I want to know Christ

You can know theology and be arrogant, but you cannot know God and be arrogant. Westerners want to expand the mind, but God wants to enlarge the heart where the mind, emotions, and will converge.

After sharing this quote by Neil Anderson with a group of missionaries I was debriefing recently, one man confided that he wanted to stand up and scream. Why the strong reaction? Honestly, I likely would have responded similarly a number of years ago. But let me back up and tell a story…

Once upon a time, and in a country far away lived a maiden named Charissa. Charissa loved being alive, relished the company of good friends, and found great satisfaction in her work. And yet she had this nagging sense that something was missing. Charissa threw herself more vigorously into her duties, but the elusive ache only grew. She wholeheartedly committed herself to helping others and, in the midst of it all, that subtle longing persisted. It insisted on, even demanded, Charissa’s attention. One ordinary day, the most extraordinary thing happened. A letter arrived from across the sea:

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Dear Charissa,

I hope you do not think it too forward of me, but our mutual friend suggested that I write to you…

It was signed, simply, “Theo.” Weeks passed and one day, to Theo’s delight, he received a letter from Charissa. Soon a stream of missives was crisscrossing the ocean. Theo wrote of his world, his work, his friends, and she responded with descriptions of the people, places, and things important to her. As she read Theo’s letters Charissa was at first interested, then intrigued, then found herself deeply drawn to this man she had never met. Writing of events and people around them shifted to confiding thoughts and hopes and dreams. Theo wrote,

I would love to give you a field of wildflowers… How I wish I could look into your eyes, see the shape of your smile, hear the sweetness of your voice…

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Charissa responded by sending poetry she had written for him. Theo’s deep affection for Charissa led him to profess his love for her and ask if she would commit herself to him for life by doing him the honor of being his wife. Utter JOY arrived in the form of Charissa’s eager acceptance of Theo’s proposal. The letters flew between them as their love deepened and grew. Yet still there was unmet longing; lover and beloved lived an ocean apart and a world away. Though Theo wrote of his longing for Charissa to be with him, she did not know how to cross the sea and join him. She did not know that it was possible to see the delight reflected in his eyes as he gazed at her, feel the warmth of his smile, or experience the pleasure of melting into her husband’s strong and tender embrace.

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What a tragic romance! Theo deeply desired an experiential relationship with his wife and yet she tried to content herself with reading his letters, pouring over them, and writing him heartfelt letters in return. Who would do that?!? For many years, I was Charissa. Like her, I longed to be fully known and deeply loved. I was introduced to God from my earliest childhood and was taught to know and love God. And I did love Him! I can still remember the day I asked Jesus to forgive me of my sins and accepted His work on the cross for me – I was so excited to be “Jesus’ girl”! I was encouraged to study my Bible and have daily devotions. As I grew, I was blessed to attend a school for missionary kids where Bible classes were a daily part of the curriculum. Scripture memory and studying books of the Bible, while good, also became my homework for which I was graded. My relationship with God grew, especially as I began classes at a Christian liberal arts college. Each year we studied the Scripture, Christian thought, doctrine, church history… In my own times with God, I was parsing verses and journaling what He was showing me. I got involved with the student missions movement, headed up the Africa prayer group, and even spent six months in Uganda with a mission organization. I loved God and yet my mind was expanding far more quickly than my heart was being enlarged. I resonated with Paul, as he exclaimed, “I want to know Christ…” (Phil 3:10). And I studied, oh how I studied, to know Him better through His Word.

As a young mom, I wondered if I would ever again have a regular quiet time – how could I, when I would fall asleep or be disrupted nearly every time I sat down and opened my Bible? But children grow up, and I did get to reestablish a routine of meeting with God in the still of early morning before the kids were awake. Equipped with my Bible, journal, Cruden’s concordance, a Bible dictionary, and other reference materials, I would pour over a few verses at a time, seeking to squeeze out of them every last drop of meaning. God was faithful to meet me and reveal more of His character and His truth to me.  I was getting to know Him… and yet I still longed to experience God and His love more deeply.

