Psalm 9:10
Those who know Your name trust in You because You have not abandoned those who seek You, Yahweh
How do we get to truly know God? How do we trust emphatically in His goodness?
We have to go beyond what we know in our head and press in to what we feel in our heart. I’m not talking about emotional feeling that are heightened at times and left wanting at other times. I’m talking about feeling with absolute certainty that we can trust in God’s goodness. Feeling with absolute certainty that He loves you unconditionally and wants to be in a ‘knowing’ relationship with you.
I once read an expression which has totally stuck with me. It goes like this. “True love comes from Knowing’ As the knowing grows, so the love expands to contain it.”
That’s the essence of a true relationship – it’s not about the emotional butterflies or the ‘love at first glance’ stuff. It’s what comes from really getting to know someone … the more you know about them, the more you love them and the more you trust them!
So, a relationship of KNOWING produces a two-fold blessing – an absolute assurance of love and an indubitable freedom to trust.
That’s why so many people find it difficult to love God. Because they don’t really know God. They might honour and respect HIm, but He wants us to love Him, like He loves us.
This is very difficult if we are not interested in knowing Him.
He is our creator, and yet He wants to have a personal relationship with us, his created.
He is so big, and yet he is passionate about us, who are so small.
He is the ruler of the whole universe, and still He wants to captivate our hearts.
God continues to pursue us with his love. He created us to know us.
To do anything other than this would go against the very character of God. And God’s character is the one thing that is absolute. It is consistent and safe and completely trustworthy.
The bible is the best place to start if we are wanting to get to know him. In the gospels we read that to Jesus, God the Father is all-loving. He is the essence of love. He cannot help loving.
This loving includes all the attributes of love that we know so well; kindness, selflessness, consideration, justice, wanting only good things for us and desiring our happiness.
It’s an unconditional love. We don’t have to do anything to earn it. We can’t do anything to earn it, because Gods love is already perfect and complete. We were born into it.
God is for us – now and forever.
Jesus based his whole ministry on encouraging us to receive Gods love. By every word and every action, by every force of his personality, Jesus determined to tell us that God our Father is always nearer, mightier and more able to help us than we could ever imagine.
He is real and He is love.
We have to trust in this love. TRUST that God is a God of love. Only if we can depend on our creator as a God of love (not an obscure ethereal love, but love as we know and understand it) will we have the courage and confidence to turn our life and all our affairs over to him.
So how do we begin to trust like this?
Trust too comes from knowing. Knowing God so well – His motives and His good will. Trust comes from being certain that nothing will make him change who he is – a God of love.
Trust comes from knowing him for a long enough time to be sure of these things.
There are many people who can claim that they have broken through to this kind of knowing. Right from the apostle Paul, all the way through the centuries and even today.
2 Timothy 1:12 & 14
For I know Him [and I am personally acquainted with Him] whom I have believed [with absolute trust and confidence in Him and in the truth of His deity], and I am persuaded [beyond any doubt] that He is able to guard that which I have entrusted to Him until that day [when I stand before Him].
Guard [with greatest care] and keep unchanged, the treasure [that precious truth] which has been entrusted to you [that is, the good news about salvation through personal faith in Christ Jesus], through [the help of] the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.
To KNOW God is to LOVE God and completely TRUST God.
Choose today, to begin knowing him.