God has a desire for us to know Him
The most important reason for us to know God is that God has a desire for us to know Him. God is not one who wants to be known as “God from afar.” He wants to be near us. We were created in His image so that there could have a common level of communication available between us and God. The Holy Spirit abides within each believer, and the Holy Spirit helps us to know God better.
The apostle Paul wrote in I Corinthians 2:10-12, concerning the wisdom of God, “But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of man except the spirit of man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.”
He also wrote to the church at Ephesus, Ephesians 1:15-22, that he prayed that God would give them “the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened.” This would then allow them to understand the full inheritance and power they have obtained in Christ.
The spiritual relationship of knowing God, which Adam and Eve enjoyed, has been restored by the work on Earth and ascension back to Heaven of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is all about relationship. After all, He loved us first, before we loved Him, and gave His only begotten Son as a sacrifice on the cross to make oneness with Him a reality.
Knowing God is part of eternal life
So, just how important is it that we know God? Jesus puts this in the right perspective in
John 17:3, when He said, “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” When we know God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all part of the “knowing.”
Knowing God has tremendous benefits, the foremost being Eternal life. And these benefits will last eternally as it will be an eternal quest for us to know God. And the word “know” used here in the Greek refers to an intimate and growing relationship.
You have to know God in order to tell others about Him
The most obvious reason to know God is that, as in any relationship, you can’t tell someone about someone else unless you know them. You cannot effectively spread the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ unless you have personally made Him your Lord and Savior, and allowed Him to work in your life. It has to be a personal experience in order to be able to relate to them how Jesus changes your life.
An unsaved person can tell you about Jesus from what he/she has heard from others, but it is not as effective a testimony as a personal encounter with the Savior of the world. The more you know Jesus Christ, the more He works in your life.
If you know Jesus Christ, the Great Physician, as your healer and by faith you have experienced this, then you have a more convincing testimony than repeating what you have heard someone else experience.
The same with Jesus as your provider, or your peace, or your intercessor, or your wisdom, or whatever the Word of God declares him to be. By you knowing this about Him, when you put your trust in Him for the area of need He has provided for, then you have a compelling testimony about Him.
The apostle Paul would write to Timothy, in II Timothy 1:12, “… for I know who I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.” Paul knew Jesus well enough that he had complete confidence in Jesus being able to keep him until the Day he was called home to be with Him. He could testify to this based on him knowing Jesus.
Paul had heard about Jesus before he was converted on the road to Damascus, but after his conversion he knew Jesus personally. The difference made a big change in his life. You might say that they started living together, as one, like in a marriage.
Paul took a journey in knowing Jesus much like a child learning about his parents. As a baby, the first thing he realizes is that they are the ones who give him the milk bottle. Then, as he grows and they spend more time together, they are the ones who cloth him, feed him, take him places, love on him, teach him, discipline him, comfort him, help him through tough times, encourage him, etc. Then, as an adult he looks back and sees how much more they mean to him than just the bottle giver. Because of this “inside” knowledge he has a personal testimony about them that far exceeds any that any friend or neighbor may have.
Because of the marriage relationship, a wife can tell you about her husband more convincingly than a neighbor down the street. It is because she lives with him; they spend time together; they reveal their hearts to each other. They connect spirit to spirit. She gains information about him that no one else has the opportunity to gain, so her testimony about her husband is valid.
As the Bride of Christ, we are to spend time in His presence, in His Word, and in putting our faith in Him so that we have a convincing testimony about His love, His provision, His wisdom, His power, etc. Your testimony about your relationship with Jesus becomes a witness as to what you proclaim about Him.
To become like someone you have to know them
You cannot become like Jesus if you don’t know Him, which also includes the Father and the Holy Spirit. Your spiritual maturity will only advance as far as the amount of knowledge you have about God.
In Jeremiah 9:24 we find the Lord speaking about knowing Him, as he says, “But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgement, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight.”
In Jeremiah chapter 22, we find the Lord giving a word to Jeremiah for King Shallum, the son of King Josiah, king of Judah. This word is a rebuke to King Shallum, as God references the good deeds and life of his father King Josiah compared to the currently unacceptable life of King Shallum. In verses 15&16 we find, “‘Shall you reign because you enclose yourself in cedar? Did not your father eat and drink, and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Was not this knowing Me?’ says the Lord.”
What the Lord was trying to get across to King Shallum was that the need to know Him, God, would be the reason that he would act in the ways that reflected the Lord, as his father had done. Then the Lord would prosper him as He did his father in ruling Judah.
As a disciple, we are called to be imitators of Christ (Ephesians 5:1). In I Corinthians 11:1, the apostle Paul writes, “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.” His life and ministry attest to the fact that Paul lived a life like Christ, which he was able to do because he knew Jesus Christ so well that Christ was living in him (Galatians 2:20). Paul was “living out” the Christ Who was in him.
That is why Jesus spent time training His disciples in ministry, so that they knew Him and how He operated and could duplicate that life and ministry. When He sent the twelve out and then the seventy, they imitated, or duplicated the ministry that they had seen Him operate in.
Because they had spent time with Him, and knew him, they were able to effectively bring the Kingdom of God to this earth in the same way that Jesus had done.
Loving someone can only come by knowing them
You cannot truly love someone nor know their love for you without knowing them.
A personal relationship is needed to allow each person to know each other. How can you love a stranger if you don’t know them? Through the Holy Spirit, God can put His love
in your heart for a stranger and you can love them that way.
But a really intimate, personal love for someone only comes through relationship, by spending time with them and getting to know them. The love created between each person then becomes the glue which bonds them together through thick and thin.
