Knowing God
The Hebrew word "to know" yâdaʻ is not just intellectual or theoretical recognition. To know the LORD is personal and experiential; to enter into a heart fellowship with Him and acknowledge His lordship over every aspect of one's life.
John 17:3
This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
John Arrowsmith Armilla Catechetica: a Chain of Principles, 1659
Nothing short of the knowledge of God can satisfy the heart of a saint. All the natural reason in the world can neither discover what God is nor what worship He expects, without divine and supernatural revelation from Himself.
Job 11:7(KJV) Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?
Christopher Ridley Pearson, Counsels of the Wise King; or, Proverbs of Solomon Applied to Daily Life on Proverbs 1:7 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge", 1880.
Let me be sure of this, that until I know God I know nothing.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones "The Approach to the Gospel" on Exodus 3:3-5
The whole point and purpose of the Christian gospel is to bring us to meet God...a personal knowledge of God.
J.I. Packer Knowing God
https://archive.org/details/knowinggod0000pack_d7r0
What were we made for? To know God. What aim should we have in life? To know God. What is the eternal life that Jesus gives? To know God. What is the best thing in life? To know God. What in humans gives God most pleasure? Knowledge of himself.
How do we turn knowledge about God into knowledge of God? The rule for doing this is demanding but simple. It is that we turn each truth that we learn about God into matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God. Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God.
Live slowly enough to be able to think deeply about God.
Octavius Winslow Daily Walking With God
It is the acquaintance with God that brings us into the knowledge of His character as a holy, loving, and faithful God; and it is this knowledge of His character that begets love and confidence in the soul towards Him. The more we know of God, the more we love Him: the more we try Him, the more we confide in Him.
A.W. Tozer
The Divine Conquest
To know God is to love Him, and to know Him better is to love Him more.
That Incredible Christian
Since true faith rests upon what God is, it is of utmost importance that, to the limit of our comprehension, we know Him as He is.
The Knowledge of the Holy
The God we must seek is not the utilitarian God who is having such a run of popularity today, whose chief claim to men's attention is His ability to bring them success in their various undertakings and who for that reason is being cajoled and flattered by everyone who wants a favor. The God we must learn to know is the Majesty in the heavens, God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, the only wise God our Savior.
The Set of the Sail
We cannot know God by thinking alone, but we can never know Him well without a lot of hard thinking.
Jesus, Our Man in Glory
God is not glorified until men and women think gloriously of Him.
Knowing (God) comes only by a personal encounter with (God) Himself.
The Next Chapter After The Last
We all come into the world with one tremendous question facing us, the question of our relation to the God from whose hand we came. So important is it that it may properly be said that no other question really exists at all till this one has been settled; and it must be settled by each one of us personally and individually.
David Jeremiah The God You Could Not Know
The greatest question in life is not "Does God exist?", but "Do I know the God who does exist, and do I know Him personally?"
God is YHWH ("I AM WHO I AM" Exodus 3:14), ’ehyeh ’ăšer ’ehyeh or Hayah Havah meaning "I am", "I was", and "I will be"; from which is derived the English Jehovah; Je - the time to come; ho - the time present; and vah - the time past. Most translations use LORD for YHWH or Yahweh (Psalm 109:26...O LORD my God...), while Adonai is translated Lord and the plural Elohim (Genesis 1:1) as God. The English Lord is a contraction of "Hlafford" or an earlier Hlāfweard meaning "master or provider/sustainer of a household".
Jehovah was first used in Tyndale's 1530 English Bible, from a transliteration of YHWH using the vowels of Adonai in translating Genesis 15:7 and Exodus 6:3; "I am the LORD".
The Latin IOHOUAH however had been in use since the 13th century.
Job 22:21 (NKJV)
Now acquaint yourself with Him, and be at peace;
Thereby good will come to you.
Proverbs 9:10
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
Jeremiah 9:24
"Let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight," declares the Lord.
Romans 11:34
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
2 Peter 1:2-3
Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.
The Confessions of St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, Book I
http://www.leaderu.com/cyber/books/augconfessions/bk1.html
They that know Thee not may call upon Thee as other than Thou art, and so worship not Thee but a creature of their own fancy; therefore enlighten our minds that we may know Thee as Thou art, so that we may perfectly love Thee and worthily praise Thee.
