Can I Know God Personally?

Can I know God personally?

Yes. But are you sure you want to?

I mean that question seriously. So seriously that I ask it of myself, and tremble in doing so. I do not take it for granted that I know God. Perhaps what I mean by that will become clear as I go on with this message.

I will begin with the stories of two men who thought they knew God but who came to a point in their lives where they weren’t so sure.

The first man was C. S. Lewis. Lewis was an atheist scholar who became a Christian in his early 30s. He then wrote many Christians works, including Mere Christianity and The Chronicles of Narnia. He had been a life-long bachelor until his late 50s. He then married a friend, Joy Gresham, who was soon diagnosed with terminal cancer. She was expected to die within weeks, but then made a miraculous recovery, and they had a blissful marriage. Lewis wrote, “Friendship gave way to pity which became love.” They loved each other dearly, and lived in the delight of unexpected life and unexpected romance. Then two years later the cancer returned, and she died. In the throes of his sorrow, Lewis wrote a classic memoir, A Grief Observed, in which he wrote the following:

Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be – or so it feels – welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?...Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not “So there’s no God after all,” but “So this is what God’s really like.”

Question: did C. S. Lewis know God? Please understand, he’s my idol. Part of me wants to ask, before answering too quickly the question “Can I know God personally?”, did C. S. Lewis know God personally? And if so, then how could he come to a point where he felt no connection with God whatsoever - or, still believing in God, could suspect that God was perhaps very different from what he had imagined him to be?

Second story concerns Gordon MacDonald. He was the pastor of an influential church in New England, eventually became president of the campus ministry Intervarsity. Around 1984 he was asked to be a candidate for head of an international Christian organization. I don’t know which one; he did not identify it. During the candidating process he later wrote that neither he nor his wife Gail had “ever asked God for omens or signs to determine future direction, but during these weeks, the dots seemed to line up. The books we read, the conversations we held, the prayers we prayed, the voice of God we heard in our souls – everything pointed to my getting this position. We felt God was saying, ‘This is going to happen.’” After his final interview when it had come down to him and one other candidate, his wife Gail said to him, “They’re going to ask you to be the next president.” He said, “That surprised me, because Gail is not prone to such pronouncements.”

So he prepared his resignation from the church he was serving, and called his staff together to tell them what was happening and that he would probably be moving on. Then he got the phone call telling him that the organization was going with the other candidate.

He wrote this:

Ten days later the full force of what happened crushed me. I submarined into the depths of disillusionment. At a subterranean level, I told God, “You’ve made a perfect fool of me. You drew me to the finish line and said, ‘I’m sorry.’ I no longer know your language. You speak a different language than I’ve been trained to understand.” I was questioning God, something I had never really done. I doubted whether it was possible to hear God speak.

I repeat my question: Did Pastor Gordon MacDonald know God personally? And if so, how could he be so baffled, so utterly wrong about what he presumed to be the leading of God that he could wind up saying, “God, you and I speak different languages. I don’t know yours. I have no idea what you’re saying.”

This problem is an old one. In Proverbs 30: 2-3 a man named Agur confesses, Surely I am too stupid to be a man. I have not the understanding of a man. I have not learned wisdom, nor do I have knowledge of the Holy One. That’s a strong statement from a teacher in Israel: “You’re asking me about God? What do I know about God?”

In response to the problem I have posed in these allusions to the experiences of others, let me offer a few thoughts arranged briefly under four headings.

First, knowing God is not the same as knowing about God.

We all know intuitively the difference between knowing someone and knowing about someone. I know some things about Lebron James and Meryl Streep and Joe Biden, but I don’t know them. And part of the proof that I don’t know them is the fact that they don’t know me. I could pick them out of a lineup because they are celebrities, but if you put me in a lineup in front of them, they would not pick me out as an acquaintance, and they wouldn’t know my name in the first place.

Likewise we can have significant knowledge about God the way we know about a celebrity, but not know him at all. The clearest indication of that is James 2:19 which says, You believe there is one God. Good! The demons believe that – and shudder. Demons are orthodox monotheists. There are no atheist demons. Demons are evil but they aren’t stupid. They even believe in the deity of Christ, his death on the cross for sinners, his resurrection from the dead. Their theological sophistication is advanced and accurate. But they do not know God. And just as Lebron James and Meryl Streep and Joe Biden don’t know me, so also, in the end, demons and all the damned will be declared unknown by Jesus Christ. That is shown to be the case in his awful words of judgment in Matthew 7:23: “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.”

Knowing about God is not the same as knowing him. You can know a lot about God and still be an evil reprobate whom Jesus could not pick out of a lineup.

Number 2: Knowing God is not the same as understanding God.

