MY friend Bobby and I were talking one day, and he told me how it is amazing the amount of money, time, and preparation that’s expended to put together a wedding – a single day, a single event that no one usually remembers and that may last a sum total of 6 hours including the reception (those are the really good Catholic ones of course!). He went on to say that in comparison for the preparation for the actual marriage – the lifelong commitment – there is hardly any thought or discussion.

And he’s right.  People just assume that with their 1 mandatory visit with the pastor or priest that somehow everything’s just going to fall in place.  They’ll figure it out. Marriage isn’t rocket science, right?

I think we all know what the marriage statistic is in the U.S.  Young couples should know: love is difficult, commitment is hard.  It hurts to prefer another person above yourself.  Some days you won’t like your spouse, and you still have to sacrifice for them.

I find it fascinating that in the Bible there is so much of a focus on the heart with a strong allusion to marriage that just keeps coming up all throughout the Book.

Idolatry was equated with adultery, and even we, as Christians, are known as the “bride of Christ.”

No one ever prepared us to be in this kind of a relationship with God. Some people tried to tell us how to go about it, which typically looked like someone throwing a Bi­ble at us, telling us to go to church often, or to take part in a small group.  Again, it was a lot of activity, but it didn’t equate with growing in a deeper personal knowledge of God.

WE KNOW A LOT…

Our favorite pastime as human beings is talking about people.  We’re fascinated by people.

I crack up when I catch my wife watching TMZ, Talk Soup, and some of these other celeb shows.  If you watch those things enough, you can convince yourself that you know these people.  You can know who’s fighting with who, where they bought their dress, what their driving record is – there is a lot of information out there that makes us smart fans.  We can fool others and even convince ourselves about how much we know, but that’s a far cry from actually knowing someone.

A lot of our knowledge of people in our social circles is second hand at best.  It’s not even our experience. When we have a fun experience with people, we tell everyone.

When we have conflict with people, we go to close friends, family, or spouses to help process what happened. Who are these people?  Are they just jerks?  Or am I the jerk?

Sometimes we have bad first impressions of people that always linger as an underly­ing belief about them. Sometimes people tell us their impression of someone and we belief falsely about them.  It will even lead us to avoidance.  Sometimes we’re even surprised to find that our first impressions are wrong.  The individual turns out to be someone completely different.  “Hey, she’s not an airhead.” or “This whole time I thought he didn’t like me.”

No matter what people say, no matter what our first impressions are, no matter what the rumor mill is, no matter what the tabloid headlines read, everything that there is to know about a person – the information – is forced to submit to our personal ex­periences of them.  That is what is real for us.

The people you know best in life are the people that you have chosen to love.  Maybe it’s your mom, or your dad, or your child.  Can you take 3 solid minutes to describe the person you love the most in the world?

Try it.

And where did all that knowledge come from?  It came from experience.  We have seen, felt, shared, conversed, walked, talked, laughed, cried, celebrated, endured, suf­fered, and it’s led to an intimate knowledge of them.

Let me stop right here and ask you another question.  Who is God?  Can you take a solid 3 minutes and describe Him to me?

Just try it.

Is it different from the way you described the person you described a few moments ago? It usually is. Why?  Because we haven’t seen, felt, shared, conversed, walked, talked, laughed, cried, celebrated, endured, or suffered with God.  If we describe God with grandiose terms, and we haven’t truly experienced Him that way, then it’s not real knowledge.  If we know God as harsh, oppressive, or displeased with us, then we have to ask ourselves: “Where did I pick up this knowledge of God?  Did I legitimately experience this for myself?”

The source of our knowledge is the biggest problem. It’s second or third hand at best.  We live vicariously through other people’s experiences, their thoughts, their impres­sions.  We know a lot about God, but that doesn’t translate to truly knowing Him. Sometimes it even damages us.  It may even cause us to avoid Him.  We read stuff.  We hear stuff, but we don’t typically come close.

Why are we okay with second hand knowledge of God when He desires for us to come close?  Part of it may very well be that we just don’t see the worth in Him.  We make time, we pursue things that matter most to us. When Paul spoke of knowing God, he discovered the value of that knowledge to be priceless.

Philippians 3:8-9

Yes, furthermore, I count everything as loss compared to the possession of the

priceless privilege (the overwhelming preciousness, the surpassing worth, and

supreme advantage) of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord and of progressively be­

coming more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him [of perceiving and

recognizing and understanding Him more fully and clearly]. For His sake I have

lost everything and consider it all to be mere rubbish (refuse, dregs), in order

that I may win (gain) Christ (the Anointed One), And that I may [actually] be

found and known as in Him…

I started traveling from time to time shortly after our second child was born.  It was really difficult being out of town during Jadyn’s formative developmental years.  I loved calling home and asking how the baby was doing, but I hated it at the same time.  It seemed that in every conversation, Jessica would tell me something new that Jadyn was doing. I was excited for Jadyn, but I honestly was disappointed that I’d missed it.  I have to admit that I was jealous of Jessica for being there to experience it. Sure, I could come home and see her doing it again, but I’d missed the moment.

Sometimes people will babysit our kids and tell us what we’re missing when we call home.  I’m glad they’re enjoying my kids, but I’m so dissatisfied with hearing about it. I want to have that experience.

