I Want To Know God.

"Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls."
(1 Peter 1:8-9 ESV)

So I've been reading this book by this really smart man named J. I. Packer. This is something I came upon:

"How many of us would say that in the light of the knowledge of God which we have come to enjoy, past disappointments and present heartbreaks, as the world counts heartbreaks, don't matter. For the plain fact is that to most of us they do matter. We live with them as our "cross" (or so we call them). Constantly we find ourselves slipping into bitterness and apathy and gloom as we reflect on them, which we frequently do. The attitude we show to the world is a sort of dried-up stoicism, miles removed from the 'joy unspeakable and full of glory'. 'Poor souls,' our friends say of us, 'how they've suffered.' And that is just what we feel about ourselves!" ~J.I. Packer

I want to know God in this manner, in this way. In a way that is so real, so close, so deep, that it changes EVERYTHING. I know God, don't get me wrong. But I want to know him like this. In a way that produces continual 'joy unspeakable'. I think a lot of us accept the truth of the gospel and maybe we even study a little bit and develop a pretty good foundation of God and who we are in Christ. But we stop there for some reason. And although it seems like we know all this stuff, we've barely scratched the surface of KNOWING our God. We know a lot about Him, but how deeply do we KNOW HIM?

"But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 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..." Phillipians 3:7-8

"When Paul says he counts the things he lost rubbish, or dung, he means not merely that he does not think of them as having any value, but also that he does not live with them constantly in his mind: what normal person spends his time nostalgically dreaming of manure? Yet this, in effect, is what many of us do. It shows how little we have in the way of true knowledge of God."

I want to KNOW Him in such a way that all these pointless things fade away. These things- the ones that hurt so much, that are so tiring, that are so hard to understand....they are rubbish, they mean nothing in comparison to KNOWING Him.

I want that. I want it not just in a theological, philosophical, abstract sort of way. I want it in the everyday, in a practical, hands on, lived out sort of way.

Determined.