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May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love.
Ephesians 3:17 NLT

How deeply my heart was drawn to this prayer of Paul’s. It suggested to me a depth and a richness – an experience of God – that seemed elusive. I was frustrated by the gap between my knowledge of God and a heart experience of Him. As I continued to seek to know God in Scripture, my heart’s longing grew in intensity. I came across Song of Songs 2:14, and adopted the words of the Lover for my own as I daily prayed,

“…let me see Your face, let me hear Your voice;
for Your voice is sweet, and Your face is lovely.”

In that season, I was introduced to soul care and the practice of a slow and mindful reading of Scripture in which I was encouraged to allow the text to master me, rather than I mastering the text. It was a revolutionary paradigm shift! How else would one study the Scripture? Or, perhaps, was there a better question to ask? An unfamiliar hymn opened further vistas as I considered that the very same Spirit who breathed out the inspired Word to the writers of Scripture still breathes it into me today. Not to fill my head, but to fan the flame of love in my heart. I realized I had been trying unsuccessfully to content myself with reading God’s love letters to me, pouring over them, and writing Him love letters in return – (my journaling had shifted from writing down insights gained about God to sharing my heart with Him as I “prayed on paper”).

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Author Robert Mulholland, in his classic “Shaped by the Word” dismantled my tidy devotional routines when he made a case for the distinction between reading the Word for information and reading for transformation. I realized that, for most of my life, I had taken all that I’d learned over the years about being a good student and – with the best of intentions – applied them to my efforts to know God. Perhaps there IS a better question to ask: “What does it mean to know God?” In our 21st century Western culture, it’s easy to make assumptions about the meaning of a word:

Know: to perceive or understand as fact or truth; to have information in your mind; to be cognizant or aware of a fact or a specific piece of information (dictionary.com, Cambridge dictionary, vocabulary.com)

As in, “You can know theology and be arrogant…” In Greek, the word for this type of knowing is “oida” and it seems that the emphasis has been on this understanding of the word at least ever since the Enlightenment. In contrast, Old Testament writers usually (nearly 950 times!) used the Hebrew word “yada” for “to know.”  That, and its New Testament Greek equivalent, “ginosko” both imply experiential, relational, intimate knowing. As in “… you cannot know God and be arrogant.”  That is the word Paul used when writing, “I want to know Christ…”

Charissa learned about Theo primarily by means of her intellect as she read his letters and grew to love him through what she knew (oida) about him. Theo longed for Charisa to fully know (ginosko) and experience him as they spent time together. As I really began to understand that God desires us to know him in a deeply relational and intimate way, a quietly disruptive, gloriously life-giving revolution began. I was (and continue to be) learning to experience God – to know Him – not only with my mind, but with all of me. When Jesus drew on Deuteronomy 6:5 in answer to the rich young ruler’s question about the greatest commandment, I believe that every word mattered, that God was very intentional when He instructed, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” As Jesus addressed the earnest man in front of him, He added “with all your mind” after “with all your heart,” and “with all your soul.” I realized that I unwittingly had prioritized [gone about?] my knowing of God differently than He had intended or desired for me to know Him. It wasn’t that knowing Him with my mind is of no value, but rather that He created me to know and enjoy Him experientially, with my heart and soul first.

My experience of knowing God is far messier now …  and far richer and deeper – life-giving and soul-satisfying. My devotional life is less predictable, because I am quite aware that I am not in control and cannot intellectually muscle my way into experientially knowing the Trinity. And I’ve barely begun to taste union and communion with Father, Spirit, and Son! As Michael Card sang, “There is a joy in the journey/there’s a light we can love on the way/There is a wonder and wildness to life/and freedom for those who obey” (Joy in the Journey, italics added).

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This obedience is not a striving born of duty, but the overflow of richly experiencing God and being fully known, deeply loved, and utterly delighted in by Him. It’s a relationship rooted in the desire of the Trinity and my responding desire to truly, experientially know Him and His love for me. And, oh, what a glorious adventure it is! The Lover of our souls longs for us to, as Paul prayed for all believers, “…feel and understand, as all God’s children should, how long, how wide, how deep, and how high his love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it. And so at last you will be filled up with God himself” (Eph 3:18-19 NLT).

“Oh, that we might know [“yada” experientially] the Lord!
Let us press on to know [“yada” experientially] him.
He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn
or the coming of rains in early spring.”   Hosea 6:3

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Written by: Rosalyn Otto