Knowing

“And these things they will do to you because they have not known the Father nor Me.”

These were Jesus’ words to His friends in John 16 vs 3. He was pointing out that there are certain actions that people can take that show a lack of knowledge or understanding of God.

The question today is: what do you know about God and what do you know about Jesus His Son?

When you need to reach out for the divine and for God to hold you in his everlasting arms, say when you find yourself in a situation of despair, as tends to be inevitable with life, what do you know about God that you can call up in your mind that would lead you to Him and the hope He has to give?

Too many of us use God as a wild card or as a shot to nothing. For some, he is one of a couple of last resorts or the Joker in a deck of cards that is capable of springing a sudden and dramatic change in fortune. Too many call out to Him while at the same time doubting He would ever answer. Too many call out to Him without actually being interested in knowing Him.

God wants relationship and fellowship. He wants to be acknowledged as our Creator and as our friend. He wants our adoration and our loyalty. He wants us to be able to share our lives with Him and for us to get to know Him more and more both through the Bible and as He reveals Himself to us in our hearts, minds, dreams and daily lives.

Even in our earthly relationships, most of us are aware that we cannot carry on with the people around us in a one-sided way: all us and no them; all our issues with no interest in theirs. These are basic things but many of us fail to extend the same courtesy in our approach to God.

We want Him to hear about everything that is going wrong with us and about everything wrong we think He has done with the world but too often there is little to no interest in Him, His passions or His views on us. For far too many, God is that “friend” of ours that we actually secretly despise. For some, He is no more than tissue for a runny nose that is to be discarded and refreshed once it is no longer useful.

That’s not who God is though. It is the greatest honor of my life to know Him, to serve Him and to be a Christian not just in name but in action as well.

To know God is to want to know more of Him. To know the beauty of who He is can only be followed by a desire to see more of that beauty. There are actions which people take that clearly show that they do not know God. To push Him away or to pull yourself away from Him is to have never really known Him.

Knowing God is a journey and a journey worth going on. There will be ups and downs that are sometimes of our own making and other times not. If we are going to call out for God to come into our lives, then our minds must be made up to get to know Him and to take the actions to make it happen.