The more you know Jesus the more you realize His Love for you and how far deeper that is compared to your love for Him. Paul wrote about this love in Romans 8:38&39, when he declared, “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Faithfulness to someone only comes by knowing them
You will not be faithful and loyal to someone you do not know. Jesus had faithful disciples because He spent time with them and they with Him. There have been men in the business sector, the religious sector, the political sector, who have had devoted followers because there was a personal relationship between the leaders and their followers. They knew each other personally, not just as associates.
If you look at military armies of the past and their leaders, you will find a pattern of relationship, men like Napoleon, Genghis Khan, Hannibal Barca, King David, General Patton, General Eisenhower, George Washington, Alexander the Great, to name a few. The successful generals would spend time with their troops so that they would know their troops and the troops would know their generals. They would be sold out to each other.
The best relationships produced both generals who were loyal to their troops as well as troops who were so loyal that they would follow their generals anywhere, giving up their lifestyle and even going to the point of death.
Obedience of the soldiers to these leaders was automatic because they knew their leaders and loved them. I John 2:3 states, “Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.”
Is this not what Jesus demands of our relationship with Him, a total surrender to His lordship?
Matthew 16:24 states, “The Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.’” Luke 14:33, “So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be my disciple.”
You cannot love this world and Him at the same time. As in marriage, the bride is only the bride to one groom, so we are the Bride of Christ alone, not the Bride of Christ and someone else.
The less of this world I have within me the more loving, faithful, and loyal I will be to Jesus.
Does He not make Himself available for such a relationship, Him seeking us first before we sought Him? Revelation 2:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.”
True disciples don't follow strangers
You will not follow and be a disciple of someone you do not know. The devil will deceive you into following someone who claims to be Him but is not. Jesus warned about this in Matthew 24:24.
Bank tellers are trained to know the real dollar denominations so well that when they come across a counterfeit they easily recognize it. It should be the same with us, as His disciples. We should know Him and His Word that when false teachers and teaching appear we are easily able to recognize that they are not the original.
As the True Shepherd, Jesus emphasized that the sheep only follow those whose voice they know. In John 10:3-5 Jesus states, “To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know his voice.”
Whether a person follows the devil or Jesus is dependent upon which one they prefer to spend time with, listen to, and obey. The voice you listen to most is the one you know and follow, so who are you listening to?
You have to know God in order to really worship Him
As with love for someone, you cannot truly worship God in spirit and in truth unless you know Him. You can praise God with your lips, but you can only worship Him from the heart.
The more you know the Lord, the more you want to truly worship Him because of what you learn about Him. The worship in Heaven around the throne of God is so pure and reverent because the ones who worship Him have come to know how awesome He is and worthy of their worship as they spend time in His presence and see His glory.
You cannot serve and please a Lord you do not know
Without knowing Jesus Christ, you will be caught trying to serve two masters, being double-minded, since you do not know either one (Matthew 6:24). This goes back to loyalty and faithfulness.
No one is going to totally serve someone they cannot have some sort of personal relationship with, so that they know what pleases and displeases them, and what is required of them as servants.
It takes knowing someone to be able to recognize them
You will not be able to recognize Jesus unless you know Him. The guards that came to get Jesus on that night of His betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane had to have Judas with them in order to know who to arrest. They had no doubt heard about Jesus, but they didn’t know Him, so they weren’t able to recognize Him from the other disciples without help from someone who did know Him.
More importantly, Jesus will not acknowledge you if you do not know Him. Knowing God is a two way relationship, Jesus and His disciples getting to know each other through experience and the Word.
Friends recognize friends. Loved ones recognize loved ones. The ones you spend the most time with are the ones you recognize. Strangers don’t recognize strangers.
In Matthew 7:21, Jesus addresses those who say they should be accepted by Him by what they did in His name. Yet Jesus discounts that as any good because they did not know Him enough to follow His commands.
They learned how they could use His name to do great works yet they lived a life outside His desires, a life of lawlessness yet professing to know Him. They lived a life of hypocrisy, their works and their fruit not matching up. So Jesus responded, “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’”
Knowing someone's character gives you insight into petitioning them
If you know God, then you will know how to approach Him, whether in prayer or in the courts of Heaven. It is like a child approaching his father concerning a need. Over time, the child, at an early age, learns how to approach his father in such a way that the father will give him what he desires.
Proverbs 37:4 states it like this, “Delight yourself also in the Lord and He shall give you the desires of your heart.” Getting to know God is delighting yourself in Him, seeking to know Him, and God rewards this pursuit of knowing Him. Hebrews 11:6 states, “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”
If you look at Abraham interceding for Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:16-33) and Moses interceding for the Children of Israel (Exodus 32:7-14) you will see how effective they were in their intercessions because they knew God’s character and His covenant promises.
Strangers don't walk as one
You will not be able to walk with God in harmony without knowing Him. As you get to know God, He will reveal to you what pleases Him, and then with this knowledge you can walk in a way that pleases Him, and be in harmony, or agreement, with Him. In Amos 3:3 we find the words of the Lord, “Can two walk together unless they are agreed?”
Enoch was a man who learned to know God so well that he pleased God so much that God took him directly to Heaven. Genesis 5:24 records, “And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.”
Knowing Jesus Christ makes you an overcomer like Him
You cannot be an overcomer without knowing God. Hosea 4:6, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” When you know God, He will reveal the truths that will keep you from the traps of the enemy, as well as the weapons which He has provided that will give you victory over the devil.
Knowing Jesus allows you to trust Him more, which in turn steps up your spiritual maturity. As you trust Him more you find out that there is only victory found in Him.
So want to know to more about God to become like Him? Then spend time in His presence and listen for His voice, read His book, the Bible, and learn to yield to the Holy Spirit.
Just as you cannot know the contents of a book unless you read it, so spending time with God is the same principle. You can read reviews about the book, but you really can’t know the book without reading it.
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