for whatever comes.

That’s what he wants. Trust him.

“Whatever happens, whatever mistakes we may make, we shall come safe home.

Slipping and strayings there will be, no doubt, but the everlasting arms are beneath us; we shall be caught, rescued, restored. This is God’s promise; this is how good He is.”

* * *

Do you have trouble making decisions? What helps you finally decide? Please share in the comments.

This is Week 10 of 11 of Knowing God together with Tim Challies.

Previous chapters:

• Why do you want to know God? (chapters 1-2)
• What does it mean to know God? (chapters 3-4)
• You know God & Jesus. But the Holy Spirit? (chapters 5-6)
• Is reading the Bible worth it? (chapters 7-8)
• Does God toy with us in his wisdom? (chapters 9-10)
• Why doesn’t God give up on us? (chapters 11-12)
• When we don’t believe in grace (chapters 13-14)
• Is God mad at you? (chapters 15-16)
• Praise God for his jealousy? (chapters 17-18)

Next (and LAST) week:

• Chapter 21 and 22, “These Inward Trials” and “The Adequacy of God”

“He is jealous for me
Loves like a hurricane, and I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy”

– “How He Loves” by David Crowder Band

Have you been accused of jealousy? Or accused someone else of it?

Is jealousy a good or bad trait?

In humans, I think of it negatively. But we’re to praise it in God?

The Bible is full with statements about God’s jealousy (including Numbers 25:11, Joshua 24:19, Zephaniah 1:18, Psalm 78:58). J. I. Packer hits it hard in chapter 17, “The Jealous God,” of Knowing God.

“How can jealousy be a virtue in God when it is a vice in men? God’s perfections are matter for praise; but how can we praise God for being jealous?”

Here’s how we praise God for his jealousy, according to Packer.

1. Statements about God’s jealousy are anthropomorphisms.

It’s language in terms of men, for our own understanding. But these anthropomorphisms aren’t limited by men.

“The human qualities which show the corrupting effect of sin have no counterpart in God. . . . God’s jealousy is not a compound of frustration, envy, and spite, as human jealousy so often is, but appears instead as a (literally) praiseworthy zeal to preserve something supremely precious.”

2.  There are two kinds of jealousy among men, but only one is bad.

We’re familiar with the bad kind, hating someone for having something we want.

But Packer suggests there is a good jealousy—“zeal to protect a love-relationship, or to avenge it when broken.” He says that the jealousy we feel in a husband-wife relationship brings a “proper zeal to keep it intact.”

He says this is the kind of jealousy that God has for his people, a covenant love. It carries with it “a demand for unqualified love and loyalty.”

Spiritual adultery on our part provokes jealousy on God’s part.

Packer concludes that this jealousy drives us to be more zealous for God.

• We respond to God’s love for us by loving him in return.
• His concern for us leads to our concern for him.
• His jealousy for us provokes us to keep him as our one thing, too.

* * *

What do you think about God being jealous? Please share in the comments.

This is Week 9 of reading Knowing God together with Tim Challies.

Previous chapters:

• Why do you want to know God? (chapters 1-2)
• What does it mean to know God? (chapters 3-4)
• You know God & Jesus. But the Holy Spirit? (chapters 5-6)
• Is reading the Bible worth it? (chapters 7-8)
• Does God toy with us in his wisdom? (chapters 9-10)
• Why doesn’t God give up on us? (chapters 11-12)
• When we don’t believe in grace (chapters 13-14)
• Is God mad at you? (chapters 15-16)

Next week:

• Chapter 19 and 20, “Sons of God” and “Thou Our Guide”

I’m uncomfortable around angry people. And more so if they’re mad at me.

I don’t really like feeling angry myself. While it is empowering, it leaves a bad aftertaste.

So thinking about God being angry makes me uncomfortable, too.

I was most uncomfortable this week with our reading assignment in J. I. Packer’s Knowing God. It’s chapter 15, “The Wrath of God.” (Can we substitute a more modern word for “wrath”? I’m going to use “anger” here.)

Packer says he knows we play it down. We don’t like talking about God’s anger for these reasons:

1. We think anger isn’t God-like.

Yes, I admit it. I don’t want to equate God’s anger with how I see man’s anger: bad tempers; out of control behavior; violent mood swings. I agree with how James speaks of anger: “The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:20). (For more on this, check out Brant Hansen’s book, Unoffendable.)