I think it’s time for us to be dissatisfied.  God desires to be known. He is great. He is mighty, powerful, patient, merciful, loving, satisfying, and all of those things we’ve heard, but we’ll never know until we experience Him for ourselves.

HOW DO WE PURSUE KNOWLEDGE ?

I find it ironic that this process of getting to know God is often in the context of some­thing many Christians in America commonly know as “Sunday School.”

If I think of it in modernistic terms, it’s academic, schoolbook knowledge. If I tell someone to gain knowledge about something, they usually will ask someone who is an expert, go to the library, read a book, or surf the web and grab it.  Wikipedia, pod-casts, Youtube and many sources abound. Bam! It’s done.

This is the way we we’re usually taught in church, and there’s a huge problem with that.

Take a look at Paul’s prayer in Ephesians again:

Ephesians 3:17-19

I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power

through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts

through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may

have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high

and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowl­

edge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

This word know again in this passage is the Greek word “ginosko.”  Here’s the un­packing of that term:

• to learn to know, come to know, get a knowledge of perceive, feel
• to become known
• to know, understand, perceive, have knowledge of
• to understand
• to become fully acquainted with, to know
• to acknowledge
• Jewish idiom for sexual intercourse between a man and a woman

The deeper we get into this word, we come to the reality that spiritual transformation is incomplete until we come to an intimate knowing of God comparable to a husband knowing his wife.

The knowledge that Adam and Eve lost at the fall was not academic.  It was rela­tional.  Relationship was intrinsic to knowledge.  And you know what?  Relationship is still instrinsic to knowledge. Nothing has changed.

Well, actually something has changed – namely, us!  We’ve been changed by God.  When we began a relationship with Jesus, a work took place in our hearts. Where we once separated from God, we now find Jesus inviting us to “come learn of Him.” Where our hearts were once darkened to the knowledge of God, the veil that once cov­ered our hearts has been removed.  We’ve now been given the “mind of Christ,” and we have His Spirit – the essence of Jesus Himself – to speak, to make Him known, and affirm in hearts who He is and who we are. We possess everything there is to truly know Him.

What does that look like in practice though?

I’m extremely careful with this question because it can so quickly lead to formulas and insincerity.  There are steps to everything these days.  Steps to prayer, steps to a better you, steps to getting what you want from God.  It’s selfish and dishonest. How insincere would it come off if on the next date you’re on, you ran that person through a formulated process in order to “get to know them?”  You think they’d hate that?  You think anyone would want that?  Of course not.  It’s at best contrived and un­natural.

How does getting to know a person happen in any relationship?  Since we’re talking about a relationship that is comparable to marriage, maybe there are some cues that can help us:

Ask the basic questions.  Ask the really tough questions.  Ask anything you want. This isn’t a theology lesson, mind you, it’s getting to know a Person. What’s it going to take to make this relationship survive? How do you really know God loves you?  Do you love Him?  If God loves you, what does that mean for the choices in your life? What are your pet peeves?  What are God’s pet peeves?

Share your struggles.  Share your first impressions.  Tell Him why you’re angry with Him. Tell Him the picture that you have of Him and ask Him to reveal Himself if there’s anything inaccurate about it. Share what the tabloids say about Him. Talk to God about the conflict someone else has with Him.

Invite Him along the ride for each and every moment of your life.  Talk to Him about the things you’ve been avoiding. Tell God a joke.  Share the beauty of nature with Him beside you.  Have regular alone moments.  Go out on dates.  Never break from conversation.

Now, go back to the things that you used to do with this different heart.  Read the Bi­ble to know Him.  Consider those words to be living and breathing spoken by the Author who’s living inside you.  Don’t get in marathon reading contests. Stop as He speaks.  Interact with Him.

Pray. But don’t let it be one-sided.  Let God respond.  Don’t even consider the notion that God might not respond.  God didn’t begin this relationship with you to generally guide you, to tease you by leaving some of His encrypted writings that would leave you dumbfounded as to their meaning, or to watch from a distance as you performed various acts in an attempt to appease Him. He speaks.  He wants you to know His voice.

Ask God to help you know the height, depth, width, and length of His love. Go back to church to experience His presence with other followers.  Attend that small group and share your first-hand experiences of God.  Challenge what you don’t know to be true in your heart.

What happens when God is truly known?  What happens when God’s love is an ex­perience rather than a cliché? What happens when God shows up in the picture moment by moment?  What happens when your relationship becomes more than just a Person in your life, but He becomes part of your identity? What happens when this Person is so tightly wrapped up in your being?

My opinion?  I think you become ONE. I think what the other Person thinks matters. I think the other Person comes up a lot – in every decision. I think you feel as ONE.  You come to share the same thoughts as that Person.  You finish His sentences.

And after you come to know Him, commit to never figuring Him out again.

I know that if I ever figure my wife out, if I ever stop discovering and re-discovering her, then our relationship is as good as dead.

Paul calls God “unsearchable”. It doesn’t mean that we can’t know Him; it’s that there is so much to Him that our finite minds could never know everything. Just when you think that you’ve figured Him out, you find another door that opens you to another dimension. Complexity isn’t frustrating. It’s beautiful.  It keeps us curious and our passion stirred.

Are you curious now?  Is your passion stirred? Then go: Find Him. Know Him. Ex­perience Him.

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