Is it possible to know God? We are far removed from the days when Jesus walked the earth. It would have been wonderful to see Him, to see Him having mercy on people and healing them. And His wisdom when He spoke would have been unsurpassed. And to see Him after He rose from the dead, that would have been amazing. It would have been much easier to believe in Him then than it is now, in our troubled world. In John 20 when Thomas still doubted, he saw Jesus risen from the dead. Jesus told Thomas to put his hand in His side and Thomas exclaimed, “My Lord and my God”. What did Jesus say then? Verse 29 says “Because you have seen Me, have you now believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed”.
It is a prophetic word to our generation, to all of us who did not see what Thomas saw, “Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed”. For those of us who have believed in Jesus without seeing Him in the flesh, Jesus has pronounced a blessing, a blessing on us! We are blessed when we come to know Him.
How do we really know that we have come to know Him? This how we know, if we accept Jesus and obey His commands set forth in the scriptures. 1 John 2:3-6 says “By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever follows His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says that he remains in Him ought, himself also, walk just as He walked”.
When I came to know Him, the way that I walk changed! I used to walk to please myself, doing whatever was good for me. When I came to know Him, I wanted to walk as He walked on the earth. We are to keep His commandments. If we keep them, that is how we know that we have come to know Him. In our hearts, we desire to be like Jesus. It is a hard saying, “If you say you have come to know Him but do not obey Him, you are a liar”. Those are His words, not mine. It is possible then to have some religious beliefs and not really know Him. There is a kind of Christian religion that embraces some of the moral aspects of the teachings of Jesus, but in reality does not fully obey Him. Matthew 7:21 says “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter“.
We should search our hearts and seek to know Him better thru understanding His words. And we should work toward being obedient to those words. Let those words of Jesus spread in to all areas of our lives, and live in a manner worthy of the calling that He has on us.
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