Job 11:7 says, Can you fathom the deep things of God? Can you discover the limits of the Almighty? The answers to those rhetorical questions are no and no. God is beyond us. We cannot fathom his ways.

Isaiah 55:8-9: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

An illustration might help convey that point. For those of you who have a pet dog, does your dog know you? Yes of course. The dog wags its tail at you and barks at a stranger. The dog knows what you smell like. We have all seen those videos of a soldier coming home from a tour of duty and the dog practically leaps out of its skin to welcome its master home. The dog knows its master. But does the dog understand its master? I little bit, I suppose. The dog recognizes its name when called. Maybe it knows a few simple commands – “sit,” “stay,” heel.” “Sic ‘im,” if it’s a warrior dog.

But ask yourself, does your dog know what you do for living? Of course not, it doesn’t have a clue. Does the dog know what you study in school? Your dog is illiterate. In this congregation I see Asian faces before me, and as an honorary Asian myself I get to stereotype. I bet some of you can do calculus. There may be some here who have solved differential equations, which is farther than I ever got. Well, your dog doesn’t even know the square root of 9. Your dog can’t add 7 and 4. And the gap between you and your dog’s comprehension of you is far, far narrower than the gap between God and your comprehension of him.

God is beyond our comprehension. You can believe in God, obey God, love God, and know God. But you’re not going to understand God fully, or comprehend more than rudimentary things about him. The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 11:33-34, Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Do not confuse knowing God with understanding God. The first is possible, the second is not. There will always be things about him that leave you stumped.

Number 3: Knowing God is not a matter of knowing what God is up to or what he is going to do.

There are exceptions to that, as when God reveals to a prophet some news about a future event and or reveals something about present or past reality which would normally be opaque. But more often than not, those things which are future to us or normally hidden from us remain hidden from us by God’s design and mercy. Both C. S. Lewis and Gordon MacDonald were mistaken about what they assumed to be God’s plan and purpose.

They’re not alone. King Josiah was probably the godliest of all 39 kings of Israel and Judah. He was a remarkable man. Do you know how he died? He got involved in a battle that frankly he should have stayed out of. Pharaoh Neco of Egypt went up to engage the king of Assyria, and Josiah went out to intercept him. It is recorded in 2 Kings 23 and 2 Chronicles 35. Josiah got killed in the process. Basically he made a mistake - he really should have stayed home. He wasn’t a bad man, he was a profoundly good man – but that did not keep him from being fundamentally mistaken about the victory that he seemed to assume that God would give him over Pharaoh Neco.

Great humility is in order for all of us lest we presume that our acquaintance with God makes us unerringly privy to the things that he is doing now or will do in the future. In James 4:13-15, Jesus’ half-brother James writes this: Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

Humility about human knowledge of the plan of God is reflected beautifully in one little word that St. Paul uses in Philemon verse 15. As he is writing a letter to reunite Onesimus with Philemon Paul writes Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back forever. Note that word “perhaps”. Paul does not say, “I know what God was up to in these circumstances. I’ve got it figured out.” No, he says, “perhaps” - “perhaps this is the reason.” God alone knows.

I try to be rigorous in my caution about statements that suggest that I know what God is doing and what his plans are. In 2003, after serving for some time as pulpit supply at Faith Bible Church I was called to be the pastor there. They had a ceremony installing me as pastor, and a Chicago area minister graciously agreed to officiate. He even wrote up a statement for me to repeat, kind of like a wedding vow. I wish I had a copy of it. Because I don’t remember the exact wording. But it was something along the lines of, “I know that God is calling me to serve this congregation as its pastor and faithfully to lead the people in proclamation of the Word and discipleship etc.” I contacted him beforehand and said, “I can’t say this, because while it does reflect my thinking, the truth is I don’t even know if I will be alive one minute from now. God has not revealed even that much to me, much less what his future designs are for this fellowship with me as its pastor. There is nothing in my theology that would make it impossible for an asteroid to wipe out the church building tonight! What I can say is “perhaps” and “maybe” and “if God so wills.” But I make no claims to be privy to the mind of God concerning his future plans in such matters. I don’t know him that well.

Does that mean that we never know the mind of God about anything? No, I would never go that far. I know it is God’s will that I not covet anything that belongs to my neighbor. I know it is God’s will that I not bear false witness, or be unfaithful to my wife, or steal, or that I take his name in vain, or worship other gods. I know it is his will that I love him with all my heart soul mind and strength, and that I love my neighbor as myself.

And that leads to my 4th observation about knowing God. My first 3 observations were all negative. Knowing God is not a matter of knowing about him. The demons know about him. It is not a matter of fully comprehending him and his ways. Nobody comprehends very much of him. It is not a matter of being confident in your own mind that you know what he’s up to and what he is going to do. The best of us make mistakes with those kinds of guesses.

