Do You Know Him?

“We often try to get “good” to get to God. We need to get God to get to “good”.” (Harry Stegall) It’s not what you know… It’s who you know… Read that opening line a couple of times and let it sink in. I am around Christians all of the time all over this world. It seems that the newest fad in the “Christian Religion” is knowing all you can know about God and His works. The idea is that if you know enough about something, you can do it. Take healing for instance. When I was a young pastor I tried to tap in to God’s healing power. I had prayed for Healing many times before. Lots of people were healed. That was not good enough for me. I wanted everyone I prayed for to be healed. I soon conceived the thought that I did not know enough about healing. If I knew more about healing, I could provide more healing. I had been praying for Healing through the stripes on Jesus’ back. But in studying I found out that the original text might have said stripe not stripes. Had I been missing out on healing because I was using the word “stripes” not “stripe”? I dug and dug. I wanted to know Hebrew and Greek and get the exact details concerning the full knowledge of Healing. God abruptly got in the middle of my business one afternoon in my kitchen and gave me a great revelation. He impressed upon me that I don’t need to know anything about healing, it is the Healer I needed to know. This is not a book strictly about healing. My point in this story is to illuminate our human flaw in seeking faith from knowledge. Have you ever been at this place? We get to a point that we think we just need to know more. We believe we need to know more before we can witness or we need to know more before we do mission work. The list goes on and on. God said we need to know one thing… HIM. What does it mean to know someone? You might know a lot about our President. That does Not mean you will know Him. In fact, if you look at your every day life and the people that you know, you will find that you don’t really “know” very many of them at all. You just have this superficial relationship with most people based around some common ground that you share with them like work, hobbies, kids, etc. To know someone is to have a connection with them. Biblically, God wants us to “know” Him like we “know” our spouse. This type of knowing is sexual in nature. We need to seek an intimate relationship with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We often catch ourselves knowing all about God and not really knowing Him at all. Don’t worry too much. You are not the only one who has been guilty of a shallow relationship with the Almighty. It has been going on since the beginning of time. Other than leaders, priests and prophets very few people in the Old Testament knew God. Most of them called on someone to go to God for them in times of need. Have you been guilty of that? You might feel fine when praying for raises, safe trips, and good meals but, when you really need God, you call on someone else to talk to Him for you. My wife and I get an amazing number of phone calls asking us to pray for people and their situations. Don’t get me wrong, I love to pray for people, but I don’t have a different communication connection with God than you do. We always tell people when they request our prayers, “You must realize God listens to you too”. They usually respond with, “I know He does but you seem to get better results”. Well that statement is exactly the reason I am writing this book. I want you to know that you need to know God. I also want you to know that we have a very knowable God. I am afraid that many Churches portray th