Getting to Know God

When digging deeper into God’s Word, we can discover all sorts of new things. Getting to know God will make our life’s paths straighter.

This past summer, I took a class through our church to learn better how to study God’s Word. I’ve been studying God’s Word for years and learning through many resources. I admit, I didn’t expect to learn much during this beginner class, but I did learn a lot during this eight-week course. I learned I didn’t know as much as I thought I did. 

Gaining more knowledge and understanding about how to study God’s Word has been a huge blessing. In fact, I bought one of the recommended resources, The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. This book has about 500,000 Scripture references to help one discover the truths of the Bible. It’s a bit daunting.

Dictionary Fallacy

One of the biggest lessons I learned during my summer course was learning the error we make when we see a word in the Bible, and we look up the definition in our English dictionary. Guess what? “Our dictionary definition is for the English word, not the original Greek or Hebrew word!” And our modern definitions may be quite different from the original definition.

You may remember me writing about Big Red in some past blog posts. Well Big Red is my old Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary I’ve used countless times to define words and Bible verse meaning. Ugh! I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And that leads me to something new I discovered today.

Acknowledge Getting to Know God

This morning in my journal I acknowledged how hard it is to write daily when I don’t know what I’ll be writing about or when. It may seem ridiculous to some, but this is one way I’ve learned to be dependent on Jesus. We must trust Him if we are going to have Him lead us.

Immediately, Proverbs 3:5-6 came to my mind.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” (ESV)

Want to know what jumped out at me? The word acknowledge. So, you guessed it, I looked it up. Only I don’t use Big Red anymore to look up the meaning of words in the Bible. I use the Blue Letter Bible app, which gives me the Greek and Hebrew meanings.

Did you know acknowledge in Strong’s H3045 Old Testament Hebrew is yāḏaʿ? And it means “know, known, knowledge, perceive, shew, tell, wist, understand, certainly, acknowledge, acquaintance, consider, declare, teach.”

So, in Proverbs 3:6, “In all your ways acknowledge him,” this means that we are to know God. In all our ways we are to get acquainted with, understand, and have knowledge of God. We get to know Him through spending time with Him, reading His Word, studying His Word, and praying to Him. We also can get to know God through our hearing and seeing (Isaiah 6:9) and experiences (Job 5:25).

We need to get to know God first. That’s when our curvy paths become straight.

Listen and Seek

Each morning during this November New Challenge, I spend time with God. But it’s as the day goes on that the blurry, curvy path of what I will be writing becomes clearer and straighter. I need to listen for God first. I need to seek Him first. I need to experience Him first. That’s when He reveals the path forward.

I gain more knowledge and understanding as I turn my ear to listen for Him. When I look for Him and search for Him, I will find Him, and I get to know Him. 

The same can happen for you. Acknowledge getting to know God. In everything, we first must acknowledge that we need to get know Him before we actually do get to know Him. But then seek Him. Listen for Him. Search and you will find. What a wonderful discovery He is. Getting to know God is the biggest blessing of all.

Blessing

May you spend time getting to know God this November. Turn your ear to Him. Listen for Him. May you search for the God who loves you that you may be blessed and get to know the One who is above all.