Underneath All Our Studying & Reading & Serving Do We Truly Know God?

Recently, I picked up a copy of A.W. Tozer’s book The Knowledge of the Holy after many years since my first reading. Taking time to slowly read through the book, I’ve been challenged afresh by how deeply Tozer entered into the pursuit of knowing God. It’s been reminding me how important it is for us to deliberately take the time to grow in knowing God.
Studying; Reading; Serving Do We Truly Know God - KP Yohannan - Gospel for Asia
At the beginning of each chapter is a prayer. Read through this prayer from the book and seek to see the God that Tozer saw:
O Majesty, unspeakable, my soul desires to behold Thee. I cry to Thee from the dust.
Yet when I inquire after Thy name it is secret. Thou art hidden in the light which no man can approach unto. What Thou art cannot be thought or uttered, for Thy glory is ineffable.
Still, prophet and psalmist, apostle and saint have encouraged me to believe that I may in some measure know Thee. Therefore, I pray, whatever of Thyself Thou hast been pleased to disclose, help me to search out as treasure more precious than rubies or the merchandise of fine gold: for with Thee shall I live when the stars of the twilight are no more and the heavens are vanished away and only Thou remainest. Amen.
I am reminded of what Jesus said to the Pharisees, who knew the Bible so well and yet rejected Him: “You search the Scriptures—you are exceptionally well-versed to the extent that you write thousands of commentaries on every word of the Bible—thinking there you have eternal life. It is these Scriptures that talk about Me, about entering into communion with Me, but you don’t want to do that and have life” (John 5:39-40, paraphrased).
Even with their radical lifestyle and in-depth knowledge of the Scriptures, they missed the point. They were so far off that Jesus said to them, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves” (Matthew 23:15).
What about us? Underneath all our studying and reading and serving, do we truly know God? Do we bow before Him and seek to know Him as He is? As I think about my own journey, I realize I’m still like a little kid at the sandy beach of an endless ocean, trying to figure it out and enter into the reality of experiencing and knowing God. So much remains a mystery, and only in the end will we actually know what knowing God is and what it is not.
I would encourage you to pick up a copy of this book and read through it prayerfully. And may the Lord give us grace as we seek to know Him and become like Him.
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