Knowing God

You know much has been said about National Day of Prayer. For me it was an encouraging and hopeful day. It was a day where people across this nation stopped and lifted prayers to our glorious God. It has caused me to reflect upon this day and upon prayer. This year my home fellowship group is studying prayer, and it has been so helpful in my prayer life. With all these things converging, I asked myself; why pray?

You know there are a number of good answers, we are commanded to, we pray to praise God, request things, thank, confess, worship and all those are important, but something really exciting to me is that prayer provides a way of knowing God.

A.W. Tozier minister and author of Pursuit of God had this to say about prayer:
"So when we sing, draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord, we are not thinking of the nearness of place, but of the nearness of relationship. It is for increasing degrees of awareness that we pray for a more perfect consciousness of the divine Presence."

And Oswald Chambers minister and author of My Utmost for His Highness said this:
"Our ordinary views of prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer as a means of getting something for ourselves; the biblical idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself."

Isn’t that an amazing thought; that through prayer we can truly know God. I think we can find it in scripture. In Jeremiah 24 we find this verse;

7 I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the LORD. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.

Can you see it? Can you see the call to know God and that prayer is our means to knowing our great and glorious God. Now just what does that mean and what can we learn from this one verse? I think we can peel back three things here.

First, through prayer we get to know God by having a relationship with Him. You can see it in this verse, our gracious God gives us a heart to know Him, to know that He is our God and we are His people and what a beautiful relationship it is. I just love the verse in Revelations 3 that gives us another picture;

20Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.

Even though Revelations 3 is a warning of sorts, it shows us that to know God is relational and requires a means of not only talking to, but a means of connecting and that brings us to our second point.

That through prayer we get to know God by communicating with him. We can see it in Jeremiah where God tells us we will be a people that return to Him. However, we must return as a people who recognize their brokenness and as a people who can return to their God only by the sacrifice of Christ. And the way we return, the way we communicate is through prayer. We can find this communication throughout scripture and we can even see that God hears our communication; our prayer. Let’s quickly look at Isaiah 38;

'This is what the LORD, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears

Brother Lawrence described it this way; "There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God."

Isn’t that so comforting? We, through prayer can have a continual conversation with God. And as we do, as we have a relationship with Him and as we communicate with Him an amazing thing happens which brings us to our last point.

That through prayer we get to know God by loving Him. We see it in Jeremiah 24 as we are not only a people that return to our God, a people that establish a relationship, that communicate, but that we return to our God with all our hearts. It is so clear that as we get to know God we are to love Him. I just love Deuteronomy 6:4-5;

4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. [a] 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

So what has become clear to me is that through our prayers we come to truly know God. Through prayer the communication starts, the relationship begins and the love between God and His people grows. The great theologian, J. I. Packer had this to say about knowing God:

"Knowing God involves a personal relationship whereby you give yourself to God on the basis of his promise to give Himself to you. Knowing God means asking for His mercy and resting on His undertaking to forgive sinners for Jesus’ sake. Further it means becoming a disciple of Jesus, the living Savior who is there today, calling the needy to Himself as he did in Galilee. Knowing God, in other words, involves faith- assent, consent, commitment – and faith expresses itself in prayer.

Finally, we have been brought to the point where we both can and must get our life’s priorities straight. But it is tragic that so many in our day seem to have been distracted from what was, is and always will be the true priority for every human being – that is learning to know God in Christ".

Isn’t that our real challenge, the challenge for each of us is how are we getting to know God? How are we spending out time? If you have three minutes watch this video.

Isn’t that so true? Life seems so busy, but again what are our priorities? Phillip Yancey wrote a great book and study on Prayer and in it he says that he is so busy, but in all his busyness he still finds time for the important things – things like e-mail, favorite shows, and the list goes on. You know if we will admit it we do make time for the things we really want to do. Yancey goes on to point out that "if prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer."

Let that be our encouragement; May we all learn more about prayer, may we all pray more, and may we all know God!

Grace and Peace!