My 4th observation is positive. Knowing God – knowing him “personally,” if you will - is a matter of obeying him. The Bible makes that simple point again and again and again.

In Jeremiah 22:15-16, Jeremiah is speaking to King Shallum (also known as Jehoahaz), who was a bad man. Shallum, believe it or not, was the son of Josiah, who as I mentioned before was the godliest king that Israel or Judah ever had. God speaks to Shallum through the prophet Jeremiah, saying, Your father did what was right and just, so all went well with him. He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me? declares the Lord.

God equates doing what is right and just - for example, defending the cause of the poor and the needy - with knowing him. Josiah himself may have guessed very poorly about what God was up to. And as that battle against Pharaoh Neco went horribly wrong, perhaps as Josiah lay on the battlefield mortally wounded and bleeding out, he thought, “I guess I don’t know God after all. I don’t speak his language; he doesn’t speak mine. This didn’t work out the way I thought. Surely I am more stupid than any man and have no knowledge of the Holy One. If I knock on the door of heaven, will he hear me or bolt the door?” But whether he knew it or not, he knew God. His goodness, faithfulness, justice, fairness, and generosity were barometric indicators all proving that he knew God. And much more important, that God knew him, and would never say to him, “Depart from me you worker of iniquity. I never knew you,” but rather, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Welcome into the joy of your Master.”

Knowing God is a matter of obeying him. So many passages teach this. 1 John 2:3-4 says, And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

1 John 3:6: No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

Titus 1:16, speaking of the morally corrupt: They claim to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.

One more text with this theme: 1 John 4:7-8: Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Love of course is the principle commandment. Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength, and the second greatest is to love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and prophets hang on these two commandments, Jesus said.

I began this talk by referring to two men, C. S. Lewis and Gordon MacDonald, who both came to awful moments of despair where they both wondered, “Do I know God at all – does he hear me, do I hear him, have all my assumptions been wrong?” It’s a terrible place to be. But at this point in their lives, the paths of these two men diverged. C S Lewis said his prayers, went to church, remained faithful, trudged one weary foot after another in painful obedience to what he knew to be right, and in a short time he recovered his spiritual bearings. I wonder if in his moments of darkness he recalled his own words written some 20 years earlier in The Screwtape Letters, which is an imaginary correspondence from a senior demon who coaches his nephew, Wormwood, on the art of tempting human beings. In Letter number 8, Screwtape writes this,

Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

Gordon MacDonald, on the other hand, went and had an extramarital affair. He did this over a period of several months despite having pastored a church and serving as Chairman of World Vision and President of Intervarsity. He cheated on his wife. Let me be clear. We are to love God and love our neighbor. Adultery is a selfish act of hatred against God and neighbor. Adultery expresses hatred of God, hatred of one’s spouse, and hatred of one’s children. It is one massive middle finger stuck in the face of God saying "Forget you, God. I know what you said about faithfulness and keeping my vows, but I value my pleasure over my spouse, my kids, my extended family, my church, and you, and incidentally the person whose life and faith I am probably destroying by cheating with her or him."

So my question now is, which man knew God, Gordon MacDonald or C. S. Lewis?

When Gordon MacDonald thought, “God, you and I don’t speak the same language. I doubt it is possible to hear you speak,” somebody needed to slap him upside the head and say, “Of course he speaks your language, you fool! Haven’t you heard that he has said things like, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery'? How hard is that to understand?"

God can be known, but he can only be known through obedience, and he cannot be known apart from obedience. That is why I gave what may have sounded like a strange answer to the question, “Can I know God personally?” Yes! But are you sure you want to? Because knowing God will involve being fully conformed to his image and fully submissive to his will, and that will entail an often painful process that you and I as corrupt sinners cannot begin to imagine. Even so, there will be some who say, “Yes, I want that. I want God. I want to know him, even it hurts, even if it costs me something, even if it costs me everything. I want to know my Maker, and be just the way he wants me to be.”

For such people I have good news. God loves you, and he has scaled himself down to human form in the person of Jesus Christ who died in order to bear the penalty for sin and forgive sinners, and he rose again from the dead with the kind of resurrection life that he pledges to give to all who follow him. Earlier I compared us to a dog, a pet dog who frankly understands very little of its master, but knows its master well enough to recognize his voice, detect his scent, and wag its tail in ecstatic delight when the master comes calling. The Bible does not call God’s loved ones "dogs." It prefers the term "sheep," which are even dumber than dogs. But I don’t mind that veiled insult when I read the words of Jesus, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”

Let us pray.

God, thank you for making yourself knowable through Jesus Christ. Grant to those of us who lack it a thirst to know you more. Hold before us the delight of being conformed to the image of your Son through whom we will increase in knowledge, in grace, in truth, and in love. To your everlasting glory through Jesus, Amen.