Want to know God?

Trinity Medical Center, Birmingham

The Christian conviction is that God has made Himself known in numerous and various ways but fully in and through His Son, Jesus Christ.

The question “Want to know God?” spawns at least two other related questions: “Who is God?” and “What is God like?” In the New Testament part of the Bible, Jesus’ answer to the first question is that God is our heavenly Father (Matt. 6:9). Jesus also says that whoever knows Him knows God the Father (John 14:9). Jesus answers the second question in a parable by which He teaches that God is like a loving, caring earthly father (Luke 15:11–31).

Christians understand then that to know God begins with trusting who Jesus says He Himself is and trusting what Jesus says. Jesus says God is everywhere and in our midst. He declares that God the heavenly Father is One who because He loves us, chooses to be with us and who in love takes the initiative in reaching out to us.

As written in John 3:16–17, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but have everlasting life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.” How does an individual believe so that he or she experiences knowing the living God?

In the Bible’s Old Testament Book of Psalms (46:10) are words that may be helpful to a person seeking the experience of knowing God: “Be still, and know that I am God.” These are simple, and yet not so simple, words. Believing to the extent of knowing God starts from within a person.

When an individual becomes still and receptive within and listens with his or her heart, he or she can begin to hear and see and understand with the ears, eyes and mind of the soul — a capacity every person is given at birth by the Creator, God. In the posture of being inwardly still, an individual is in a position to be helped by God’s Spirit in the mysterious and miraculous experience of coming to know God as He has revealed Himself through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.