Walter Hilton (c. 1340 – 1396), The Ladder of Perfection
https://books.google.com/books?id=xokaAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA17&lpg
You should ever seek with great diligence in prayer that you might gain a spiritual feeling or sight of God. And that is, that you may know the wisdom of God, His endless might, His great goodness in Himself and through His creatures...so that you may know and feel with all saints what is the length of the endless being of God, the breadth of the wonderful (love) and the goodness of God, the height of His almighty majesty and the bottomless depths of His wisdom. In knowing and spiritual feeling of these may be understood the full (knowledge) of all spiritual things.
Martin Luther’s 99 Propositions
Man cannot of his own nature will God to be God. He would prefer to be God himself, and that God were not God.
Miguel de Molinos The Spiritual Guide, 1675
(Let the soul)…love God as He is and not as (our) understanding says He is, and pictures Him.
Richard Sibbes
The Soul's Conflict with Itself and Victory Over Itself by Faith
We should not bring God down to our own imaginations, but raise our imaginations up to God.
The Knot of Prayer Loosed
We have a false image of God, and view him more like one of us, and not as one filling heaven and earth with his majesty and glory.
David Clarkson Of Living by Faith
Study the attributes of God. Labour to know them distinctly and effectually. The more we know, the more we trust. Is it not reasonable to trust in the Lord? Use God's attributes to strengthen faith. I am sinful, but God is merciful. I am unworthy, but he is gracious. I abuse patience, but he is love. I am unfaithful, but he is faithful. In him, there is more than we need, more than we desire, more than we can imagine, infinitely more!
Stephen Charnock The Existence & Attributes of God
We cannot comprehend God; if we could, we should cease to be finite; and because we cannot comprehend him, we erect strange images of him in our fancies and affections... We set that active power of imagination on work, and there comes out a god (a calf), whom we own for a notion of God…There are as many carved images of God as there are minds of men, and as monstrous shapes as those corruptions into which they would transform him.
God is an eternal God, and he knows all things as present. In God's mind, all things are one point, not a succession of things. God's knowledge does not depend upon the revolutions of time. His knowledge is outside of years and days. He comprehends the past and the future as one. He considers all things of eternity as one simple knowledge. He does not know one thing now and another later. Though there is a succession of events as they are brought to pass, there is no succession in the mind of God. If God is eternal, how bold and foolish it is for a mortal to question his counsels and actions. How can we who are so weak creatures that we cannot understand yesterday, presume to measure the motions of eternity by our scanty intellects?
George Swinnock The Incomparableness of God. In His Being, Attributes, Works, and Word
They who know his beauty and bounty, cannot but love him, and they who know his power and faithfulness, cannot but trust him.
William Gurnall The Christian in Complete Armour
Labour to get a right notion of God in thy understanding, and it will not appear strange at all that a great God should do so great things for poor sinners.
It is natural for every man to desire to accommodate his lusts with such conceptions of God as may be most favourable to, and suit best with, them. God chargeth some for this: ‘Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself,’ Psalm 50:21
(In man's image and imagination, man created god. Also Isaiah 65:2)
When you think of God, be sure you do not narrow him up in the little compass of your finite apprehensions, but conceive of him always as an infinite being, whose center is everywhere, and circumference is nowhere. When you have raised your thoughts to the highest, then know you are as far, yea infinitely farther, from reaching his glory and immensity, than a man is from touching the body of the sun with his hand when got upon a hill or mountain.
Augustus Tholuck Commentary of the Book Of Psalms, on Psalm 62
Our estimate of man depends upon our estimate of God.
G. Campbell Morgan The Crises of the Christ "Man Ignorant Of God"
Project ruined man into immensity, and a ruined god is the result. In the magnified man there is magnified evil and intensified failure. Man, having fallen, demanded a God, and having lost knowledge of the true God, has projected into immensity the lines of his own personality (creating) as objects of worship awful monsters...Baal, Moloch (child sacrifice) & Mammon (Matthew 6:24).
