What does it mean to know God?
To know God is to recognize His voice, be well-acquainted with His ways, be able to discern His sovereign will, and be fully assured of His perfect character. The more we know God as our Lord and Best Friend, the more we can live with spiritual authority, hope, joy, and peace.
Purpose of knowing God
“You were put on this earth to achieve your greatest self, to live out your purpose, and to do it courageously.” From that definition, knowing God’s purpose for our lives means ability to understand the purpose of our creation. Understanding the specific assignment for man on earth.
Seven steps to knowing God
Step 1: You must recognize that God loves you. …
Step 2: Admit you need help. …
Step 3: Believe that Jesus Christ is the only way. …
Step 4: Receive Jesus Christ as your own Savior. …
Step 5: Acknowledge that Jesus Christ is now your Lord and friend. …
Step 6: Recognize you now belong to God’s family –the Church
We are able to think clearly when we listen to God over all other voices, regardless the source. Our hearts are satisfied as we encounter God through His Word.
Read Psalm 119:17-18
17 Deal bountifully with your servant, that I may live and keep your word. 18 Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.
These two Verses are to Pray Every Time You Open God’s Word.
The Bible teaches us that we should be abiding in God and in His Word. It teaches us that we should meditate on His Word day and night. It teaches us to talk about it, teach it, see the world through it, and live according to it. But the Bible also tells us how we should come to God’s Word, what we should be looking for, and what it should do in us. In Psalm 119:17-18 we see these three things.
The Spirit gives Life. The Psalmist pleads with God to open his eyes in order that he may see wondrous things out of His law. In other words, unless God graciously grants sight, wisdom, discernment, and beauty, the Word of God will look like lifeless, irrelevant ink and paper. Paul reveals this in 1 Corinthians 2:11-14 “For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”
Paul shows us, just like the Psalmist prays, that in order to understand the thoughts of God, and the things freely given us by God, we need the Spirit of God. The natural person will come to the word of God and in boredom see foolishness. However, even the believer can have the tendency to approach God’s Word like the old man. There are times when we as believers read a passage with impure motives simply to check a box or gain some man-centered profit. When this happens, there is no beauty being beheld. There is no conviction or reproof. There is no life being imparted. Remember Jesus Himself said that “it is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all” (John 6:63). This means that the believer must come to the Word of God.
Read Psalm 119:19-22
19 I am a stranger on earth; do not hide your commands from me.
20 My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times.
21 You rebuke the arrogant, who are accursed, those who stray from your commands.
22 Remove from me their scorn and contempt, for I keep your statutes.
I [am] a stranger in the earth
As all his fathers were, and all the saints are; not to divine and spiritual things; to God, and communion with him; to Christ, and the knowledge of him; to the Spirit, and his operations in their hearts; to their own hearts, and the plague of them; to the Gospel, and its truths; nor to the people of God, and fellowship with them: but to the world, among whom they are, not being known, valued, and respected by them; and they also behaving as strangers to the world, having no fellowship with them in their sinful works; as also not being natives here, but belonging to another city and country, an heavenly one; see ( 1 Chronicles 29:15 ) ;
Hide not thy commandments from me;
The doctrines of the Gospel, the word which God has commanded to a thousand generations; which is pure, and enlightens the eyes, and so needful to strangers in their pilgrimage, ( Psalms 19:8 ) ( 105:8 ) ; which God sometimes hides from the wise and prudent, and which the psalmist here deprecates with respect to himself, ( Matthew 11:25 Matthew 11:26 ) . Or the precepts of the world may be meant, which are a light to the feet, and a lamp to the paths, a good direction to those who travel and strangers in the way: David, being such one, prayed that these might not be hid from him, but be showed unto him; that he might know his way, and not go out of it; but walk as a child of light, wisely and circumspectly.
My soul breaks for the longing
His heart was just ready to break, and his soul fainted; he was ready to die, through a vehement desire of enjoying the object longed for, after mentioned; “hope deferred makes the heart sick”, ( Proverbs 13:1 Proverbs 13:2 ) ; the phrase is expressive of the greatness, vehemence, and eagerness of his mind after the thing he desired, which follows:
[that it hath] unto thy judgments at all times;
Not the judgments of God on wicked men, though these are desirable for the glorifying of his justice; nor his dark dispensations of providence, though good men cannot but desire and long for the time when these judgments shall be made manifest: but rather the righteous laws and precepts of God are designed, which he desired to have a more perfect knowledge of, and yield a more constant obedience unto; or, best of all, the doctrines of grace and righteousness, that should be more clearly revealed in the times of the Messiah; who was to set judgment in the earth, his Gospel; and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and glorify the justice of God; than which nothing was more earnestly and importunately wished and longed for by Old Testament saints.
