Knowing God

I have been reading sections of Psalm 119 this past week and have been amazed by how frequently the psalmist asks God to give him a desire for His word, to show Himself, to give him understanding, etc. The psalmist is not approaching the Lord and His word with a conjured up spirituality, as if he has to be emotionally prepped. He is earnestly dependent on the Lord for even the desire to love His precepts. This was convicting to me. How often do I deem it necessary in my prideful flesh to be "ready" for God...to be mentally psyched to "meditate"? And when it doesn't feel like it's "working," I get frustrated and depressed. In reality, the desire to know God and love His word is just as much a gift of His grace as everything else in my life. Reading through Romans, especially chapters 9-11, have brought home again the doctrine of election and the reminder that there is nothing that I have done to deserve or accomplish any means of grace. It is all a gracious gift from a loving God...for His purpose and to His glory.

Then I read this interesting quote from Packer's Knowing God:

We are, perhaps, orthodox evangelicals. We can state the gospel clearly, and can smell unsound doctrine a mile away. If anyone asks us how men may know God, we can at once produce the right formulae - that we come to know God through Jesus Christ the Lord, in virtue of His cross and mediation, on the basis of His word of promise, by the power of the Holy Spirit, via a personal exercise of faith. Yet, the gaiety, goodness, and unfettered spirit which are the marks of those who have known God are rare among us - rarer, perhaps, than they are in some other Christian circles where, by comparison, evangelical truth is less clearly and fully known.

How true! We can become so wrapped up in facts and methods and routines that the true delight of knowing God is diminished. True, we do need the disciplines of daily study in the Word and time in prayer, but these are the means to an end - it's about knowing God, not just saying that I haven't missed a day of Bible reading in a month. Dependence on God for the knowledge of Him and the desire to know and enjoy Him will hopefully do away with the, as Packer says, "dried-up stoicism" of being a Good Christian Girl, and will replace it with "joy unspeakable and full of glory" (1 Peter 1:8).

Like the psalmist, I'm praying for this in my own life and in the lives of others.