J.C. Ryle "Wheat or Chaff" on Matthew 3:12 "His winnowing fork is in his hand..."
https://books.google.com/books?id=hrNDAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA149&lpg
Beware of manufacturing a God of your own,—a God who is all mercy, but not just,—a God who is all love, but not holy,—a God who has a heaven for everybody, but a hell for none,—a God who will make no distinction between good and bad in eternity.
Beside the God of the Bible, there is no God at all.
C.H. Spurgeon
“Robbers of God”
https://ccel.org/ccel/spurgeon/sermons36/sermons36.xxxiv.html
The doctrinaires of today will allow a God, but He must not be King. They choose a god who is no god (but) rather the servant of men.
“The Immutability of God”, January 7, 1855
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/spurgeon/sermons01.txt
Malachi 3:6 "I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed."
There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God…The proper study of a Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father. There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity.
Octavius Winslow Daily Walking With God
Trace the cause of much of our uneven walking, of our little holiness, and, consequently, of our little happiness, to our imperfect acquaintance with what God is. Did I know more of what God is to me in Christ—how He loves me, what a deep interest He takes in all my concerns—did I know that He never withdraws His eye from me for one moment, that His heart of love never grows cold—oh! did I but know this, would I not walk more as one acquainted with God? Would I not desire to consult Him in all that interests me, to acknowledge Him in all my ways, to look up to Him in all things, and to deal with Him in all matters? Would I not desire to be more like Him, more holy, more divine, more Christ-like? Yes, beloved; it is because we know Him so little, that we walk so much in uneven ways.
A.W. Pink The Attributes of God
(Reform Baptist who studied briefly at the Moody Bible Institute, then pastored churches in the U.S., Australia, and England)
1930 first edition from articles in the monthly Studies In The Scriptures. Expanded from articles published until Pink’s death in 1952
http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/attributes_online.html
A spiritual and saving knowledge of God is the greatest need of every human creature. The foundation of all true knowledge of God must be a clear mental apprehension of His perfections as revealed in Holy Scripture. An unknown God can neither be trusted, served nor worshipped... Something more than a theoretical knowledge of God is needed by us. God is only truly known in the soul as we yield ourselves to Him, submit to His authority, and regulate all the details of our lives by His holy precepts and commandments.
"The Contemplation of God"
http://www.pbministries.org/books/pink/Attributes/attrib_17.htm
A.W. Tozer
The Set of the Sail
A believer's faith can never rise higher than his conception of God.
The Knowledge of The Holy (1961, from articles in Alliance Weekly)
A right conception of God is basic not only to systematic theology but to practical Christian living as well. There is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God.
To admit that there is One who lies beyond us, who exists outside of all our categories, who will not be dismissed with a name, who will not appear before the bar of our reason, nor submit to our curious inquiries: this requires a great deal of humility, more than most of us possess, so we save face by thinking God down to our level, or at least down to where we can manage Him.
The divine attributes are what we know to be true of God. He does not possess them as qualities; they are how God is as He reveals Himself to His creatures. Love, for instance, is not something God has and which may grow or diminish or cease to be. His love is the way God is, and when He loves He is simply being Himself. And so with the other attributes.
God's attributes are not isolated traits of His character but facets of His unitary being. They are not things in themselves; they are, rather, thoughts by which we think of God, aspects of a perfect whole, names given to whatever we know to be true of the Godhead. To have a correct understanding of the attributes it is necessary that we see them all as one. We can think of them separately but they cannot be separated.
He is what He is in Himself, without qualifying thought or word. He is simply God...infinite, eternal and measureless.
Chapter 22 - "The Sovereignty of God"
We know that God will fulfill every promise made to the prophets; we know that sinners will some day be cleansed out of the earth; we know that a ransomed company will enter into the joy of God and that the righteous will shine forth in the kingdom of their Father; we know that God's perfections will yet receive universal acclamation, that all created intelligences will own Jesus Christ Lord to the glory of God the Father, that the present imperfect order will be done away, and a new heaven and a new earth be established forever.
Toward all this God is moving with infinite wisdom and perfect precision of action. No one can dissuade Him from His purposes; nothing turn Him aside from His plans. Since He is omniscient, there can be no unforeseen circumstances, no accidents. As He is sovereign, there can be no countermanded orders, no breakdown in authority; and as He is omnipotent, there can be no want of power to achieve His chosen ends. God is sufficient unto Himself for all these things.
