Why did God give us prayer? Let’s examine Jesus’ words in His High Priestly prayer.

John 17:3 NLT
[3] “And this is the way to have eternal life—TO KNOW YOU , the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth.”

God’s passion, among other things, is to give us eternal life, that is, to live eternally wth Him in His realm of love and peace. He said that “knowing Him” is the way to go. How important, then, that we understand what “knowing” means.

Let’s examine some of the Biblical ways and examples of knowing God, (not in order of priority).

1. Genesis 4 introduces us to one of the most intimate expressions of knowing.

Genesis 4:1 NIV
[1] “Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, “With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man.”

Genesis 4:1 NLT
[1]”Now Adam had sexual relations with his wife, Eve, and she became pregnant. When she gave birth to Cain, she said, “With the Lord’s help, I have produced a man!”

Genesis 4:1 KJV
[1] “And Adam KNEW Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.”

Some modern translations use euphemisms, others state bluntly what Adam and Eve did to produce a son. The KJV uses the word “know”… “yada”, to describe the intimacy of marriage.

God desires intimacy with us in our spirits so that He can impregnate us with His “seed”, His Word, that gives birth to His purposes. We can only have intimacy with the Father through Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit by our submission and obedience to His will, and through transparency with Him. John calls this “walking in the light”.

1 John 1:6-7 NIV
[6] “If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. [7] But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”

1. Knowing the Lord means sharing His heart for what is important to Him. Doing what is right, i.e., for example, taking care of those who need care, is the very nature of God. He gave us the gift of righteousness, Jesus’ own righteousness attributed to us. He requires that we live it out in our daily lives by loving and caring for others as He cares for us.

To the son of Josiah, Shallum, God spoke this rebuke, because he failed to follow in his father’s footsteps.

Jeremiah 22:15-16 NIV
[15] “Does it make you a king to have more and more cedar? Did not your father have food and drink? He did what was right and just, so all went well with him. [16] He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to KNOW ME?” declares the Lord.”

Josiah knew and feared God, issuing in a life of helping the poor and and needy, which God acknowledged as” knowing” Him.

1. God reveals Himself and His ways to believers through His Spirit in answer to prayer.

David’s desire to know God was to know His “way”.

Psalms 86:11 NIV
[11]”Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.”

Paul reveals his own heart for fellow believers in his recorded prayer.

Ephesians 1:16-17 NIV
[16]”I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. [17] I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may KNOW HIM better.”

Paul prayed that God would give the Ephesians believers wisdom and revelation of Himself through the Holy Spirit in them. There is no way we can “know” the Lord through human intellect or reason. Only God’s Spirit can interpret God’s ways as He interacts with us in our day-to-day lives. How can we ever understand His dealings with us unless the Holy Spirit enlightens us since God’s ways are unpredictable and mysterious?

Psalms 103:7 NIV
[7] “He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel:… “

Moses had intimate fellowship with God, so God enlightened him by revealing the meaning of His ways. The people of Israel did not share this privilege since they were stubborn and rebellious and had no desire to know God.

Deuteronomy 8:3 NIV
[3] “He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

How would Moses have understood the meaning of these circumstances unless God had revealed it to him?

1. God reveals the magnitude of His love by the ways He treats, empowers, and enables us to know Him through the Spirit in us, by our experience of Him. Again, Paul’s passion, expressed in prayer, was for his fellow believers to EXPERIENCE God’s love in all its dimensions so that the knowledge and the reality of His love would steady and steer them through life. Most of all, he wanted them to express in their own lives who God really was by understanding and experiencing His love.

Ephesians 3:16-19 NIV
[16] “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, [17] so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, [18] may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, TO GRASP how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, [19] and TO KNOW this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may BE FILLED to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

How is this possible? It boggles our minds to think that God’s “fullness”, the Greek word “pleroma”, meaning the full complement, the completeness of God’s NATURE, is in us!

Paul makes it clear that this has nothing to do with us. This work of God in us far exceeds our imagination, comprehension, or expectation.

Ephesians 3:20-21 NIV
[20] “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, [21] to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

Now let’s summarise what it means to know God.

Knowing God means having intimate fellowship with HIM, being fully known and fully accepted, all blocks and barriers removed, absolute honesty and transparency between us, no mistrust, no reservations, no hidden agendas to cloud our interaction with God and He with us. How do we know when we are in this kind of intimate fellowship with God?

Philippians 4:6-7 NIV
[6] “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. [7] And THE PEACE OF GOD, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

His peace in us!

Knowing God also means sharing His heart for what is important to Him. He is passionate about our doing the “good works” He prepared for us to do to benefit others. What are the good works He wants us to do? Whatever the Holy Spirit prompts us to do that blesses and helps others, especially using the spiritual gifts He has given us that equip us to serve others.

Romans 12:4-8 NIV
[4] “For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, [5] so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. [6] We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; [7] if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; [8] if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.”

How else do we get to know God?

A powerful and effective way to get to know God is through our experience. Every time we experience God’s gracious intervention when we call on His name or even when He intervenes without our awareness until later, on reflection, we learn more about who He is.

John tells us how this happened to him and his fellow disciples during their time with Jesus in the flesh.

1 John 1:1-3 NIV
[1] “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. [2] The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. [3] We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.”

” Heard”… “seen”… “touched”… these are all human experiences through our senses. Jesus was a real, flesh-and blood human who said and did things in their presence, to them, and for them that profoundly influenced their knowledge of Him.

So with us. We may not have His physical presence with us but we have His Spirit in us. Awareness of “Christ in us” should profoundly influence the way we view life and the way we interpret our own circumstances. Knowing His love for us and His purpose to recreate the image of Jesus in us, our interpretation should give us greater understanding of who He is and what He is doing in our everyday stuff.

So, getting to know God is by His work in us and through our growing understanding of His ways, each new life experience increasing our knowledge that God is good, and laying the foundation for the love, trust, submission, and obedience that set us apart as God’s legitimate children.

In conclusion, perhaps the Lord is wanting us to move away from our preoccupation with our foolishness and failures that disappoint us and bog us down. Perhaps He wants us to see Him in everything, to learn the lessons of life that help us to know Him better. The more we know Him, the closer we get to becoming like Jesus in love, trust, submission and obedience to the Father.

You see., in the end, since eternal life begins in the here-and-now…we have eternal life…which means we are already living in eternity although our mortal bodies will perish one day in preparation for the resurrection.

So, why not live now in greater awareness of God’s presence, experiencing the benefit of knowing Him and growing in knowing Him, increasingly distancing us from the influences and irritations of this presently evil world?