To Know You More

GETTING STARTED

“I keep pulling, everyday pulling, to know who God is!” she said through the tears. “I don’t know him, but I want to… I really want to.” Her husband had passed away years before, her son would not return her calls, her daughter struggled with addiction, her family was an utter mess. And yet this soft heart wondered why, everyday she lived, she yearned more for a God she couldn’t feel or see or even hear. I said to her gently, “I can guarantee you this… God knows exactly who you are! And God is pulling, everyday pulling you, so you can know him more!”

  • How do you think knowing God and his character should change the way you live?

READ THE WORD: COLOSSIANS 1:3-14 (ESV)

3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, 6 which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, 7 just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf 8 and has made known to us your love in the Spirit.

9 And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. 11 May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

DIGGING DEEPER

(Today’s questions focus on verses 9-14.)

  1. What can you infer is needed “to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord” (vs. 9)?
  2. From verse 11, what do you need “for all endurance and patience”? From where does that come?
  3. What do you get when you are qualified (vs. 12)? Who does the qualifying?
  4. In verse 13, from what have you been delivered? Where have you been transferred? Who did the delivering and the transferring?
  5. What does all this say about who God is and the work he is doing in you? How would truly believing this affect the way you live?

RESPOND TO GOD

Brennan Manning asserts, “Christianity happens when men and women experience the reckless, raging confidence that comes from knowing the God of Jesus Christ.” God causes us to know him and causes us to grow in that knowledge. We increase in the knowledge of him and things happen to us! Knowing him causes us to grow in wisdom, walk in purity, and be strengthened with his might—and he does the work. He does the filling and the increasing and the strengthening and the qualifying and the delivering and the redeeming. The psalmist says it like this: “Be still and KNOW that I am God.”

  • Take a moment. Stop for a second. Breathe in deeply. And … be still.
  • Ask God to increase in you the knowledge of him.