Knowing God - Part 2: It’s the Second Kind of Knowing

 

“Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods.”

—Galatians 4:8-

In the last post, I suggested that “Knowing God” seems like a pretty important part of spiritual formation. I also wrote about the knowing of the mind. The assimilation of knowledge through nature, through Jesus Christ the Living Word,, and through reading the Bible.

In this post I want to consider another kind of “knowing.” This knowing involves actual first-hand, palpable experience. It is a knowing of the soul, the very essence of a woman or a man.

As I shared in the previous post, the Apostle Paul writing in Galatians 4:8-9 makes this declaration:

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods.

But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable forces? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?

The second kind of knowing entwines actual experience with an exchange of mind and heart between a Lover and His beloved child. Such a knowing takes a lifetime of close fellowship. It involves a daily relationship of trust in the Lover by the beloved.

It involves the bending of the beloved’s will to the greater, wiser, and more perfect will of the Lover.

The pathway of obedience, of which I have so often written and of which I truly believe is our only contribution to our relationship with God, is held secure by the total, obedient submission of our will to God’s will.

We learn how to submit by submitting. We learn how to trust by trusting. We learn how to love by loving. We learn how to know God by knowing.

Sometimes our lesson involves a swift change in direction that leaves us reeling. But, in the end, we learn how to expect the unexpected.

And, at the end of our road, we come to know God through a process that will last for eternity.

 

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