How to know God better? ...

Thursday, Jan 20, 2022. There are some basic and deep questions of faith, which are addressed by the biblical verses we will look into today. How do I know about God?

The New Testament, the second part of the biblical books, talks about Jesus as the human in which God shows himself. He is the so-called “son of God”, and it is said that we can see God in and through him. There are several reasons for that, there is context and meaning.

How to …

How does it work? If it is just Jesus, then everyone can learn about God. And indeed. You might believe in Jesus or you might not believe in Jesus, there is a lot about him in the Gospels, the books of Matthew, Marc, Luke and John. A lot of stories, parables, reports, events. How to read it properly and understand it? Here, Paul writes to the Ephesians about it:

15 For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, 16 I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. 17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. (Ephesians 1, 15ff)

Paul states that we need prayer and the spirit of wisdom given by God, the father. Without the holy spirit it is impossible to fully make sense of the Gospel of Jesus. And without prayer you do not get the holy spirit.

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Faith in Jesus is not something you gain in one step. It is a process. It is an interaction. It is a get-to-know and it contains and consists of steps of obedience, of action, of acceptance, of discipleship.

First, you might have a general interest in learning about Jesus. It could be that you realize that he seems to be trustworthy in the way he acts or talks. You might be impressed by his way to the cross, or by the wonders he did, or by the resurrection.

Faith in the biblical sense is not a mental exercise. It is an act of life. It is touching our whole existence, our mental life, our emotions, our actions, everything. To have faith in Jesus means to start reacting to him. It means to start to do what he tells us to do. It means to start to behave according to his words, since we start to understand that he has something important to say.

When we start acts of faith, God opens the next step to us. When we make decisions to open our life for him, he comes with his holy spirit. He explains things. He shows things. We start to understand the parables, the stories, the events of the past and the present. Faith is a process, in which God opens himself to us as far as we open ourselves to him. This is the true miracle, and fantastic journey! (Roland Potthast)