Knowing God

How well do you know God? Now, I'm not asking you, how much do you know about God? We can all turn to Scriptures. Mr. Pereman was trying to talk about this greatness of God, and it's beyond us. He's so awesome. He lives in a dimension. I mean, what is it to live in all dimensions? We don't even know how many dimensions there are. What is it to be able to, as David said, every place I go, you're there. Yet we know He's at a throne, whatever that is. We understand that this is beyond us, and yet here we are today.

We're here because we believe that great Creator God told us to be here, to gather together and learn about Him, and He gave us a book that tells us about Him. So we may know something about God. So what do you know about God?

God is omnipotent. We know exactly what that means. God is omnipresent. God is all love. That's a nice statement, but you know when you really start to break that down, what does that mean? Perfect love. Well, He's totally righteous. So we try to break that down, and obviously what we actually go about, God, when He reveals to us, is very hard for us to understand. But when I say, do you know God, I'm talking about a personal relationship with God, relating to God. Your relationship is just knowing about somebody.

I know about a lot of people. I know about Tom Cruise. I have zero relationship with Tom Cruise. I have no desire to have a relationship with Tom Cruise. I mean, if I saw Him, I'd shake His hand. I know about Him, but what is it to know somebody? To be able to say, yes, I know that person. Yeah, that's...somebody says, do you know this person?

Oh, yeah, they're a good friend of mine. I know them. We relate. And a relationship isn't just relating one person to another. It's both relating to each other. Now, all of us want God to relate to us. Isn't that what most of our prayers are about? Please relate to me. Help me. Guide me. Give me. Teach me.

Comfort me. Heal me. Relate to me. But what about us relating to God? I mean, we all can experience His presence, but it's hard to maintain that, isn't it? Sometimes you just know God's there. But it's hard to maintain that. We know about Him. We can discover His plan for us. But, you know, even our faith...we struggle with our faith because I know God, and I'm hoping He relates to me, but I'm having a hard time relating to God.

You know, when you're in the midst of a terrible thing in your life, it's easy to say, I can't relate to God at all here. Or we blame God. Or we don't trust God. Or we're angry with God. Or we fear God. We're angry with God. We fear God because we don't understand Him. We don't know Him. Many times, to us, as little human beings, what God does makes no sense to us. Having a house full of rugrats and ankle biters, half of what I do makes no sense to me. Grandpa's working now. You need to leave my office and go downstairs. Why? Because I'm working.

Well, what work are you doing? You're sitting in your office looking at a computer. No, I'm working on my Bible study. Of course, we have a Bible study here Wednesday night. I'm working on my Bible study. Oh, okay. But then they just stay there. No, don't understand. You can't be yelling and screaming and throwing things at each other. You'll be finished with the Bible study, so you're going to have to go downstairs. Why? Because I'm working on a Bible study.

Oh, okay. Let's help. We will now clean your room. No, cleaning my room doesn't help. I've had... This is all my mind. I've had lots of conversations this weekend, I guess, again. Because they don't understand. They can't relate to what I'm doing. They can only relate to their little world. But whenever they need help, grandpa tie my shoes. Grandpa fix this. Grandpa, my legos broke. Grandpa, you know, grandpa, relate to me. Or the little 18-month-old, you know, crying, and I carried around for two hours. Because you comfort me. Because that's who you are.

You're the big person that helps me, the little person. And that's how we go to God. He's the big person that helps us, the little person. But how do we relate to Him? How do we relate to Him? How could you have a more personal, intimate relationship with God?

But there's two things you have to understand. That you really... This is the starting point in having a better relationship with God. Then we're going to talk a little bit about what that looks like. In other words, once you start to have a closer relationship with God, it certainly takes certain happen in your life. And there are reasons why we resist this relationship.

There's reasons why we have so much fear of Him or anger towards Him. And there are reasons why. The first thing that you and I have to do if we're ever going to begin to know God... Because if we don't, here's what we do. We create God in our own image. Now think about this. Husbands and wives. Have you ever seen a man who decides, or a woman, that marries somebody and they have a viewpoint of that person?

