Getting to Know God Better

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 1:17

The Apostle Paul has been teaching the great facts underlying the Christian faith in Ephesians 1, and we turn now to his prayer. This is a helpful revelation of the place of prayer in the Christian experience, especially in believers who are maturing, and in relationship to the study of Scripture. This brings prayer and the Scriptures together. The apostle, having finished a great passage in which he has set forth what the three-fold God is doing for us, now adds these words addressed to the Ephesian Christians.

That is really the major objective of a Christian life — to know God better. We need to ask ourselves, Is this happening with us? Are we really getting to know God better?

There is a principle in the Scripture that is very important for us to understand. We are all familiar with the phrase that says we are made in the image of God, which means in some way that humanity reflects God. But this fact means that we cannot learn who we are until we begin to know and learn who God is. It is the revelation and understanding of the nature of God that will tell us what we are like.

I believe that this is one of the major reasons why many people today never seem to discover who they are. They never learn what they can do, what possibilities lie within, and what potential is theirs because they have never discovered who God is. We reflect him, and therefore it is extremely important that we come to know God better. Remember that Jesus said this in his great prayer to the Father: Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent (John 17:3).

This is the reason that we exist — that we may know God better. I hope this is happening to you, young and old alike. You never get to the end of knowing more about God. He is such a fantastic being that revelations about his character and nature keep coming to us, and we discover that as we know him better, we suddenly realize we know ourselves better too.

So Paul prays for these people. He doesn't know their circumstances. He can't pray for their daily problems and pressures as you can when you know somebody personally. But he can pray, and does pray, that they may know God better. That will take care of everything.

Open my eyes, Lord, so that I may see more of who you are.