Knowing God
In today’s world, we are surrounded by books, how-to guides, and speakers who all talk about how you can know God. They lay out plans and multistep programs, all based on their personal knowledge or what they say they believe. While some of these guides are right on the money, most of them are distortions of Christianity at best. They over-complicate things, knowing God, according to the Bible is very simple. John lays out a simple list of ways to find out if you’re close to God in 1 John 2:3-11.
The first question we need to ask ourselves to find out if we know God, is if we keep His commandments. If we truly know and follow God, we’re going follow His laws. How can we say we follow God and know Him if we ignore His commandments? Or worse, how can we say we follow God if we don’t know His commandments? If we truly want to know God and follow Him, we need to not only study His Word so that we know what He wants us to do, but we need to do it as well. Like John says, if we say that abide with Him, we should walk as He did.
The second question, in 1 John 2:15-17 is how we view the world. If we love the things of the world rather than loving God, we don’t abide with Him. God should be the focus of our lives, not the world. The world is going to pass away, while God is going to exist forever. Where should we put our focus? On the things that don’t last, or the thing that does last? More and more, Christians are putting more of an emphasis on the world, making comments about not ready for God to come back because they’re not ready to leave their lives here. That is not right, this world is not our home, we’re just here till Jesus comes back. Yes, life here be good, and we can do a lot for God here, but, we never should put a greater emphasis on the world than we do on God. How about us, do we sometimes push God off to the side so we can do stuff in the world?
The final question, in 1 John 2:22-23, is how we view Jesus. If we deny that Jesus is the Christ, we’re denying God. We can’t deny Christ, and still have God. A lot of cults teach that Jesus was just a good man, or that He wasn’t God. All of these cults, by that single belief alone, prove that they are not of God.
So, to know God and abide with Him, we need to obey His laws, love Him more than anything, and accept that Jesus is Christ. Sounds much easier than following multistep guides and full-length books, doesn’t it? Man complicates things of God. Let’s look at our lives, can we say that we know God?