Chapter 7 - "The Eternity of God"
Isaiah 57:15a “thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity…”
God dwells in eternity but time dwells in God. He has already lived all our tomorrows as He has lived all our yesterdays. An illustration offered by C.S. Lewis may help us here. (Mere Christianity, Book IV: Chapter 3 "Time and Beyond Time") He suggests that we think of a sheet of paper infinitely extended. That would be eternity. Then on that paper draw a short line to represent time. As the line begins and ends on that infinite expanse, so time began in God and will end in Him.
Psalm 90: 2b ...from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
Renewed Day by Day
We who are men and women, though redeemed and regenerated, are submerged in time; therefore we properly say that prophecy is history foretold and history is prophecy fulfilled. But in God there is no "was" or "will be" but a continuous and unbroken "is." In Him, history and prophecy are one and the same. God contains past and future in His own Being.
That Incredible Christian
God is uncreated, self-existent, infinite, sovereign, eternal; these attributes are His alone and by their very definition cannot be shared with another. But there are other attributes which He can impart to His creatures and in some measure share with His redeemed children. Intellect, self-consciousness, love, goodness, holiness, pity, faithfulness--these and certain other attributes are the points where likeness between God and man may be achieved.
Do not try to imagine God, or you will have an imaginary God. Contemplate the Scriptures and let faith show you God as He is revealed there.
We are saved to know God, to enter His wonder-filled Presence through the new and living Way and remain in that Presence forever.
Jesus, Our Man in Glory
God is immanent (inherent, indwelling) in His universe. But He is (also) transcendent above His universe and infinitely separated from it, for He is the Creator God.
Why do I insist that all Christians should know for themselves the kind of God they love and serve? It is because all the promises of God rest completely upon His character. His ability to deliver on His promises is tied directly to His omnipotence. If God was not omnipotent, He would be unable to keep His promises. He could not give any of us assurance of salvation.
J.I. Packer Knowing God
We are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it. The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God.
Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.
CAUTION I
John Calvin’s Sermons on 1 Timothy
If our eyes cannot bear the brightness of the sun, how, I ask, could our mind possibly come to terms with the infinite majesty of God?
CAUTION II
Martin Luther on Isaiah 6:5 (English German Bible No 1) "Mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts."
Theology (knowing God) is not learned on a peaceful path, or through tranquil reflection: it is acquired per afflictions…not understanding, reading or speculation.
Eric Liddell, “The Flying Scotsman”, 400m Gold Medalist at the 1924 Paris Olympics and (Congregationalist) London Missionary Society missionary to Tianjin and Xiaozhang, China. He died in 1945 at age 43 in the Weihsien Internment Camp, in The Disciplines of The Christian Life
You will know as much of God, and only as much of God, as you are willing to put into practice.
Obedience to God's will is the secret of spiritual knowledge and insight. It is not willingness to know, but willingness to DO (obey) God's will that brings certainty.
CAUTION III
Jean-Paul Sartre in The Words, “Reading” described his path to atheistic existentialism and hopelessness as a turning away from the contemporary secularized church's image of God.
Raised in the Catholic faith I learned that the Almighty had made me for His glory. But later, I did not recognize in the fashionable God in whom I was taught to believe the one whom my soul was awaiting. I needed a Creator; I was given (something else).
ARE WE PRESENTING TO MEN THE GOD WHO IS YHWH (the LORD), THE GOD OF THE BIBLE?
Or a god of our imagination?
WARNING
A.W. Pink The Attributes of God
A spiritual and saving knowledge of God is the greatest need of every human creature.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones "Do You Know God?" a sermon on John 8:19
https://www.mljtrust.org/sermons/book-of-john/do-you-know-god/
Knowing about God is not knowing God.
A.W. Tozer The Size of the Soul
Are you a Christian in fact or merely a student of Christianity?
Benjamin Jowett Master of Balliol
It matters nothing what I think of God; it matters everything what God thinks of me.
C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”, 1941
I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed, how we think of Him is of no importance except in so far as it is related to how He thinks of us.