To Know Him

I have a friend who is desperate to know who her “real” father is. She has a step-father who has raised her from a young age and into her adulthood. But there’s this intense inner desire “to know him,” her biological father.

I can’t imagine not knowing my father, and there’s a part of me that’s tempted to trivialize this desire and say, “It doesn't matter! You know the father who love you and raised you, who loves your kids as his own grandkids. Who cares about the guy whose DNA you carry?” I don’t ever want to say something like that about something I don’t understand. Especially when I realize that my little girl may very well have a similar issue some day.

So, the purpose of this post is certainly not to minimize my friend’s desire to know her biological father, but I do believe that beneath her longing to know him is a deeper longing to know her Heavenly Father. She does know Him. She’s a woman of strong faith. But does she really know Him? Do I really know Him?

Our pastor is preaching a series on God’s love. This weekend, he talked about God’s desire for us to know Him. Pastor briefly mentioned a scripture in Ezekiel that says, “that they may know that I am the Lord.” He unpacked to word, “know” from this scripture. It doesn’t just mean that we know about God. It’s the deepest knowing, the same as the way a husband knows his wife – intimately. It’s a covenant love.

Well, I decided to look that scripture in Ezekiel up for myself. I went to biblegateway.com and typed in “they will know” in the New Living Translation. I found, not one, but 22 verses! But I also remembered hearing “that you will know that I am the Lord.” Maybe that’s the one Pastor was talking about. So I typed in “you will know.” I found, not 22, but 32 verses! So at least 54 times in the book of Ezekiel, God expresses His desire for us to know Him deeply and intimately.

I believe God has placed within every human being, a deep, intense desire to know Him intimately. We try so hard to quench that desire with everything from relationships, to drugs and alcohol, to ministry, to food! It’s time we all learn that the only thing that will truly quench it is to know God and open up our deepest, most inner selves to Him. That’s why I’m off to read more in the strange book of Ezekiel about God’s desire for me to know Him, my Unswerving Hope!

We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly as He knows us! 1 Corinthians 13:12 MSG