An image of that person, their mind, that everybody else knows? That's not true. Oh no! He's perfect! No, He's not! He's a criminal! He's been in and out of jail 15 times! He'll beat you! Oh, that's because I have to teach you how to love. Once I teach him how to love, he'll stop beating me. And we're all driven crazy because they created an image of this person in their mind and they see it. See, that's what we do with God.

And of course the relationship doesn't work. Well, we don't have a clear picture of God. We don't know Him. And so the first thing you and I have to do, as we have to acknowledge something that's very, very real and is very tough for us to acknowledge, is that at the very core of your being, and this is every human being because we're created this way, at the very core of every human being is a painful deed for God.

At the very core of us is an empty deed for God. It's an emptiness. And what we try to do is fill that emptiness with all kinds of other things. Stuff, people, parties, whatever we think, for a temporary little bit of time, it seems okay. We experience some happiness. This is why a lot of people can't stand to be alone. You're alone very long, and that sort of deep-seated ache becomes apparent to you.

It becomes real. So we now either fear God or we're angry with God because we cannot deal with that incredible emptiness that's deep inside each one of us. It's designed to be there. You think about Adam and Eve. Adam didn't create Eve until Adam said, or God didn't create Eve, until Adam said, there's nobody like me, until he acknowledged and understood I have a deed for another person. He didn't know that to begin with. He didn't know it. He did. He had no...

Wait a minute. There's nobody like me here. Gosh, ah, good. I'll make somebody just for you. That deed for his wife was designed, didn't it? But he could not have a relationship with her until he understood it. You and I can never have a relationship with God until we come to grips with it.

Inside each of us is a deep, painful ache. Avoid an emptiness that only God can take care of. Only God can fill. And we try to do it so many other ways. And you have to understand you're designed to feel that. You're incomplete. And I said, oh, I made complete, God says, here I made a woman to make you complete. But, you know, that didn't complete it entirely. That only completed one relationship he needed. In fact, all of our relationships, our friendships, how we interact with other people, our marriages, our relationship with our children, all of that will be dysfunctional unless we have the relationship with God right.

Unless we have the relationship with God right. Because a lot of times what we're trying to do is have other people and things fulfill something that only God can do. We have a lot of people that are connected to God. It's amazing how much there's such a lack of dysfunction in their relationships. So we have to acknowledge this. And you know who, when you look at the Bible, you see people, men and women, who understood this so deeply. We don't want to admit it. I am incomplete. I am not. There's something inside of me that is not filled. And God says, that's where I'm supposed to be. That's my relationship with you.

So how in the world are we going to have that unless we start not only having God relate to us, but we begin to relate to God?

David really understood this. I'm going to Psalm 42. This is what's so amazing about David with all of his problems and everything else in his life. Is that there's this almost overwhelming intellectual and emotional response to, I need God.

There's something inside me. Nothing else could...being a rich king doesn't matter if I don't have God.

Only God could do something in me that nobody else could do.

And I was designed that way.

We were designed that way, every one of us. And we have to accept that the Creator created us with that need.

And so much of why things don't work in our lives is we're trying to fulfill that need in different ways.

And this is one of my favorite Psalms as far as David just...the way he expresses things.

We actually have a song in our songbook that's based on this Psalm 42, so you all know this. As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for you, O God. My very life.

You know, they didn't say, so sometimes I have some anxiety, or I want to know you.

Or sometimes I feel like, oh, I wish I could know God.

No, he's my very soul at the core of who I am.

You know, with the Hebrew, in Hebrew the word soul means your life.

You know, it's the core. It's who you are. He says, at the core of who I am, I'm starving to death.

At the core of who I am, I am dying of thirst.

And my thirst is for you.

I have to relate to you. I don't even know how to relate to you.

And I want you to relate to me.

This...we can keep the holy days, and you and I can keep the Sabbath.

We can know the Ten Commandments, and we can know all about doctrine. But if we don't do this, we're going to know a lot about God.

But we won't know God.

We have to do this also.

He says, so pants my soul for you. Verse 2.

My soul first for you, God, for the living God.

What shall I come and appear before God?

He says, then how can I even come to you?

I don't even get to see you.

I go to the temple...he didn't have a temple. He says, I go to the tabernacle.

To the holy of always, I pray.

You stand outside there and pray.

Only thy priest can go into the holy of always.

