H2O college ministries

i have been pondering what Jesus meant when he said that eternal life is knowing the only true God and knowing Himself.  I always thought eternal life was heaven, but i guess that is only a place, but not the activity of that life.  well, to be honest, i never really dwelt what eternal life would be like, besides the fact that forever is a concept that my head can’t get around.  but eternal life is knowing God…hmmm…i sort of like that idea.  i suppose it would take forever to know God because God is infinitely unknowable and forever is yet inadequate to fully know God.  but we get to know more and more and more of God. 

what can be better than that?  what can be a higher goal to strive after?  what can be a better thing to think about?  nothing.  absolutely nothing.  knowing God, is the very best thing that we can do.

check this out, here are two passages that record God’s thoughts on this::  “This is what the Lord says, Let not the wise boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this:  that he understands and knows me…”  Jeremiah 9:23-24  Then again in Hosea 6:6, “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

Paul, an apostle, a mover of the Jesus movement early on, said that he considers everything garbage, crap, for the sake of knowing Jesus (Philippians 3).  David, a King of the nation of Israel with a reputation of being a man after God’s heart, wrote that He desired only one thing, to seek and to see God (psalm 27). 

There is no greater pursuit in life than to know God.  But what does it look like to know God.  Is it emotions and goose pimples?  Is it intellectual ascent?  Is it vision and dreams?  Is it to have a 6am quiet time religiously and journal every time?  Or have our disciplines distracted us from really knowing God and we really just know a lot of things about God (BIG difference).

Knowing God is a complex issue.  It isn’t anything like knowing a subject matter.  It isn’t anything like knowing your car or whatever.  when we get to know living objects, we have to know their past and present in order to help us understand what they will act like in the future.  not only that, another person is the gatekeeper to what we can know about them.  have you ever been around someone for years and felt like you don’t really know them?  with other people, i can have the want to know them, but they have to allow me to know them.  all the more with people of fame.  all the more with God.  but it is different with God.

why?  we don’t even want to know him.  it isn’t on our radar.  if we have a desire to know God, that is God’s initiative in our lives.  He always makes the first move.  But the beauty of this, is that he opens up his heart fully, as much as we can comprehend, to us.  God, the great God, the all-powerful God, the essence and source of light and love and mercy and grace and justice and holiness and immensity and infinitude and magnitude and…wants us to know him?  WHY?  BECAUSE IT IS GOOD FOR US TO KNOW HIM.  it is essential for us to know him.  we were created to know him.

saying that, what does it take to KNOW God instead of knowing things about God.  First, it is a personal thing.  you can have as much of God as you want.  he wants to commune with you.  not through another person for you (even though that happens).  but for you, personally.  he adores you and wants you to connect with him, because he created you just for that purpose.  how awesome is it that the God who created the stars that you stare at, wants you to intimately know him.

I must say this at this point, your width of your knowledge of God is no gauge of the depth of the knowledge of God.  you can be a scholar and a great theologian and yet have no clue of the affections that God has for you, or have your heart wrecked by the Gospel.

you must not only make it personal, but you must get personally involved.  your mind, heart, soul, and strength need to be caught up in it.  if not, then your relationship is shallow and superficial.  to get to know another person you have to commit yourself fully to them. 

Lastly, knowing God takes a good realization that it is all about grace.  we must never lose sight of this, because when we do, we think we deserve it, or it gets stale and dogmatic.  we also become convinced that our commitment to God is stronger than his commitment to us.  Which is DEAD WRONG.  the initiative is his, always will be.  He is so completely above us and we have so completely forfeited all claim to know him by our sins.  we do not make friends with God, he does with us.  We know God because he first knew us and decided to have us know him.  we love because he first loved.  Paul writes in Galatians, “now that you know God–or rather are known by God” states in perfectly. 

Its grace.  he fully knows us and still pursues us.  he is not disillusioned by who we are.  we will never catch him off guard in our relationship and that still doesn’t stop him from pursuing us.

made to know God.  WOW.  make it personal.  get personally involved.  remember, it is about grace.