Do you know God? One can know all about God, but not really know God. Just like someone famous. We can know all about them through media, but do we truly know them?
While I’ve been talking about a relationship with God for a few weeks now, I’ve been assuming that all my readers had a personal relationship with God. But one can be religious without truly knowing the Living God.
What does it mean to know God?
By the way, this topic is what separates all religions from what we understand on this blog. This is how to be a Christ follower, not a religious follower. There is no religion that enables people to be a “friend of God”.
Jesus did not come to start a religion…
He came to grow His family
I confess that I knew about God for most of my life, but I really didn’t know God personally until much later. It was as if God was a distant Father that was always away and never had time for me, but now I know that it was me that failed to reach out to Him.
James 4: 8a Come close to God, and God will come close to you.
When I finally read His Word diligently, and sincerely sought Him, I discovered God in a way that I never realized. It was like He had this invitation to know Him extended to me all along, but I didn’t actually read the invitation until I finally “woke up”.
We are friends of Jesus
Check out this notable change in the relationship between Jesus and His disciples…
John 15: 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me.
We are brothers of Jesus
After Jesus is resurrected…
John 20: 17b “…go find my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'”
We become friends with God as His disciples and we know from this verse in John 20 that Jesus means for us to relate to His God as our God and His Father as our Father.
These verses seem to cement this concept…
Mark 3: 35 Anyone who does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”
Hebrews 2: 11 So now Jesus and the ones he makes holy have the same Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them his brothers and sisters.
Isn’t this amazing, how the Creator of all things desires us to be in His family? This was His intention from the beginning of time.
Our Father calls us His children
1 John 3: 1 See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him.
Can you see that God gave us earthly families to remind and teach us about how we can relate to Him and His Son? But if we don’t read the Invitation He gave us (the Bible), we’d continue in ignorance of these things and remain estranged to Him, even if we do “believe”!
Do know God as your Father?
About prayer: When you come before God, think of yourself as God’s own son or daughter, because that’s who you are! He is there to listen to us and we can take great comfort in that.