He says, but I just want to see you.

We need to understand.

We have to come to a deed.

We have to recognize it.

That we want to see God.

We want to know Him.

We want to see...what we want to see.

What is God all about?

My tears have been my food day and night.

While they continually say to me, where is your God?

He says, I agonize as I go through life's sake, but I don't know God enough.

I don't...I want to know God.

You'll love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and all your strength.

We all know that.

Have you ever met anybody that actually does that completely? Oh, you know, that's what God expects of us.

But how do we do that?

The truth is, I can't tell you entirely how to do that, because I don't know yet.

I'm trying to.

But the older I get the more I realize, how can I love God with all my heart and all my mind and all my soul and all my strength, if I'm not even sure if I don't even know Him? Now, there's a limitation to what we can know about God in the Bible you can tell us it's that.

Over and over again it says, you'll never fully figure this one out.

That someday you'll get to see me.

He says, verse 4, When I remembered these things, I pour out my soul within thee.

For I used to go with the multitude.

I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with the multitude that kept the pilgrimages.

My life was dedicated to obeying God, learning about God.

He'd drift away from God here.

As I remember, the times were just going to the tabernacle on a holy day.

It just overwhelmed me.

So, verse 5, Why are you cast out on my soul?

Why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God.

For I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance.

His countenance is His appearance.

And He's not saying God appeared to Him physically.

He didn't.

Or even in visions.

An understanding of God.

Sort of a glimpse of who God really is.

A knowing of God.

Now, once again, at the heart of the problem we have here is that we don't really trust Him, so we fear Him.

Or we resent the fact that we think God can tell us what to do.

He just resents.

He resents us. So what happens is that we have anger. So how can I know God when you have a false viewpoint of God?

As a parent, if your child wanted, if your eight-year-old wanted to eat comet, you would say no. And if they said it's my right to eat comet, you would say no.

But we don't accept that God knows. That God tells us don't do things.

Now, you would not tell a parent, well, you don't have the right to do that. If your kid wants to eat comet, let him eat comet.

But think about what we do with God.

Because we're so afraid He's going to tell us to do something we don't like.

Or He's going to tell us to do something that goes against what we want.

And since He doesn't take away our free will, we struggle.

It's because we don't know God.

We see Him as the big policeman in the sky.

Or, you know, just this judge that's waiting to punish us, no matter what.

We don't understand who He is.

And so we're afraid.

And that means after we come to this realization, oh, by the way, talk about fear. Think about that parable of the talents. We've all gone through that so many times, right? The parable of the talents. God gave ten talents, five talents, one talents, when the Master did of the parable. And then He comes back, and everybody's grown their talents, except the one who received one. Anyway, it's very interesting. You look at that, you say, wow, isn't that fair, unfair? You only got one talent.

Because, like, God, this was unfair. You really went fair to me. Only got one talent.

But then you read through there, and what it says is, I was afraid.

You're harsh, and you're mean, and you weren't going to treat me right, and I knew I wouldn't get a reward like everybody else, because I didn't have as much as everybody else, and you didn't give me that much, and so I was afraid. It was His fear, His total misunderstanding of His Master. His Master said, this is what I give you, I go. He didn't come back and wasn't going to judge you by other people. He came back and said, what did you do with what I gave you? God's given us this life. What He wants to know is, what are you going to do with the life I gave you? What are you going to do with it? And we look at each other and say, well, it's not fair. That person has more money than me, or that person has more abilities than me, or that person has more opportunities than me. And guess what? Every one of us can say that. Every one of us can look around and find somebody who's smarter than us, or had more opportunity than us, or just everything seems to work out in their life. And you say, how come it doesn't work out that way for me? But that's not... the whole point of the parable is, that's not how we look at life. We look at life and say, look what God gave me!

And He wants me to do something with it. He wants us to be happy, by the way. I really do think Christ is going to ask us someday, why were you so unhappy?

Or is it because it was your fault?

This means, and another thing we have to do, once we realize we have to come to grips with this need, we really have to accept it. It's hard for human beings. Because if we accept this, we realize we don't actually... we have to give up some control over our lives.

