“To know Him is to love Him, and to know Him better is to love Him more.”
A. W. Tozer
One of the sweetest moments of the day is when Jeff comes home from work. Sometimes, the girls catch the sound of his car door closing or the narration of an audiobook as he approaches the house. Other times, it isn’t until he steps in that they realize he’s back and run to see him. Either way, Jeff is usually met by two breathless little girls yelling “Daaaaddy!!” and a toddler boy excitedly jumping around in the fray. You’d think they haven’t seen him for days the way they greet him.
Our kids know their dad.
They know the sounds of his going out and coming in, and his form through the beveled glass of the front door. (Only once did one of them mistake someone else for him in her hurry. The stranger, whose build approximated Jeff’s, was met with the door swinging wide open and immediately slamming in his face.) They know that when he gets home, he’s happy to see them, ready to hear about their day.
On the flip side, sometimes Jeff has a hard time getting out because a little person is hanging onto his legs, refusing to let him leave for work. Sometimes there are tears because there was no proper goodbye. Our kids love their dad and would be with him all the time if they had the choice.
Those who have walked with me know the burning heart-question which drove me to seek God with intensity in my late teens. Seeking God’s will for my life led me to the Greatest Commandment, which in turn led to the perplexing question of: What does it even mean to love and know God? Growing up, a common saying in church highlighted the difference between knowing about and knowing God. But I wasn’t so sure what that actually looked like in the flesh.
In college, the words of the Apostle Paul set a clear course to aim for, a request to God to make this true of me: that I may consider all else as loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. God revealed himself as holy in the Scriptures. And the Spirit, in love, relentlessly shone a spotlight on my heart, revealing the ugly, pervasive grip sin had on me. Every time I tried to untangle one root of sin, I seemed to unearth more of my wretchedness. Finally, having been stripped of all illusions of my own righteousness, I saw— and felt— the beauty of the gospel with life-changing force. Oh the joy of not merely acknowledging, but knowing my sin and the grace of God through Christ!
The following years of zeal and service revealed significant gaps in my knowledge of God. Personal piety and ministry experience did not answer questions I had about reading and applying the Scriptures; my (mis)understanding of the Christian life led to guilt and burnout.
It wasn’t as if all I believed before was untrue, but I needed deeper and wider roots. While the foundation remained the same, God reworked some of the infrastructure of my theology through seminary. Rather than dryly academic, my studies in seminary were absolutely life-changing in the best way. I remember holding back tears and stepping out of class during breaks to praise God for his precious truth. And to this day, I am passionate about orthodoxy because I have experienced firsthand the way our thinking about God affects our lives before him.
Both experiential knowledge of and rigorous study about God have powerfully shaped my life and I now see the “knowing about God versus knowing God” dichotomy as a false one. People may tend toward cold intellectualism or vapid emotionalism, but knowledge about and of God is neither. Christians love God with all our hearts and our minds. God seeks worshippers who worship in spirit and in truth.
These days though, I have needed reminders to seek to know God relationally. In particular, I have been challenged by the psalms. Packed with rich theological truths about God and deep affection for him, verbs of religion and devotion abound— long, love, yearn. They are directed relationally— I remember you, seek you, faint for you, thirst for you, bless you, cling to you. Your steadfast love is better than life, the psalmist declares, so my lips will praise you (Psalm 63).
Scripture is packed with experiential, emotional, and relational language when it comes to us and God. Christians audaciously call God our King, Father, Creator, Redeemer, Shepherd, Friend, and Bridegroom— all descriptions of who he is in relationship to us— and ourselves his servants, children, creation, redeemed, sheep, friends, and bride. So I have been reminded to go to God with love and affection, to pray with words of the heart and long for deeper experiences of him.
At home, I have three living displays reminding me of the kind of knowledge at the heart of Christianity. Their knowledge of me, their mom, and of their dad is not abstract. Rather, it drives them to seek us for empathy and bandaids when hurt, to confession and requests for prayer when troubled. Their knowledge that we are wiser means they ask us many questions. Their prior experiences of our care means they climb onto our laps for snuggles just because.
Our kids are still growing in their knowledge of us and we of them, but there are countless ways they display what they already do know. The girls know where to go with fears about the night and joyful stories of new accomplishments. They come to us in tears, ecstatic, and everything in between. Our 18 month-old cannot articulate why he trusts us so much (as of now, he can’t articulate much at all), but he knows to cry for help when he’s slipped trying to reach the sharpener, even as his hand grips a dangerously sharp pencil and his legs dangle off the table. He knows to plead his case, “Mama!”, with pointed finger when his sister is walking away with the Mozart Magic Cube he was playing with first.
Our kids pursue us in relationship, excitedly chatting away, sitting close, freely offering kisses, hugs, and high-fives. They have come to know us through trusting us and they trust because they know us. They know about us, they know us, and will continue to know us more.
Their example is God’s grace to me. The little hand that grasps my finger to walk me to the snack cabinet reminds me to go to my Father because I know he is wise and able. Their desire to know where I am at all times, a reminder to seek him because I was made to be with him.
Every day, they give testimony of the loving delight of knowing in the scramble to the door, the jumping up and down, and the bursting laughter of welcoming daddy home.
God, make this true of me.
Keeping Heart 