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SELAH! Pause - reflect- just think of that!

Selah Alphabetical Index

God Knows My Name

God knows me, and He still wants to pursue a personal relationship with me. That is truly amazing. He knows everything about me, and still wants to enjoy my fellowship with Him.

What does it mean to know God? How do you come to an intimate personal knowledge of Him?

I am not thinking of intellectual knowledge or facts about Him, but the importance of knowing a close friend.

The apostle Paul prayed that believers would know God the Father who chose us, God the Son who redeemed us, and God the Holy Spirit who applied salvation to us personally through the new birth. Now that He has saved me do I have a growing knowledge of Him? Perhaps in our busy schedule and pressures of modern life we should ask do I even want it? How do I fit a hunger for God into a complex worldview?

In Ephesians 1:17-19 the apostle Paul prayed that God would give believers “the Spirit of wisdom and revelation . . . to know Him better.” Paul wanted them to have a “true knowledge of Him.” But you say, they already knew Him as their Savior, and had obtained eternal life. But what I am asking is has God placed within your heart a hunger to know Him better?

With every relationship in life we make deliberate choices as to whether we want to pursue the relationship. God has invited us to get to know Him better. Have we responded to that invitation to belongingness? Do we have that “we” feeling with Him? Have we taken the first few faltering steps and halted? Have we reached a plateau, and is it now time to respond to further instruction in His Word?

Has the Holy Spirit opened the “enlightened eyes of our hearts” in order that we may know “the hope to which He has called us, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and His incomparably great power for us who believe”?

Paul’s prayer for knowledge of God is based on a plea to have a greater knowledge of God’s saving grace. God takes the initiative and invites us to a personal involvement of our whole person. It is a permanent relationship based on the awesome knowledge that He knows me and desires a personal, abiding relationship with me.

Perhaps Paul had in mind the great prayer of Jesus, “This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

Do you know Him? Do you want to know Him better? It is true that we have a great deal more to learn about Him in His Word. Knowing about Him is important, but knowing Him personally is more important. We must act on what we have learned in His Word.

How do I get to know God better in His personal dealings with me? It begins with a hunger or thirsting for the Holy Spirit to reveal Christ to our soul and to open the living Word of God to our inner person. Such a knowledge is not found apart from a study of the Scriptures. It is to the person who sits at Jesus’ feet that God opens His heart to reveal Himself. It is time spent with God on our knees with the open Word that issues in an intimate knowledge of Him. You cannot get to know a real person without spending time with him or her. We cannot know God without time in His presence. We know truth about His attributes from His revealed Word as the Spirit applies them to our lives, and as we act upon that knowledge we experience Him personally.

God chose us, and called us “to be holy and blameless in His sight” as His full grown adopted children. We grow in our knowledge of God as we become more like the Lord Jesus Christ in every way, every day. As we grow in the knowledge of His grace we grow in His likeness. One day we will know Him in perfect character. My prayer is that He will hasten that day. Today, we live in the tension of the here and now and that which is yet to be.

Because we are His unique possession, purchased by His blood, “we share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light” (Col. 1:12). God has rich blessings in store for those who get to know Him better. Are we claiming our inheritance now? We can only as we get to know Him intimately. The apostle Paul said, “We know little; and we know imperfectly.” One wonderful day when He comes we will know fully and perfectly.

Do I know Him in the power of His resurrection? This is to know God’s power by personal experience. Do I know the power that God exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead? The knowledge of God is experienced in the power of Christ’s resurrection in our lives today. Oh, God that I may know you today!

Message by Wil Pounds (c) 2006