We have to enter into a relationship in which we're giving up control over certain aspects of our lives. But all relationships are like that, right? If you have a best friend, you both give up a little bit of something in order for that friendship to work. Every relationship, somebody gives up something. Well, we have to give up something in our relationship with God. So the next step we have to do is we have to ask God to reveal Himself to us so that we can know Him.

Now asking God to reveal Himself to you is not a passive experience. You say, well, God, please reveal yourself to me. You get up, wait five minutes. Oh, well, I guess He's not going to. Turn to Psalm 27. We're going to go back to David again here. Then we're going to look at Paul a little bit. Psalm 27.

This is another psalm of David. He says, Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice, Have mercy upon me and answer me, when you said, Seek my face. Now, it's interesting. God said, Seek my face. Now, we can't see His face, but realize the power that is in Hebrew poetry. It's like, seek me to know me as if you're looking right into my face. Get to know me, God said. And David said, My heart said to me, Your face, Lord, I will seek. Getting to know, God says, Come, know me. And we have to say, I will seek to know you. I will seek to know you. You know, when you're young and you're dating, He'll say, Oh, that's a good looking girl. I'm just going to go over here. You get to know the person. How many times, though, the people say, Oh, I wish I would have known him or her better. Well, we knew each other for two weeks. Seek to know that person. David said, God said to him, Seek. I mean, seek takes effort. You work and stuff. You've got to go find it. Seek to know me. My face, like we're talking face to face. That's a remarkable thing. And David said, Yes, Lord, I'm going to seek to know you. And then he says to God, verse 9, Do not hide your face from me. Do not turn your servant away in anger. You have been my help. Do not lead me to forsake me, O God, of my salvation. Verse 10 is interesting. My mother and my mother forsake me, that the Lord will take care of me. He's probably looking toward the time when his mother and father would die. So when they're gone, God will take care of me. Because he's the one that's always taking care of me. In other words, it gets down to, I understand that other human beings can only help me to a certain extent. No matter who it is, the closest people, parents and children, you can only help them to a certain point. We can only help each other to a certain point. It is God who can do something that nobody else can do. But we don't know to even relate to that. Well, I relate to God, he tells me to tithe, so I tithe. I relate to God, he tells me to keep the sand, so I keep the sand. No, that's part of it. But in a way, it's a beginning part of relating to God. It's like telling children, don't touch the hot stove. Now, that relationship is quite different than the relationship you have with your adult child. Sometimes we're still back to God relating to us, don't touch the hot stove. And we're not relating back to him. I wish to see your face. I wish to know who you are. So that we can actually relate to each other, and that God can fill that void. And to do that, you must actively seek it. Seeking is not passive. It is an active, or an activity that we must do. It is through prayer, through Bible study, it's through thinking about it. It's through asking God. It's through going alone. Sometimes I say, God, I'm here, and I have no idea how to relate to you.

God, help me understand the void that's in me. Help me understand how only you can fill that. You see places all through the Bible where people do that. Especially David. Now, as we begin to seek God, certain things happen. And I want to just mention a few things that happen as we begin to seek God.

Because you will know that God is beginning to help you relate to Him when these things happen. So you have to ask for these things, too. You actually have to ask for it and be open to it. One of the things that happens is that those who desire to know God begin to seek a different way of life or a different approach to life. Something changes in the way we see life as we begin to relate to God.

Once again, we can know lots about God. I know lots of people who know lots about God. But don't relate to God at all. They may sing songs to Him and have an emotional reaction. They may know some of the Scriptures. But deep inside who they are, as David said, in my soul, in the core of who I am, there is no relating to God. He's out there someplace. I know He exists, but I just don't believe anything anybody says about Him. He's out there.

Look at Philippians 3.

Once again, another Scripture we've all heard many times. This is just so powerful because Paul was a very religious person.

And understand, Paul kept the laws of God very strictly.

And he didn't say he shouldn't. But he saw His keeping of God's laws as His means of salvation.

God just sort of stacked up His good deeds, stacked up His bad deeds, and He knew He had more good deeds.

So He was going to get salvation through having more, you know, in His debit account. There was lots of money in there. There was lots of good deeds in His account. And every time He did something bad, something came out of the account, but it didn't matter. Because there was lots of good deeds in there.

