Yesterday, I wrote:
It is not that we don’t know how to live for God.
It is not that we don’t have enough information about what He wants us to do.
It is not that we don’t understand the difference between right and wrong.
These are not our problems, because God has clearly revealed His will to us. Rather,
“Our problem is not an inadequate education. It is a rebellious heart” (Ravi Zacharias).
(click here if you missed yesterday’s post and want to read it first)
Today’s quote contains a similar idea, but goes a step further:
One can know a great deal about godliness without much knowledge of God.
–J. I. Packer
What Packer means is that we can have a head knowledge of God, or information about God, without truly having an intimate relationship with Him. Packer explains it a bit more fully:
It depends on the sermons one hears, the books one reads, and the company one keeps. In this analytical and technological age there is no shortage of books on the church booktables, or sermons from the pulpits, on how to pray, how to witness, how to read our Bibles, how to tithe our money, how to be a young Christian, how to be an old Christian, how to be a happy Christian, how to get consecrated, how to lead people to Christ, how to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit (or, in some cases, how to avoid receiving it), how to speak with tongues (or, how to explain away Pentecostal manifestations), and generally how to go through all the various motions which the teachers in question associate with being a Christian believer. Nor is there any shortage of biographies delineating the experiences of Christians in past days for our interested perusal.
Whatever else may be said about this state of affairs, it certainly makes it possible to learn a great deal secondhand about the practice of Christianity. Moreover, if one has been given a good bump of common sense one may frequently be able to use this learning to help floundering Christians of less stable temperament to regain their footing and develop a sense of proportion about their troubles, and in this way one may gain for oneself a reputation for being quite a pastor. Yet one can have all this and hardly know God at all.
We come back, then, to where we started. The question is not whether we are good at theology, or “balanced” (horrible, self-conscious word!) in our approach to problems of Christian living. The question is, can we say, simply, honestly, not because we feel that as evangelicals we ought to, but because it is a plain matter of fact, that we have known God, and that because we have known God the unpleasantness we have had, or the pleasantness we have not had, through being Christians does not matter to us? If we really knew God, this Is what we would be saying, and if we are not saying it, that is a sign that we need to face ourselves more sharply with the difference between knowing God and merely knowing about him.
I don’t want to know about God.
I want to know Him.
I want to be so content in my relationship with Him that neither “the unpleasantness I have had” nor “the pleasantness I have not have” matters, but only that I am walking with Him daily – learning that His Presence in my life is enough and meets all my needs.
God, I want to know you more. Help me to never settle for just knowing about You.