But Packer reminds us there is a difference between God’s anger and our anger. Ours is often self-indulgent, whereas God’s is always a reaction to evil.

2. We wonder if God’s anger is cruel.

We know God is good. But don’t his judgments sometimes come across as too harsh?

Packer says no. He says God is always fair. Agreed.

(Except when God isn’t fair. It doesn’t seem fair to me that I get forgiveness for every sin I’ve ever committed or will commit just because Jesus paid the price instead. Grace goes beyond fair.)

But my bigger disagreement with Packer is here. Packer says that God’s anger isn’t cruel because we choose it for ourselves.

Well, I wouldn’t put it quite that way. If it were my choice, I’d always choose less pain and more pleasure as my consequence. Let’s all eat Krispy Kreme donuts and lose weight, not gain it.

So while I understand what Packer is alluding to (such as, if we choose to play with fire, we’ll get burned as a consequence), I think he’s underestimating our foolishness.

Our decision-making skills aren’t as refined as they need to be. We don’t always think the consequence will apply to me, or at least not until a very long time from now. (No need to start saving for retirement now, right? It’s so far down the road.)

So with all respect to Mr. Packer, I can’t agree with his statement:

“The essence of God’s action in wrath is to give men what they choose, in all its implications: nothing more, and equally nothing less.”

But where we do agree is here:

“Between us sinners and the thunder-clouds of divine wrath stands the cross of the Lord Jesus. If we are Christ’s through faith, then we are justified through His cross, and the wrath will never touch us, neither here nor hereafter.”

So is God mad at us? All I know for sure is this: Not if we’re his.

However God’s anger works or doesn’t work, it’s no longer directed at me. He sees me differently now; he sees me through the eyes of Jesus. His anger has turned away. Now he comforts me instead. (Thanks, memory verse, Isaiah 12:1).

I’m not uncomfortable with that at all.

* * *

What do you think? (I won’t get angry if you disagree with me—I know I still have much to learn.)

We’re on Week 8 of reading Knowing God together with Tim Challies.

Previous chapters:

• Why do you want to know God? (chapters 1-2)
• What does it mean to know God? (chapters 3-4)
• You know God & Jesus. But the Holy Spirit? (chapters 5-6)
• Is reading the Bible worth it? (chapters 7-8)
• Does God toy with us in his wisdom? (chapters 9-10)
• Why doesn’t God give up on us? (chapters 11-12)
• When we don’t believe in grace (chapters 13-14)

Next week:

• Chapter 17 and 18, “The Jealous God” and “The Heart of the Gospel”

I went to church for years and never understood it. Never heard much about it. And surely never believed much in it.

Grace. 

I finally discovered it, and wow! Now I can’t hear enough about grace and the freedom it brings me.

But why are there many in our churches who still don’t believe in grace?

“The thought means nothing to them; it does not touch their experience at all. Talk to them about the church’s heating, or last year’s accounts, and they are with you at once; but speak to them about the realities to which the word ‘grace’ points, and their attitude is one of deferential blankness. . . .

They do not accuse you of talking nonsense, but . . . the longer they have lived without it the surer they are that at their stage of life they do not really need it.”
– J. I. Packer

In chapter 13, “The Grace of God,” in Knowing God, J. I. Packer suggests these four reasons why many can’t grasp grace.

4 reasons we don’t appreciate grace:

1. We think we’re good enough without it.

Instead of us being made in the image of God, we tend to create God in the image of us. And we think highly of ourselves. We’re pretty good people, yes?

“Modern man, conscious of his tremendous scientific achievements in recent years, naturally inclines to a high opinion of himself. He views material wealth as in any case more important than moral character.”

2. We see no need for it.

We’d rather put off any thoughts of punishment. Ignore evil as much as possible. So we assume God feels like that, too. With no worldview of punishment, who needs grace to counter it?

3. We believe we can talk our way out of trouble.

Who can say no to us? Aren’t we capable of repairing our own relationships—even with God? We have the power within ourselves, right?

“. . . by putting God in a position where He cannot say ‘no’ any more. Ancient pagans thought to do this by multiplying gifts and sacrifices; modern pagans seek to do it by churchmanship and morality.”

