I don’t know about you, but I don’t automatically trust or follow someone I don’t know very well. If a stranger asks me to change my life’s direction or give my money to something beneficial, I’m not super quick to listen if I don’t know him/her. I’ll even research nonprofits with a good reputation before I support them. It is important to me to not blindly support someone or something that may not be leading the organization well.
And the same is true with God.
You can’t follow or trust him if you don’t really know him beyond just the Sunday school answers. It is extremely important that you take the first step and spend time getting to know God so that when he then asks you to do something, you will have that deep knowledge of who he is and will be able to trust and obey him.
But getting to know Him can seem overwhelming at times. But it doesn’t have to be!
3 Ways to Grow in your Knowledge of God
It is important to note that you will never FULLY know God. I mean he is God. How small would that make him if we could fully know him! But, although we will never exhaustively know God, we can continually be “increasing in the knowledge of God” throughout our life. The more you are “increasing in knowledge of God”, the more you will fall in love with him and desire to obey him.
To Know God Better, study the Character or attributes of God.
One of the first ways we can get to know God is by studying the the character, or attributes of God. These attributes are often broken down into communicable (those he shares with us like love, joy, peace, etc..) and incommunicable (those he does not share with us like all-knowing, omnipresent, unchangeableness, etc…).
A great way to begin to notice his attributes is to start in the Psalms. Pick any Psalm and start to underline every time you see an attribute of God listed. Notice them ALL. Then just sit and look over your list and praise God for who he is. I like to continue to add to the list over time to help me remember how vast He is. It also is good to reflect on where I have seen him demonstrate each attribute in my own life.
To Know God Better, notice the Names of God
In scripture, a name is a description of the very character of that person. This is why when we pray, “your name be honored as holy ” as part of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:9), we are praying that people would speak about God in a way that is honoring to him and that accurately reflects his character.
So every time you notice God called a Rock, or our Father, or the Comforter, or the Healer, you can see that as a description of the very character of God. Keep a list of these names or check out this list of the names of God to help you in this journey.
To Know God Better, recognize His Will for You
This is the hard one for most of us, but it’s important if you want to know God better. We don’t want to just know who God is, we also want to know what he asks of us. This happens through both his revealed will in scripture and his secret will that He brings about in his own time.
For today, we will just camp on his revealed will in scripture. God’s revealed will clearly tells us what we should do and what God commands us to do. This is what we pray will happens in the Lord’s prayer when we pray “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. In heaven, everyone is obeying the revealed will of God. No one is thinking maybe God can’t be trusted and does his/her own thing. The Lord’s prayer is praying that the same would happen on earth, and people would begin to obey God’s commands and follow His principles for their life.
This same idea is what Paul is commands the Ephesians to “understand what the will of the Lord is Ephesians 5:17. Paul is telling them to search the scriptures and understand what God is asking of you.
Recap
If you want to know God better, study his character, notice his names through the Bible, and learn his revealed will. These 3 ways will help you know and fall in love with God more. It could be helpful to simply keep a journal section just for these 3 lists so you can go back periodically and remind yourself who God is. Over time, your love and trust toward Him will grow as a result. These other posts designed to help you know God may be helpful as well.
Just know, increasing in your knowledge of God is not only possible, you can easily get started right now. Use these 3 tips and have a blast getting to know God better.
(If you want a more in-depth teaching over these 3, check out this teaching)
Leave a Reply