And it led Him to actually persecute the Church. Because the Church had this idea, these people, that Jesus was the Messiah. And that He died for our sins. And without that death and resurrection as a substitute, it didn't matter how many good deeds we put into the bank account.

That's not... No! Whoa! Then why should I do the good deeds? Well, you do the good deeds because that's what God does in us, is what we're supposed to do. Yes, we do them. But we can't earn enough for salvation.

No, He persecuted them. God calls Him. And He says in verse 3, For we are the circumcision, in other words, the Jewish segment of the Church at the time, who worship God in the Spirit. So these are not just Jews that are still Judaism. These are Jews who become Christians, which most of the Church at this time was, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.

Though I also might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I'm Orso. So, okay. And we want to look at me. I'm better than all of you. Now, He's being very facetious here, but He's making a point. Because then we want to look at who's better than everybody. He says, well, I'm better than all of you. Circumcised the eighth day, in accordance to the Law of God, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews.

Now, when He says that, He wasn't just saying that to me. But make a joke. He was probably one of the most perfect, law-abiding Jews of His day. Now, remember, in the book of Romans, He would say, am I saying we should not keep the laws?

No. He says, we should keep the law. But He's making a point here about His approach to life. He thought He knew God. If something happened to Him to make Him understand, He knew about God. But He didn't know God. And it came down to the very core of who He was. He spent His life knowing about God. He says, concerning the Law of Pharisee, concerning zeal, persecuting the Church, concerning the righteousness which is in the Law of Blameless.

But what things were gained to be? These I have counted loss for Christ. He said, and then God showed me something about Himself when He showed me Christ. That the Son of God left the side of the Father, came here to be killed for me and then returned. He said, I figured that out. He says, what's that was revealed to me? I learned something about God I never knew. He said, I didn't know. He says, yes indeed, I also count all things lost with the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, then I may gain Christ.

He said, Christ now shows me God. I had no idea God loved me that much. I had no idea God had that much mercy. I had no idea. It's like Christ opens the door and there's God. He said, I knew about Him. I know Him. And He says, I count everything else. My whole former life is meaningless. It's hard for us to understand that statement from a man who was what he was.

Probably, if you lived at that time, the Jews were the people of God, the temple still stood, right, on the face of the earth. There was probably nobody more righteous than Paul. Paul said, when I really got to know God, just the little bit that we get to know, and I could see Him through Christ now.

I had somehow I could relate to Him. He said, wow, all that religion was nothing. He says to know God changes everything. It's more than just knowing about Him. He says, it may be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the wall, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith. In other words, I had to have more than just these rituals I did and things I did to earn salvation.

He said, Christ saves me, and God is making salvation available in a way that I could not make it happen. Now, once again, He didn't throw the law, that's a whole other subject. But He realized He could be saved by His own doing. Only God could save Him, and God loved Him enough to do it. Christ loved Him enough to do it.

And it was a shock to Him.

He knew God was merciful, and He read the Scripture, but He didn't know what that really meant. And now He started to know God, who He was. That I may know Him. He said it that I, verse 10, that I may know Him. He didn't know Him before. He sure didn't know Christ. He thought He understood who the Messiah was. He didn't know Him until He actually met Him. Of course, in Paul's case, He actually met Him. He appeared to Him.

Oh, I know Him. I've met Him. He says that I may know Him at the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship... Oh, what a remarkable sermon. I have fellowship with Christ. And that fellowship with Christ, I understand the Father more. I understand who God is. And the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, by any means I may attain to the resurrection of the dead.

When we begin to have God fill that hole... Now, we resist it. It's just part of human nature. No, I don't want Him there, but I can feel it.

I know it's there, but I don't want Him there. I want to do it another way. I'll fulfill it through getting married and having lots of kids. I'll fulfill it through my career. I'll fulfill it the other way. Now, eventually it's there.

And that fear and that anger... And we keep pushing it. No! Because if I do this, I have to surrender.

I have to surrender.

And I don't want to do that. But once God begins to work in us, that we begin to know Him. We begin to seek a different way of life. So if this life doesn't work, I want something different. Because God has something different for me. And when that happens, we also begin... This is the second thing.

Excuse me. We have a desire to communicate with God.

