Knowing God

"How shall we learn to enjoy God? How obtain such an all-sufficient soul-satisfying portion in him as shall enable us to let go the things of this world as vain and worthless in comparison? I answer, This happiness is to be obtained through the study of the Holy Scriptures... The more we know of God, the happier we are... What will make us so exceedingly happy in heaven? It will be the fuller knowledge of God... It is absolutely needful in order that happiness in the Lord may continue, that the Scriptures be regularly read... Especially we should read regularly through the Scriptures, consecutively, and not pick out here and there a chapter. If we do, we remain spiritual dwarfs. I tell you so affectionately. For the first four years of my conversion I made no progress, because I neglected the Bible. But when I regularly read on through the whole with reference to my own heart and soul, I directly made progress. Then my peace and joy continued more and more. Now I have been doing this for 47 years. I have read through the whole Bible about 100 times and I always find it fresh when I begin again. Thus my peace and joy have increased more and more.” – George Mueller

It’s strange how popular Christian culture can have nothing to do with knowing God. We sing, “I want to know you” on a Sunday and go back to lives that don’t carry any real evidence that we mean that. We go to church to be entertained or feel self-helped, without a consciousness of the weightiness of God. The gospel becomes advice, not news—it helps us without transforming us. We want to know God’s will because we want knowledge about what to do, not wisdom about who to be. We want to be spoon-fed spiritual food in a palatable manner rather than learn to feed ourselves. We ask more than we listen in our prayers. 

Recently I heard this quote from A.W. Tozier: “The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of him. It begins in the mind and may be present where no overt act of worship has taken place… The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true.” It is probably inevitable that our culture seeps into our faith, but the dangerous thing is when we don’t see it—and I don’t know any other way to see it than to step outside of myself and my culture and my history by reading the Bible. 

Dave asked me what it’s like now that I’ve finished memorizing Ephesians—what I think it’s really done is taught me how to meditate. I’m in the long-term consolidation part of the process, where I recite the book once a day for one hundred days: what that feels like is stepping into an alternate reality. It helps me see how deep the roots of my culture and selfishness go, and how shocking, how beautiful and powerful, reality is. Meditation is marination, stepping out of our cultural river and sinking into the pool of the Word, sitting with it and letting it surround me.

Lately I’ve discovered a way of doing daily Bible reading that for once seems to stick. It takes reading beyond just the ticking off of a box, that I may or may not get to; beyond the words just glossing over me without entering into me. The technique, from Cordiero’s book The Divine Mentor, is pretty simple. I pick a regular time of day (no judgment, he says, if it’s not the morning: mine never is). I associate it with something good (a cup of tea always, often chocolate or a nice snack). I read the section of the Bible listed for that day in my reading plan (if one misses, he says, forget about the missed day and resume on-schedule). During the reading, I ask that the Holy Spirit speaks to me about one verse, or two verses in a row—many things may jump out, but I pick one. If something I read confuses me, I don’t bother about it. Then I journal using S.O.A.P. (not, as we were taught in med school, Subjective, Objective, Assessment and Plan): I write out the scripture (S), write one paragraph of observation about it (O), write out how it changes my day or any other applications to my life (A), and write out a short prayer (P). Whole thing under one page. Then I think of a brief title, write that at the top, and index that page (listing title, page number, scripture reference, and date). Whole process happens in thirty minutes.

I could write on about all the things I am learning about God—I wish this was something we talked about more, our communion with God, something we asked each other about more—but I do think Mueller’s right. The result of it all is satisfaction in God. I’ve found that’s what I feel like saying to all the problems my friends have: find your satisfaction in God! Let him be your joy! Know him! Will the rest even matter? Much less so. Who is it that we love and worship, anyway? How well do we know Him? Are we pressing in to do so?