DAY 1
TOPIC: KNOWING GOD BY EXPERIENCE
Knowing God through personal experience is like knowing what God is able to do. Knowing God via experience is not based on how much you have read or learned, but rather on the experiences you have personally had.
Knowing something requires firsthand experience with it. In fact, you can’t fully claim to know something unless you’d dealt with it firsthand.
For the Greeks, to know something meant you understood a concept in your mind. For a Hebrew person, knowing something meant experiencing it firsthand. When Jesus said eternal life is knowing God, he was speaking as a Hebrew. We come to truly know God as we experience Him in and around our lives.
Let’s look at a biblical event where Abraham was being put to test (Genesis 22:1-18). Abraham was able to personally identify God as “God Almighty” because God miraculously gave him a son when he and his wife, Sarah, were old and past the age at which humans are capable of having children.
We can see that on that particular day, Abraham experienced God as his provider, which caused him to develop a close relationship with God and made him pass the test.
Therefore, we can also learn about God in this way. God is something we must personally encounter in order to know Him in new and deeper ways. We can learn that God provides when we’ve read about Abraham’s journey, but we can truly know God as a Provider after we have personal experience with Him making a specific provision for us.
It read, “There is always a reason why God exposes Himself to us in new ways.” We were made to be in a loving relationship with Him. He is letting you encounter Him so that you can know Him firsthand.
For instance, until you have personally felt God’s compassion in the midst of pain or misery, you cannot genuinely know Him as the “Comforter in sorrow.”
In conclusion, we learn about God through experience at His initiative as He gives us the opportunity to gain new knowledge about Him. We get to know God more and better when you have experiences with Him. Our desire to praise, thank, and worship Him will grow as your understanding of Him deepens.