You know, in those moments where you get that little glimpse into God, if it happens in life, you'll want to pray. Or you just can't stop reading the Bible. You just can't stop. Oh, look! Oh, look what He says here! You can't stop! You can't stop because you're getting to know God! And then we lose Him. Now we come back. Now we lose Him.

Can you imagine having a relationship where the person who meets the most to you in life, you meet one hour a day, I mean one hour a week, you come and you hear somebody talk about it. And then you go home and you live your life just ignoring that person.

Well, that's what it's like to come to church on the Sabbath to spend the rest of the week ignoring God. That's the most important person in my life. He doesn't believe that.

He doesn't believe He's the most important person in your life. And neither do you.

When we begin to have God reach in here and deal with the fact you and I were designed to worship Him. You and I are designed to love Him. You and I are designed to have this relationship with Him. Whereas He's designed to relate to Him.

But to have that happen, we resist it.

But when that moment comes, when it actually breaks open and we let God in there, you want to communicate to Him. You actually want to talk. You want to relate. You want Him to relate to you? Yes. And as little children, that's basically... Most of the time we just want God to relate to us. But the relationship requires that we get to know Him. Just keep going back to what David said. God said, know my face. And he says, Lord, I want to know your face. I want to meet you face to face. I want that kind of relationship.

And then we struggle to have it. Psalm 5.

Psalm Chapter 5.

Verse 1.

You will see all through the Psalms where David doesn't say, I just prayed to God. I went and talked to God. It's like he cried out. It's like he's just... just verbally, almost like shouting and crying, God, I want to know you.

In the morning, I will direct it to you, and I will look up. He says, I'll start every day by coming to you and just crying out, God, I wish... I listen to my words and relate to me and help me relate to you. We need to move beyond just God relating to us. We have to move into us relating to God.

There's an appreciation there and a love towards God. And a love towards Jesus Christ realizing it's through Jesus Christ that we get to see God. Because now we understand God's love, His gentleness, His mercy. We also understand that He will not put up with evil. He will not live with evil. But He actually has a means for changing evil people into something else. But nobody has changed until they recognized, inside my soul, there is that emptiness. That only God can fill. Otherwise, we'll keep fearing Him and we'll still be angry at Him. And when that begins to happen, we begin this communication, there's sort of a third thing that starts happening, is we begin to see God as our Father. Many years after Paul had that experience where literally Christ revealed Himself to Him, showed Himself to Him, the resurrected Christ, He got to see Him. And He taught Him personally. And He said, I know Christ. Years later, He makes this remarkable statement in Romans 8. Romans chapter 8. Sort of go back and forth between David and Paul here.

There's such good examples because both of them were hard cases in some ways. And yet inside, in that core where God could work, He was able to work with them. Some people, God works on a surface way, but they never let Him into the core. We never let Him into the deep part of us. You have to ask Him to do that. You have to ask Him to do that. Romans 8.14. He says, There's a surrender part of this. It is okay, God, I need you. Here I am. Okay, God, I get it. I don't know how this works, and I fail. Okay, God, here I am. Help me relate to you. I don't know how to love you. I don't know how to obey you. I don't know how to do all this because I think, how can I love somebody I don't even know? God says, and seek my face. Seek to know me. So we have to ask God to even take us there. You and I can't know God on our own. How could you know somebody that you've never met on your own? Right? That person has to come talk and relate to you.

God wants to relate to us, but he wants us now to reciprocate. This is the maturing process. We begin to reciprocate. We move away from children who are told, don't do this, don't do that, don't touch this, don't do that, to, okay, you've learned not to touch the stone. This is good. Now let's talk. Okay, you've learned not to break this law and that law, this, okay, that's good. Now, let's talk so that we relate to each other. God says, I know who you are. Come find out who I am.

Verse 14, what we just read, verse 15. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, Abba, Father, as the dearest form of what a child would call a Father in Greek. By Abba. The spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.

And if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, and if indeed we suffer with Him, then we may be glorified together. Look at the difference. I mean, think of the difference of the man who tried to obey God and externally obeyed God perfectly, internally didn't do it. He knew a lot about God. Think of that man being confronted by Christ and having to realize that what he needed to change would do. And years later, he now says, God is my Abba. That's a remarkable change. From look how righteous I am, because I know a lot about God, to God is my Abba.

