It’s natural—or should be—for Christians to go to the Bible for our spiritual needs. God has promised to meet our needs. His Word gives us hope, assurance, comfort, guidance, and so much more.
But if we’re not careful, we can approach Bible reading with an “all about me” attitude. What’s in it for me, how does it relate to me, how does it make me feel.
Instead, the Bible is all about God. God wants to meet our needs, but more than that, He wants us to know Him. He told Jeremiah of the exiles He was punishing, “I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart” (Jeremiah 24:7). Throughout the Bible we see His longing for a people to know Him.
Eternal life begins with coming to know God. Jesus said, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). But when Paul said “that I may know him” in Philippians 3:10, he already knew Him as Lord and Savior. Yet he longed to know God more. Peter tells us to “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18).
My husband and I met and started dating in college in SC. But in May, he went home to Idaho, and I went home to TX for the long summer until we saw each other again the next fall. I’m sure I spent much of those summers apart gazing at the photos I had of him. But to get to know him better, I heard his words during the few phone calls we could afford and read them in his letters.
2 Corinthians 3:18 says, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” We can’t behold an accurate physical image of God in a painting or photograph. But we behold Him in His Word.
And in His Word, we find that He is good, loving, kind, merciful, righteous, powerful, wise, always present. We see His declarations about Himself. We read what the prophets of old said about Him. We see His actions in dealing with people throughout the Bible.
When we see our capable God, we’re assured He can handle anything, and anxiety melts away. When we see Him as the God of all comfort, our sorrow or pain is eased. When we see His ability to provide abundantly, over and above our need, we trust Him. When we see His calm and control, our fretfulness dissipates as we rest in Him.
The more we get to know Him, the more secure we are in His love, the more confidence we have in His wisdom, character, and provision.
And as we get to know Him, we trust Him more. We trust His promises in individual Bible verses, but more than that, we trust His character and His ability to take care of every need we have. We move beyond just getting our needs met and we find the ways He wants us to show His love and truth to others.
We don’t get to know Him just to get our needs met. But in getting to know Him, our needs are met.
So as we come to His Word, let us look for Him on every page. Let’s know and trust and love Him more and more each day.
In Thy truth Thou dost direct me by Thy Spirit through Thy Word; and Thy grace my need is meeting as I trust in Thee, my Lord. Of Thy fullness Thou art pouring Thy great love and pow’r on me without measure, full and boundless, drawing out my heart to Thee.
Have you ever had anyone give you a gift that showed they didn’t know you very well at all?
Or introduce you to someone else with phrasing that made you wonder who they were talking about?
I think one of the deepest desires of our hearts is to be known for who we truly are. Though we may have several acquaintances and friends, our best friends are probably the ones who “get” us the most.
Getting to know each other requires effort. Usually there is some kind of instant connection or like interests that draw two people together. But really getting to know each other comes with years of talking, listening, and being together.
Even then, those kinds of friendships don’t mean we’ll always understand each other or will never learn anything new about each other.
And if being truly known is one of our deepest desires, one of our deepest frustrations is being misrepresented or misunderstood. In one town we lived in, my husband was involved in local politics and had some brief interactions with the local press. It was amazing how often the media got details wrong or inferred meaning that was not implied.
God is the one who knows us best and still loves us. He knows exactly what we need when we need it. He made us, He planned for us from before the foundation of the world. He knows our frame, he knows our deepest thoughts.
O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether (Psalm 139:1-4).
Have you ever had an answer to prayer that was so exquisitely detailed and perfectly met your needs that you knew it could only have come from God? Or have you ever been burdened about something, opened your Bible for the day’s reading, and found the answer to the very thing you were thinking about before? Few things make me feel so known and loved by God.
But how well do we know Him?
Wrong views of God abound in the world. As a child, I had a mental picture of Him as a scowling deity peering over a thundercloud with lightning bolts in His hand, just ready to zap me when I did wrong. Others picture a kindly, indulgent grandfather who will always smile, pat them on the head, and let them get away with anything.
J. I. Packer said in his classic book, Knowing God:
How often do we hear this sort of thing: “I like to think of God as the great Architect (or Mathematician or Artist).” “I don’t think of God as a Judge; I like to think of him simply as a Father.” We know from experience how often remarks of this kind serve as the prelude to a denial of something that the Bible tells us about God. It needs to be said with the greatest possible emphasis that those who hold themselves free to think of God as they like are breaking the second commandment. . . .
All speculative theology, which rests on philosophical reasoning rather than biblical revelation, is at fault here. Paul tells us where this sort of theology ends: “The world by wisdom knew not God” (1 Cor 1:21 KJV). To follow the imagination of one’s heart in the realm of theology is the way to remain ignorant of God, and to become an idol-worshipper, the idol in this case being a false mental image of God, made by one’s own speculation and imagination (pp. 47-48).
The Bible says there are those who “have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge” (Romans 10:2) and who “profess to know God, but they deny him by their works” (Titus 1:16). Some who think they know Him and even call Him Lord will be surprised one day when He says, “I never knew you; depart from me” (Matthew 7:21-23).
How can we be sure we know Him, and know Him aright? Not only does the welfare of our souls depend on knowing God for who He truly is, but so does the welfare of those we speak and write to and influence.
Our spiritual life begins with coming to know Him. Jesus said to His Father in John 17:3: “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” When we understand that we’re sinners, deserving of God’s wrath, but He loved us and died to save us from that wrath, and we turn to Him in repentance and faith, we begin to know Him. (For more information, see How to Know God.)
Paul said in Philippians 3:8-11
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 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead (emphasis mine).
