Knowing God vs Knowing OF God

"The LORD passed in front of Moses, calling out, "Yahweh! The Lord! The God of compassion and mercy! I am slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness." Exodus 34:6 NLT

Lately, I have been involved in several different Bible studies. I love how God works, because honestly, they have all been working together.

You can't tell me that God isn't in it when a DVD based study recorded years ago, my 70 something year old Spiritual father, and my 50 something year old cousin are all teaching similar things to me! It amazes me how God works like that!

We tend to know OF God. We don't know HIM. Mr. Earnest always says, "You can't trust someone you don't know." Isn't that true?

When you first meet someone, you don't immediately trust them. I think the most trust we put in people has to be while we are driving. Other than that, giving someone your heart is scary. You need to know them first. 

Priscilla Shirer wrote in my Discerning the Voice of God study, "When God instructs us to do something based on our knowledge of Him, He moves our relationship from mental to experiential. This is why He is so passionately desires to reveal Himself to us through His Word."

God's Word shows us what He is like. He tells us in there, point blank, about His character.

The Old Testament is written so we can see Jesus through it, learn some lessons, AND so we can see God's character.

The New Testament is written to show that Jesus fulfilled the law,  He also reveals God's character.

We can not base what we know about God on what we hear from other people. Let me say that again...

We can not base what we know  about God on what we hear from other people.

Would you start dating someone based only on what someone else's told you about the person? No! You'd get to know that person BEFORE you decided to date them.

So, why do we let other people tell us who God is?

While the truth is, God is God. Our relationship with Him is intimate. It's personal. How I know God, and what He's done in my life is different from your's. Ya know?

Also, we can not base who God is only on the Old Testament. Jesus was God in the flesh, so you HAVE to see His character as He walked on this earth in order to know Him correctly.

I do not claim to know everything there is to know about God. I am not a Bible Scholar by any stretch of the imagination, but I do know that He loves me with an unfailing, ever lasting love. It is a love endures, never fails, and never stops.

Nothing we can do will make God love us any less, just like nothing we can do will make God love us any more.

He is the same, yesterday, today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8)

My question for you today is... do you KNOW God? Or do you just know OF Him?

God bless you today and always!