Thou hast rebuked the proud
Which some understand of the fallen angels, who, in proud wrath, left their habitations, because they would not be subject to the Son of God in human nature; wherefore he scattered them in the imaginations of their hearts, and cast down these mighty ones into hell, where they are reserved in chains of darkness to the judgment of the great day. Others of the Scribes and Pharisees in Christ’s time, this psalm being suited, as is thought, to Gospel times; who were proud of their own righteousness, and despised others less holy than themselves; and submitted not to the righteousness of Christ, whom he often rebuked, and at last punished. Rather all proud atheistical persons, profane and wicked men, are meant; who, Pharaoh like, say, who is the Lord that we should obey him? who reckon, their tongues to be their own, and employ them both against God and men, and regard neither: these God resists, sets himself against, and sooner or later severely punishes; for in the things they deal proudly he is above them, ( Exodus 18:11 ) ;
[that are] cursed which do err from thy commandments;
according to the law of God, being transgressors of it, and will hear the awful sentence, “go, ye cursed”, ( Matthew 25:41 ) . The Targum, Septuagint, Vulgate Latin, and all the Oriental versions, join this with the next clause: “cursed are they which do err from thy commandments”; from the way of them, not observing them; from the end of them, Christ, not looking to him for righteousness.
Remove from me reproach and contempt
Or, “roll [it] from me” F21. It lay as a load, as a heavy burden upon him, which pressed him sore; and he therefore desired ease from it, being probably in a low frame of soul; otherwise, saints do and should rejoice when reproached for Christ’s sake; and esteem it, with Moses, more than all the treasures in Egypt, being what is common to them with their Lord.
For I have kept that testimonies;
which was the reason why he was reproached and despised; for having a regard to the word of God and embracing and professing the doctrines of it. Thus the word of the Lord was made a reproach to Jeremiah, or he was reproached for delivering it; as many good men have been vilified, and have suffered for the testimony of Jesus, ( Jeremiah 20:8 ) ( Revelation 1:9 ) ; and for walking according to the directions, of it; wicked men thinking it strange they do not run into the same excess of not with them, and therefore speak evil of them.
Read Psalm 119:23-24
23 Though rulers sit together and slander me, your servant will meditate on your decrees.
24 Your statutes are my delight; they are my counselors.
Princes also did sit and speak against me, The princes in the court of Saul, who suggested to him that David sought his hurt; the princes of his own court, Absalom, his own son, a prince of the blood, and Ahithophel, a counsellor of state: or the princes of the Gentiles, as Jarchi; so the princes of the Philistines spoke against him in a very disdainful manner, “make this fellow return to his place again”, 1 Samuel 29:4. Such as these might speak against him, as they sat and rode in their chariots; when at their tables, conversing together; or at their council boards, forming schemes against him: the phrase denotes their constant practice, as Kimchi observes; see Psalm 50:20; herein David was a type of Christ, whom the princes of this world conspired against, and whose life they took away, Psalm 2:2;
But thy servant did meditate in thy statutes; what the princes did or said against him did not divert his mind, or take off his thoughts from the word of God, and the ordinances of it; he thought of them, he spoke and discoursed of them; he declared them, as the wordF23 sometimes signifies, and so the Targum takes it here; he was not afraid nor ashamed to profess his regard unto them: as Daniel, when he knew that the presidents and princes had obtained a royal decree, and the writing was signed; yet went into his chamber, as at other times, and kneeled down and prayed to God, Daniel 6:10.
Thy testimonies also are my delight. Or “delights”F24; exceeding delightful to me. The whole of Scripture is so to a good man; he delights in the law of God, after the inward man; the Gospel is a joyful sound to him; the doctrines of peace, pardon, righteousness, and salvation by Christ, are very pleasant; the promises of it give more joy than the finding of a great spoil; and the precepts and ordinances of it are not grievous, but ways of pleasantness and peace;
And my counsellors; or, “the men of my counsel”; though David took counsel with men about affairs of state; yet concerning spiritual ones, or what related to his soul, and the concerns of that, not they, but the Scriptures, were the men of his counsel. The Gospel is the whole counsel of God relating to salvation; in it Christ, the wonderful Counsellor, gives advice to saints and sinners: the whole word of God may be profitably consulted on every occasion, and in every circumstance in which a child of God may be; all Scripture, being divinely inspired, is profitable for doctrine, for correction, and instruction in righteousness, 2 Timothy 3:16.
When we seek God through His Word, our relationship is strengthened. We Grow in Christ. This helps us face opposition and keep the right perspective concerning our lives. Only God’s Word can keep us focused and thinking clearly and correctly about life. We must listen first and foremost to God and His Word, and then test and measure all the other competing voices in light of how God commands us to live.