First, Paul said that knowing Christ was worth the loss of everything else. Then, though Paul already knew God, he wanted to know Him more, to know Him better. Bible Study Tools’ commentary on this verse says:
This power and virtue the apostle had had an experience of, yet he wanted to feel more of it, in exciting the graces of the spirit to a lively exercise, in raising his affections, and setting them on things above, and in engaging him to seek after them, and set light by things on earth, and in causing him to walk in newness of life, in likeness or imitation of Christ’s resurrection, to all which that strongly animates and encourages.
Just as it takes time to know other people, it takes time to know God. Though He already knows all about us, He wants us to talk to Him in prayer. He has revealed Himself through nature, but He has revealed Himself most clearly in Christ and in His Word.
1 Samuel 3:21 says, “The Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the Lord.” God reveals Himself to us the same way. Interestingly, verse 1 of that chapter says “the word of the Lord was rare in those days.” Then comes the incident where Samuel thinks Eli is calling to him, until Eli finally realizes it’s the Lord who is calling Samuel. Eli instructs Samuel to respond, “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.”
Paul says in the Philippians 3 passage referred to above “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection”—we love that part— “and may share his sufferings.” We don’t like that last part so much. Yet when we endure sufferings by seeking Him in His Word and prayer, we come to know Him in ways that we couldn’t otherwise.
There will always be more we can know about God. 1 Corinthians 13 says we “know in part” (verse 9), “we see in a mirror dimly” (verse 12). But someday we’ll see Him “face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (verse 12).
But God has enabled us to know Him here and to continue to know Him better and more fully until we see Him.
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6).
That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him,having the eyes of your hearts enlightened (Ephesians 1:17-18a).
Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. (Ephesians 4:13-14).
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 (Colossians 1:10).
May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire (2 Peter 1:2-4).
But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18)
And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life (1 John 5:20).
Most of us don’t get terribly excited about doctrine. We don’t rub our hands together before opening the Bible eagerly, anticipating what doctrine we’ll encounter this time. We think of doctrine as dry and dusty, full of highfalutin polysyllabic words that go over our heads.
We think doctrine is boring.
But right doctrine is our bedrock. Knowing what we believe and why comforts us and keeps us on course.
If we’re feeling insignificant, lonely, unloved, we might be inspired by an Instagram meme or a friend’s compliment—for a little while. But what truly ministers to our hearts is the foundational truths that God is with us even if we don’t “feel” Him, that He loves us even when we feel most unlovable, that we matter to Him because He created us and redeemed us.
Almost every NT book encourages right doctrine and warns against false doctrine. Doctrine determines and directs our thinking and actions.
With that in mind, Keri Folmar wrote The Good Portion: Scripture: The Doctrine of Scripture for Every Woman “to shed light on the treasure and sweetness of the sacred Scriptures. The book attempts to summarize the doctrine of the Word of God in a way that keeps the relational nature of the Bible at the forefront. After all, the Bible is God speaking to us. It is God revealing Himself with words and calling us into relationship with Him.” The title comes from the example of Mary of Bethany, who chose “the good portion, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42) by sitting at Jesus’ feet and listening to His teaching.
The eight chapters cover how we can know God through His Word, the Bible’s inspiration, trustworthiness, authority, clarity (ability to be understood), necessity, and sufficiency. Keri does a wonderful job keeping ” the relational nature of the Bible at the forefront.” The chapters are not “dry” at all, and each feeds into knowing God better and developing our relationship with Him.
A few of the quotes I noted in the book:
God is not silent. He has revealed Himself. He will speak to us if we will take our Bibles off the shelf and taste and see His goodness. It is through regularly hearing God speak that we can know Him and enjoy relationship with Him.
Churches want ‘customers’, so they work hard not to offend. Pretty soon the cross is bloodless, and Jesus becomes merely a good example for some to follow. It all starts with sidelining the Bible. We are told, “Let’s not put God in a box or a ‘book.”’ The Bible may remain a “participa[nt] in all our conversations,” but it loses its authority as the Word of God—all in an attempt to make Christianity more palatable to modern sensibilities. But the apostle Paul would not have agreed. He preached to pagan peoples, using the pure Word of God, declaring, ‘We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word’ (2 Cor. 4: 2). We should also refuse to tamper with God’s Word, not judging it to be obsolete, but letting it sit in judgment over us.
If we believe the Bible is universal truth, we should use it to interpret our experiences and circumstances, not the other way around.
God has communicated to us in a clear way, yet Paul tells Timothy to ‘rightly handl[e] the word of truth’ (2 Tim. 2: 15), implying that we can wrongly handle it. Our goal in reading, studying or teaching the Bible is to understand the author’s intended meaning. Hermeneutics can help us in this endeavor. Let’s look at several overarching principles or guidelines to interpreting the Bible.
Mary has chosen Jesus over completing her tasks. Mary has chosen Jesus over pleasing or impressing others with her clean house and good food. She has chosen Jesus over everything else that is tugging at her heart and her time. Mary knows what’s necessary. She wants to know Jesus.
Don’t miss the impact of this passage: Jesus was commending a woman, 2,000 years ago in the Middle East, for sitting under His teaching. He wants women to know Him and be grounded in the Scriptures. He wants women to be serious students of the Bible, studying it and hearing it taught. Godly women choose the good portion by going to Jesus in His Word. And Jesus says this good portion will not be taken away.
Keri writes as a pastor’s wife in Dubai. Her experience sharing God’s Word in another culture and dealing with people from other religions helps to illustrate the truths she shares.
This book is the first in a series of three. “This series of books on doctrine for women is an attempt to fuel your enjoyment of God by encouraging a greater knowledge of Him.” I’ve not read the others, but I greatly enjoyed and highly recommend this one.
Stray Thoughts 