4. We think God is obligated to love us anyway.

To quote a French freethinker, “God will forgive—that’s his job.” We feel he is bound to show us pity because of who he is.

But, but, but . . .

As Packer points out, we aren’t as good as we think we are.

We are guilty, unclean. So we do need grace to cover our otherwise deserved punishment. God is the one with the power, not us, to mend our broken relationship with him. We are dependent upon him for mercy—he doesn’t owe it to us—but by his own choice and goodness, he gives it to us.

“Justification is the truly dramatic transition from the status of a condemned criminal awaiting a terrible sentence to that of an heir awaiting a fabulous inheritance.”

Thank God for his grace.
Believe it.
Receive it.

Be changed by it.

“For love awakens love in return.”

* * *

Are you early or late to grace? I’m late, but better late than never! Please share in the comments.

Previous chapters:

• Why do you want to know God? (chapters 1-2)
• What does it mean to know God? (chapters 3-4)
• You know God & Jesus. But the Holy Spirit? (chapters 5-6)
• Is reading the Bible worth it? (chapters 7-8)
• Does God toy with us in his wisdom? (chapters 9-10)
• Why doesn’t God give up on us? (chapters 11-12)

Next week:

• Chapter 15 and 16, “The Wrath of God” and “Goodness and Severity”

She is the tiniest little thing. Casey’s new baby daughter was tucked in close to her mama’s chest as we went over our songs for worship Sunday morning. Her tiny little eyes quickly closed into a deep sleep as the band played and the choir sang.

She is easy to love. It’s not a hard decision to choose to love her.

But us? We grown-ups aren’t always as easy to love. 

So why does God keep up the hard work of loving us anyway?

In chapter 12 “The Love of God” in J. I. Packer’s Knowing God, Packer explains that “God is love” is as deep into the mystery of God’s nature as man can go.

“The love which God shows to men, and which Christians know and rejoice in, is a revelation of His own inner being. . . .

Contemplating His love, we are to look into His heart. We shall stand on holy ground; we need the grace of reverence, that we may tread it without sin.”

God’s love is unfolded through Packer in this succession:

1. God’s love is an exercise of his goodness.
God practices his goodness through loving us. Packer calls it “His cosmic generosity.” God’s goodness prompts him to deal with us better than we deserve.

2. God is good to love sinners.
We recognize this as grace and mercy, ideas that are totally foreign to the natural give-and-take of relationships.

“There was nothing whatever in the objects of His love to call it forth; nothing in man could attract or prompt it. Love among men is awakened by something in the beloved, but the love of God is free, spontaneous, unvoiced, uncaused. God loves men because He has chosen to love them.”

3. God is good to love this sinner.
His love isn’t just in general; it’s specific. To me. To you.

4. God’s love is in our best interest.
I agree. I believe God does what is best for our good and his glory.

[But I disagree with Packer here: he states that “those who truly love are only happy when those whom they love are truly happy also. So it is with God in His love for man.” God is only happy when I’m happy? Well, maybe. But I think God maintains his peace and contentment within himself regardless of outside forces, including my happiness or lack of it. I don’t see his happiness as conditional upon mine.]

5. God’s love to sinners is expressed through his gift of Jesus to us.
If, as Packer states, “the measure of love is how much it gives,” then God really loves us. [I’m not sure that’s always the truest measure, however, but I don’t want to nitpick.] We all know John 3:16, that God loved us so much that he gave his Son, part of himself. That is the ultimate gift.

6. God’s love is fulfilled through a covenant relationship.
I like how Packer phrases this: “two parties are permanently pledged to each other.”

The greatness of God’s love as seen through these six characteristics shows his love isn’t contingent on how lovable we are, but on how great he is. 

God doesn’t love us just because of who we are, but because of who he is. 

It’s easy for me to look at Casey’s sweet baby girl and love her when she’s asleep and cuddly and so adorable. But Casey loves her in a bigger way: even when she’s spitting up and crying and refusing to sleep—because of who Casey is. She’s the mother. She is love.

I’m glad it’s that same way—yet a million times more!—with God’s love for us. He loves us regardless of how high or low our adorable factor is, even when we mess up and act ugly, because he’s still our daddy.

He doesn’t just love. He is love.