That's where God wants us to go. We have to grow beyond the childhood things. You don't give up the childhood lessons. You carry your multiple patience tables with you, right? But you learn how to apply them. And we learn to interact with the Creator who made up the rules because of the only rules that work in the end. None of the other rules work. They just don't. We don't accept that because we're afraid or we're angry with Him.

You see that enormous change that happened in Him, where He now sees God as Abba. And we're back to where we sort of started now. Because if our lives are going to begin to change, if we are going to begin to know God, we have to be acutely aware that we're designed to need Him.

But I don't want to need anybody. I'm sorry, but you're designed to need God. It's every human being, every baby, every child, everybody has inside them because God wanted to have a relationship, so we're designed to need God. We're designed to want Him to lead us and love us, and we're designed to actually learn how to love Him. It's how you're designed.

You can't get away from that. So we're back to that. We're back to what Paul had to figure out, that all of his religious ossity was knowledge about God, but he didn't know Him face to face, as David said. There's an interesting scripture in Zephaniah 2, to be our last scripture. If you remember a few years ago, not long after I came here, Mr. Kellers gave an entire sermon on this verse. An entire sermon on this verse. Remember I said, we have to seek Him.

If I understand, if I ask God, show me the void that's inside of me. I know there's something there. Show it to me what it is. God says, it's because you need to seek me in my face. This will help me to know you, but now you have to seek to know God.

Just like any other relationship, you have to work to get to knowing, to reach out to God. Verse 3 says, Seek the Lord all you beak of the earth, who have upheld His justice. Seek righteousness, seek humility, and it may be that you will be hidden in the day of the Lord's anger. Seek the Lord all the beak of the earth, upheld His justice, in other words, people who are learning God's definition of right and wrong. Okay?

We all should be learning God's definition of right and wrong. Seek righteousness, the right way to live. So we all should be seeking the right way to live. And he says, seek humility. He is so hard for us to find and come to the realization.

I can't do this. I had a couple times this week where one of the children, I could do it, I could do it, I could do it, and then it's, Grandpa, will you help me do this? I figured it out, huh? Yeah, I can help you do that. But I can help you do that. It's interesting to watch the 11-year-old, because she's beginning to relate to Grandpa, not as a child, but more as person to person. Our talks are a little different.

Her talks are a little different than the other ones. Yeah, because Grandpa's a real person, too. And that's what you want. This is what you want in this growth process with these kids. That's what God wants with us. But it's, it's, it's, there's this lack of humility we have. But God, that means you're actually in control. Yeah. He is. But I want control. I guess it's okay. How's that working out for you? Because you got it. You know, what little bit you have, it's not working out very well.

God has called you to have a father-child relationship with Him. And it's interesting. It's through Jesus Christ that we learned that. He came as a human being, and now we can relate to God through Him. Just like it was with Paul. I didn't get Abba until I saw Christ.

It's like, oh, He's Abba. The Father is Abba. And that's the way it is with you and I. Until we understand that Christ sacrificed for us, we'll never understand God as Abba. But then we begin to realize this relationship between the Father and the Son, and this relationship that we have in that family.

We all need to be healed. We're all damaged. Every one of us is spiritually, emotionally damaged because we've been cut off from God, and the part of us that was designed to have a relationship with God has not been fulfilled. We're damaged, and it hasn't been fulfilled. And we're taking it out on each other. We're taking it out and just being miserable. We're taking out all these other things. We have to deal with this fear and anger towards God, and God goes away, and God breaks that open, and we get to know Him a little bit, and we understand Christ.

Then, only then, does that begin to be healed. We begin to ask God to do that. Now remember, when you ask God to help you, ask Him to gently and lovingly open this up. You don't want to try to know God all in three minutes. You'll never know Him in this lifetime. I'm not sure we'll know everything about God in eternity.

But, we can know Him face to face. We can know Him in our relationship. Ask God to show you the reality of who He is and who Christ is, and how much they want us to be part of that family. Then, and then, only then, when we accept that, understand it, and humility, surrender to that. Can we begin to grow beyond just knowing about God, to actually knowing God?