Packer writes:
Our friends tell us how much they value our contribution, and this spurs us to further explorations of God’s truth, so that we may be equal to the demands made upon us. All very fine—yet interest in theology, and knowledge about God, and the capacity to think clearly and talk well on Christian themes, is not at all the same thing as knowing him.
So, how do we know if we really know God since being fluent in biblical jargon isn’t a sign of true knowledge of God?
Packer distinguishes many signs of true and real knowledge of God and among those, here is one thought:
People who know their God are before anything else people who pray, and the first point where their zeal and energy for God’s glory come to expression is in their prayers. In Daniel 9 we read how, when the prophet “understood from the Scriptures” that the foretold time of Israel’s captivity was drawing to an end, and when at the same time he realized that the nation’s sin was still such as to provoke God to judgment rather than mercy, he set himself to seek God “ in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes”, and prayed for the restoring of Jerusalem with a vehemence and passion and agony of spirit to which most of us are completely strangers. Yet the invariable fruit of true knowledge of God is energy to pray for God’s cause—energy, indeed, which can only find an outlet and a relief of inner tension when channeled into such prayer—and the more knowledge, the more energy! By this we may test ourselves.
I’d highly recommend you the (best-seller) book for an extensive answer on the matter.
Image credit: Vanishing Library - Miguel M.Almeida.Licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
