Day 24

“Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” —JOHN 17:3

A little girl one day was in deep concentration as she was drawing a picture. Her mother asked her what she was drawing and she answered, “God”. Her mother replied, “But no one knows what God looks like.” And she said, “They will now.”

No one knows what God looks like. In fact, He may not “look like” anything at all, for Colossians 1:15 says of Christ, “He is the image of the invisible God”. Yet, though He is the ‘invisible God’, Moses, “… saw him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:27). Here is a paradox that is explained in no simpler way. It is about seeing what cannot be seen!

We are finite trying to understand the infinite. We are temporal trying to understand the eternal. We are the localized trying to understand the omnipresent. Yet, despite this huge chasm between the nature of God and the knowledge of humanity, we are brought to a means of actually knowing Him. Jesus defined eternal life this way, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). That knowledge is not merely the awareness of propositional facts about God; it is experiential in nature. In scripture, God supremely reveals Himself in experience. We may believe and state that God is infinite (has no boundaries), eternal (has no beginning or end); omnipresent (is in all places); omniscient (knowing everything), omnipotent (is all powerful), immutable (is unchanging) and all of this is true. But that is not to know Him! I could recite the attributes of any person in history without knowing them.

There must come a moment when we move from saying ‘I know what I have believed’ to saying, ‘I know whom I have believed’ (2 Timothy 1.12). It has become personal experience of God. It is then the Christian life comes alive and the Scriptures become powerful and active. We know God in Christ. That is where we, ‘see him who is invisible’, and enjoy that life giving fellowship with God – which is to know Him.

PRAYER: Dear Father, Thank You for the wonderful privilege and blessing of personally experiencing You. That’s how I see You. That’s how I know You and I

pray that I come to know You more and more for You are my life!

TO REFLECT UPON: How have I most recently experienced God and what did that reveal to me about Him?