To know God.
Why is this important to my life?
And if it is important, how do I go about learning who God is?
And once we begin to learn who God is, what do we intend to do with this knowledge?
To help answer these questions I have posted the following quotes from J.I.Packer's book "Knowing God."
"Knowing God is crucially important for the living of our lives. 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 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 mind."
"Before we can jump to studying God Himself, we need to determine the principles by which we make this effort.
There are five basic truths, five foundational principles of the knowledge about God which Christians have, which will determine our course throughout. They are as follows:
1. God has spoken to man, and the Bible is his Word, given to us to make us wise unto salvation.
2. God is Lord and King over his world; he rules all things for his own glory, displaying his perfections in all that he does, in order that men and angels worship and adore him.
3. God is Savior, active in sovereign love through the Lord Jesus Christ to rescue believers from the guilt and power of sin, to adopt them as his children and to bless them accordingly.
4. God is triune; there are within the Godhead three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; and the work of salvation is one in which all three act together, the Father purposing redemption, the Son securing it and the Spirit applying it.
5. Godliness means responding to God’s revelation in trust and obedience, faith and worship, prayer and praise, submission and service. Life must be seen and lived in the light of God’s Word.
This and nothing else is true religion."
"We also need to determine what we intend to do with this knowledge about God, once we have it. For this we would be wise to follow King David.
“Blessed are the undefiled in the way,
who walk in the law of the LORD.
Blessed are they that keep his testimonies,
and that seek him with the whole heart.
O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes!”
(Psalm 119:1-2, 5)
His supreme desire was to know and enjoy God himself, and he valued knowledge about God simply as a means to this end. He wanted to understand God’s truth in order that his heart might respond to it and his life be conformed to it. The psalmist was interested in truth and orthodoxy, in biblical teaching and theology, not as ends in themselves, but as means to further ends of life and godliness, His ultimate concern was with the knowledge and service of the great God whose truth he sought to understand."
"Our aim in studying the Godhead must be to know God himself better. Our concern must be to enlarge our acquaintance, not simply with the doctrine of God’s attributes, but with the living God whose attributes they are. As he is the subject of our study, and our helper in it, so he must himself be the end of it. We must seek, in studying God, to be led by God. How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? The rule for doing this is simple but demanding. 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. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communion with God. Its effect is ever to humble us, so as we contemplate God’s greatness and glory and see our own littleness and sinfulness, and to encourage and reassure us- as we contemplate the unsearchable riches of divine mercy displayed in the Lord Jesus Christ."
"A little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about God.
1. One can know a great deal about God without much knowledge of him.
2. One can know a great deal about godliness without much knowledge of God."
"Do we desire such knowledge of God?
First, we must recognize how much we lack knowledge of God. We must learn to measure ourselves, not by our knowledge about God, not by our gifts and responsibilities in the church, but by how we pray and what goes on in our hearts. Many of us, I suspect, have no idea how impoverished we are at this level. Let us ask the Lord to show us.
Second, we must seek the Savior. When he was on earth, he invited ordinary people to company with him; thus they came to know him, and in knowing him to know the Father. The lord Jesus Christ is now absent from us in body, but spiritually, it makes no difference; still we may find and know God through seeking and finding Jesus’ company. It is those who have sought the Lord Jesus till they have found him - for the promise is that when we seek him with all our hearts, we shall surely find him - who can stand before the world to testify that they have known him."
(Knowing God by J.I. Packer pages 19, 20, 22, 23, 26, 32)
