Knowing God: A Lifelong Journey

Today's Scripture

Philippians 3:8 — "Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ."

Hosea 6:3 — "Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth."

The Big Idea

Knowing God is not a course you complete. It is a road you walk for the rest of your life — and then forever. But here is the secret that keeps a traveler going: underneath your knowing of God lies a far steadier fact, that he knows you, holds you, and never looks away. We press on to know the One who has already made us his own.

Reflection

Look how far the road has come

Fourteen days ago we started with a simple, searching distinction: knowing about God is not the same as knowing him. Since then we have stood with Isaiah before the throne, learned to say "Father," been startled by grace, sobered by wrath and judgment, steadied by wisdom, claimed by a jealous love, and told that his grace is enough for our weakest places.

So where does the road end? It doesn't. And that was the plan all along. The prophet Jeremiah told us on day one what a human life is for: Jeremiah 9:23-24 — "Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD." Trophies tarnish, grades expire, and money changes hands. Knowing God is the one pursuit that death does not interrupt. J.I. Packer says that once this clicks, everything else reorganizes:

"Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

Main business. Not a hobby for religious people, not one app among forty on the home screen — the thing you are for.

Notice what Packer claims that awareness does: problems "fall into place." Not disappear — fall into place. A life organized around knowing God still has trouble in it, but the trouble stops being the headline. The way a hiker with a fixed destination reads every hill differently, a person whose main business is God reads every season — even the brutal ones — as part of the route.

The fact underneath the fact

But a lifelong journey raises a worry. What about the seasons when your praying goes flat, your attention drifts, your knowledge of God feels thin as paper? If the relationship depends on the quality of your pursuit, the whole thing wobbles. Packer answers with the most beloved passage in his book:

"What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it — the fact that he knows me. I am graven on the palms of his hands. I am never out of his mind." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

Graven means engraved — carved in, permanent, borrowed from God's promise in Isaiah 49:16. Your name is not written on God's hand in washable marker. And Packer keeps going:

"He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when his care falters." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

No moment. Not the moment you fell asleep mid-prayer. Not the week you skipped everything. Not the season you doubted he was there. Your grip on him flickers; his grip on you does not. Paul says this is exactly why he can keep running: Philippians 3:12 — "I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own." Notice the order. Christ's grab came first. Paul chases a God who already caught him.

Far from making us lazy, Packer says, this is fuel:

"There is unspeakable comfort — the sort of comfort that energizes, be it said, not enervates — in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

"Enervates" means drains. Being fully known and still fully loved does not drain your effort; it powers it. You run farther on acceptance than you ever ran on fear.

Think of how children learn to walk. They fall constantly, and they keep trying — not because the falls don't matter, but because someone is holding the room steady, smiling at them, ready to catch. The being-known comes first. The walking grows out of it.

How travelers keep walking

So how does the journey actually continue after day fourteen? Paul shows us the posture: Philippians 3:13-14 — "But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." This is the greatest theologian of the early church, near the end of his life, still describing himself as a runner mid-race — counting his very impressive past as "rubbish" compared with "the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (Philippians 3:8).

Hosea gives the same picture with a sunrise in it: Hosea 6:3 — "Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth." Press on — and notice the promise stitched to the command. The God you seek is as reliable as morning. You have never once worried whether the sun will come up. Seek him, and he comes to meet you like rain on dry fields.

Augustine, looking back over the years he wasted chasing everything else, wrote the most famous sigh in Christian literature:

"Late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved you!" — Augustine, Confessions

Ancient and new — that is why the journey never gets old. God is too ancient to be a fad and too new to be boring; there is always more of him than you have seen. And whenever you start, even late, you have not missed him. The psalmist learned to want one thing the way Paul did: Psalm 27:4 — "One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple."

What does pressing on look like on an ordinary Tuesday? Not heroics. Brother Lawrence was a seventeenth-century monastery cook with a crippled leg who became famous for one simple practice — talking with God all day, right there among the pots and pans:

"There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God." — Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

A continual conversation. Truth turned into talk: thanking him at lunch, asking his help before the test, telling him the truth on the bad days. That is how information about God becomes friendship with God — which, Packer insists, is the whole point:

"A little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about him." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

You could memorize this entire plan and still only know about him. Or you could take one truth from it into a real conversation with him today — and actually know him a little better by tonight. That is the difference between a tourist and a pilgrim. A tourist collects pictures of places; a pilgrim is changed by where he has walked. Peter's last recorded words make it a standing assignment: 2 Peter 3:18 — "But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

The dawn keeps brightening

Here is the last thing to pack for the journey: it ends in sunrise, not sunset. Proverbs 4:18 — "But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day." Most pursuits dim as you age — the athlete slows, the singer's voice fades. This path runs the other direction. The longer you walk it, the more light there is.

Older saints confirm it. Ask believers who have walked with God for fifty years whether he has gotten smaller or larger to them, and watch their faces. The God they know now is bigger than the one they started with — and they will tell you, with shining eyes, that they have still only seen the outskirts of his ways.

And full day is coming. 1 John 3:2 — "Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is." Every day of Bible reading, every clumsy prayer, every truth about God you have wrestled with these two weeks — all of it is rehearsal for a meeting. Revelation 22:4 — "They will see his face."

That is where this is going. Not a quiz on his attributes, but his face. And you will not arrive as a stranger hoping to be recognized. You will arrive as someone graven on his palms, never out of his mind, known as a friend — because the Son of God walked his own road, to a cross, to make you his own. The journey of knowing God begins, continues, and ends inside the gigantic fact that he knew you first and loved you anyway.

So: press on. The dawn is sure.

Going Deeper

Before you close this plan, write yourself a short note — three sentences. First: the one truth about God from these fourteen days you most need to remember (name the day). Second: one sentence to God about it — thanks, awe, or honest struggle. Third: the one small habit you will keep — five minutes of Scripture before your phone, a daily "continual conversation" moment like Brother Lawrence, or rereading one chapter of Knowing God each month. Date the note. Hide it in your Bible. Let your future self find proof that you decided, today, to keep walking.