Knowing God through His Word — Part 12
A conversation with God?
It may sound simplistic, even anthropomorphic, to say that we come to know God through His Word just as we get to know people as we talk with them, but it is true. Despite learned theological and philosophical discussions about the hiddenness of God, God talks with us. He does not hide from any who truly seek Him. Remember Mendelssohn’s Elijah,
If with all your heart you truly seek me,
You shall ever surely find me,’ thus saith our God?
It is straight from the Bible. God promised,
And you shall seek me, and find me, when you shall search for me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:13 KJV
Jesus did not hide His identity from those closest to Him, but, despite His wisdom, miracles and love, His own brothers didn’t seem to believe that He was God until after His resurrection. Jesus healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, restored life to the dead and spoke of who He was in front of many people. He taught daily in the temple, yet those locked into opposing belief systems hardened their hearts and were incapable of understanding the truth of who He was. Speaking of them, He said,
That is why I use these parables, for they look, but they don’t really see. They hear, but they don’t really listen or understand. Matthew 13:13
That hasn’t changed much in 2,000 years; it is the same today. Although God often speaks to those who aren’t seeking Him, at times He will only open our understanding when we are honestly interested, seeking, and open to Him. It makes sense because for Christians Truth is a Person, Jesus Christ. He was, is, and ever will be God’s Living Word.
Therefore, in getting to know God through His Word, it helps to remember that Jesus, God’s Living Word, was a man. His human life began as an infant. He was a person, just like you and me. Because He is, was, and always will be truly God as well as truly man, in and through Him God choose to meet us in all of our humanness.
The Word came in the flesh, and lived for a time in our midst, so that we saw His glory—the glory as of the Father’s only Son, sent from His presence. He was full of grace and truth. John 1:14 Weymouth
If Jesus was fully human like us, consider, how much of us, our real inner selves, do we reveal to people who lack interest? If you are at all like me, you don’t disclose too much about yourself to strangers or to people who discount you and might doubt your word. I’m quite tight lipped around people who are convinced of their own ideas about me. I open up to my friends. So did Jesus.
It takes time to get to know people, to make and to keep any human friendship that is imbued with the capacity to grow in intimacy and trust. Building even deeper committed love relationships takes even more time. Lovers study one another’s faces and spend hours exchanging their histories and stories. They meet one another’s friends, learn each other’s tastes and ways, try to understand their views, and discover their feelings. Similarly, growing a history with God and learning His ways and voice takes time and intentionality too.
Courting couples often carefully plan and prepare for dates with one another and intentionally share a variety of activities. Lovers of God often study His Word through carefully structured studies: topical studies, chronological studies, character studies, place studies, book and passage studies, devotional studies, and word studies.
Studying the Bible to get to know God is analogous to getting to know another person. When love begins to grow between two people, almost everything, even the smallest details about them, become alive and interesting. Their growing relationship builds and sustains their interest in one another. When we study God’s Word, relationship is the key to understanding, to getting to know Him.
But a relationship with God is quite different from other relationships. That’s because God is Spirit, as Jesus said,
God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. John 4:24
That means we relate to His Spirit with our spirit through the Holy Spirit. In the natural realm of earth, people generally relate to one another soul to soul and body to body as well as spirit to spirit. When I first met my husband, I was attracted by his looks and when he first saw me he thought I was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. That’s relating body to body, like the first time we held hands. As we became acquainted, we shared our interests in literature, music, and art. We talked about our values and our feelings. That’s soul to soul. But I didn’t grow in love for my husband because he was a six foot one blonde with horned rimmed glasses or because we valued courtesy or enjoyed music together. I grew to love him because of his spirit, an invisible something that sets him apart from all other men.
Our human spirits are made to connect with God’s Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit vitalizes all Bible study. In a mysterious, supernatural way Holy Spirit takes inert words from a page or computer screen and brings them to life inside of believers. God’s written Word can stab hearts with unexpected light; bring comfort or courage; teach, exhort or admonish. When the Holy Spirit enlivens God’s Word within a person, it is relational; it is like entering into a conversation with God.
Have you ever had the experience I wrote about in the last essay? One where reading a Bible text feels dead, dull and inert? The words are flat and ordinary until suddenly a line, phrase, verse or concept jumps out, as if invisibly highlighted. It speaks to your mind and heart. When that happens, God is speaking to you through His Holy Spirit.
I’ll never forget the wonder of two well-read agnostic college students who decided to read through the Bible together out of curiosity. They began with Genesis as an intellectual and cultural exercise. Later, they said, “It was amazing. The words felt alive; they seemed to come off the page. We’d never read a book that talked back to us before.” Both became Christians.
Countless people throughout history love their Bible reading and Bible study as conversation with the one and only, omniscient, all-powerful, omnipresent Creator God. Saints like St. Francis and George Fox, preachers like the Wesley brothers, evangelists like Billy Graham and Reinhard Bonnke and believers like my neighbor, an elderly woman who humbly goes about helping others, all read their Bibles with the expectation that God will speak directly to them through His written word.
In my next essays on Knowing God through His Word, I will discuss a few hindrances that silence God’s voice and how to overcome them and position ourselves to hear God in His Word.