* * *

Is it difficult for you to understand the love of God? What’s the closest you’ve come? Please share.

We’re reading through Knowing God via Challies. Grab a copy and read along.

Previous chapters:

• Why do you want to know God? (chapters 1-2)
• What does it mean to know God? (chapters 3-4)
• You know God & Jesus. But the Holy Spirit? (chapters 5-6)
• Is reading the Bible worth it? (chapters 7-8)
• Does God toy with us in his wisdom? (chapters 9-10)

Next chapters:

• Chapter 13, “The Grace of God”
• Chapter 14, “God the Judge”

In elementary school, my friends and I invented our own alphabet code. We meticulously took each letter of the alphabet and connected it to a new symbol.

We would then write notes to each other using that code, despite the hours it must have taken us to decode it on both ends.

Why?

It was fun to have a secret language, something no one else could understand even if they saw it.

Does God toy with us that way?

I don’t think so. In reading J. I. Packer’s chapters 9 and 10 this week on God’s wisdom, I heard hints (perhaps incorrectly?) that God intentionally keeps us in the dark about things—uses his own secret code without disclosing the key—so that we’ll stay humble about our own limitations and will lean more dependently on his strengths.

“The God who rules [the world we live in] hides Himself. Rarely does this world look as if a beneficent Providence were running it. Rarely does it appear that there is a rational power behind it at all. Often and often what is worthless survives, while what is valuable perishes.”

~ * ~

“For the truth is that God in His wisdom, to make and keep us humble and to teach us to walk by faith, has hidden from us almost everything that we should like to know about the providential purposes which He is working out in the churches and in our own lives.”

I disagree. While I do agree that we should be humble about ourselves and that we should be dependent upon God, I don’t think God has to hide himself to make us seek him for his wisdom.

It’s just reality. We are less. He is more. The longer we live, the more we experience the gap between the limitations of man and the power of God. We see there’s more we don’t know than we do know. We discover that God redeems the circumstances and relationships in our lives to show us that he does indeed know more than we do, if we’ll pay attention to him.

He doesn’t have to intentionally send us troubles to do it. Each day brings enough troubles of its own. We wouldn’t do that to our own children—create suffering so they’d have to call on us for help. Since God loves us much more than we’re capable of loving our kids, how much less likely is he than we are, to manufacture additional trouble for us in order to gain our trust. I just don’t think he operates that way.

Am I misreading Packer? It’s likely. I’ll stay open to changing my mind.

But I still agree with Packer on more than I disagree with. Such as,

• Wisdom is both moral and intellectual
• Wisdom is more than mere cleverness or cunning
• Wisdom is the power to see and the inclination to choose the highest goal
• Wisdom is the practical side of moral goodness
• Wisdom is at its fullest in God

I also appreciate Packer’s list of benefits we receive when we recognize God’s wisdom:

• We are more humble
• We are more joyful
• We are more godly
• We are more quick to do his will
• We are more resolute to do his will
• We are less bewildered by life

Perhaps my confusion with this chapter is simply more proof I lack wisdom. We are not wise enough to understand God’s ways. We’re incapable of handling the whole plan up front.

But God doesn’t have to intentionally create a secret alphabet code to keep us away from insider information. We wouldn’t grasp it anyway.

He just is too wise, too big, too powerful for us to understand.

And that’s okay. It’s enough to know that God sees all, and that we can see God.

We’re just to follow God today. Stay focused on the road in front of us. Be present with him now.

That sounds like wise living to me.

“The kind of wisdom that God waits to give to those who ask Him, is a wisdom that will bind us to Himself, a wisdom that will find expression in a spirit of faith and a life of faithfulness.”

* * *

Your thoughts?

We’re reading through Knowing God via Challies. Grab a copy and read along.

Previous chapters:

• Why do you want to know God? (chapters 1-2)
• What does it mean to know God? (chapters 3-4)
• You know God & Jesus. But the Holy Spirit? (chapters 5-6)
• Is reading the Bible worth it? (chapters 7-8)

Next chapters:

• Chapter 11, “Thy Word is Truth”
• Chapter 12, “The Love of God”

Reading the Bible can be a lot of trouble.

• We don’t understand its original language.
• We’re far removed from the lands and peoples it includes.
• It’s confusing.
• It wasn’t even written directly to us.

And just because it says it’s true, that doesn’t make it true.

“It all seems very far away. It all belongs to that world, not to this world. We feel that we are, so to speak, on the outside of the Bible world, looking in.” – J. I. Packer

Packer sets up some of these arguments in chapter 7, “God Unchanging,” in Knowing God. Surely we’ve considered a few of these ourselves.

So why is reading the Bible worth the work?

It’s not because we’ll discover our own world there. It’s because we’ll find the same God there. The God spoken about in the stories of the Bible is the same God we can know today in our own time, in our own lives.

“The link is God Himself. For the God with whom they had to do is the same God with whom we have to do.”

Our languages change. Our cultures change. Even people change.

But God stays the same.

Packer quotes A. W. Pink as saying,

“[God] cannot change for the better for He is already perfect; and being perfect, He cannot change for the worse.”

What was true about God in Bible times is just as true of God today. Packer gives this list . . .

• God is everlasting.
• His character is always merciful and gracious.
• His truths stand forever.
• His purposes remain the same.
• His Son Jesus is also the same yesterday, today, and forever.

The details of our stories will differ, the characters move in and out, but the Creator who guides us through the events never changes.

God is always love, always mighty to save. Read it in the Bible. But live it now.

* * *

Do you ever find the Bible hard to understand? What makes it worthwhile reading to you? Please share in the comments.

We’re reading through Knowing God via Challies. Grab a copy and read along.

Previous weeks:

• Why do you want to know God? (chapters 1-2)
• What does it mean to know God? (chapters 3-4)
• You know God & Jesus. But the Holy Spirit? (chapters 5-6)

]]> https://lisanotes.com/is-reading-the-bible-worth-it/feed/ 26 https://lisanotes.com/what-about-the-holy-spirit/ https://lisanotes.com/what-about-the-holy-spirit/#comments Thu, 03 Sep 2015 10:00:23 +0000 https://www.lisanotes.com/?p=7236 The song list was made: All to Him; God Is Able; When You Walk into the Room. We’d practiced with the band on Thursday night. We’d shown up early to… ]]>

The song list was made: All to Him; God Is Able; When You Walk into the Room.
We’d practiced with the band on Thursday night.
We’d shown up early to practice again at 8 a.m. Sunday morning.

But here’s one thing (of many) I’ve learned about my (relatively) new church: Nothing man-made is set in stone.

If the Spirit wants to move, let him.

As the believers gathered last Sunday morning, the worship grew stronger. The songs were reminding us that God was in the room, in us. You could feel it the atmosphere.

So our worship leader had us linger on a chorus. Then led us into a totally different song that fit perfectly with the spirit of our praise and the Spirit of God’s presence.

We know God. We know Jesus.

But what do we know about the Holy Spirit?

Do we position ourselves to be nudged by his movement too?

In this week’s chapters of Knowing God (“God Incarnate” and “He Shall Testify”), author J. I. Packer says,

“The person and work of Christ have been, and remain, subjects of constant debate within the Church; yet the person and work of the Holy Spirit are consistently ignored. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is the Cinderella of Christian doctrines. Very few seem to be interested in it.”

Perhaps that’s changed a little since Knowing God was originally published (1973). But the point remains relevant. Because the Holy Spirit has a more mysterious reputation, we often leave him out of things.

Packer pushes us to confrontation:

“But is the work of the Holy Spirit really important?”

By our thoughts and actions, our answer may be, “No, not very important.”

Here’s how Packer responds,

“Important! Why, were it not for the work of the Holy Spirit there would be no gospel, no faith, no Church, no Christianity in the world at all.“

He goes on to explain that after Christ left the disciples, it was the Spirit who led them onto into all the world, reminding them of the things Christ had taught, emboldening them to preach the good news, empowering them to do miracles.

It is the Spirit even now who illuminates our way, convicts us of our wrongs, and demonstrates the power of God in and around us.

Whether it’s to change our attitude in a relationship, or to guide us into a new ministry, or even to sing an unplanned song, may we continue to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
Revelation 2:29

* * *

How aware are you of the Holy Spirit compared to God the Father and Jesus the Son? Please share in the comments.

Previous weeks:

• Chapters 1-2, Why do you want to know God?
• Chapters 3-4, What does it mean to know God?