Knowing God

“And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, ‘The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands...” Exodus 34:6.

Growing up we experience our parents day by day and become aware of their character and how they will respond in most situations. When I was a little girl and had made a bad decision I never questioned the love of my parents as they disciplined me. Through spending time with them I had become confident in their character and sure of their love. In the dictionary the word abounding means to be plentiful, well supplied and to be present in large numbers or quantities.

We either believe God’s word or we don’t – we cannot take pieces out of the Bible and claim them leaving other principles behind. The Bible is very clear on the character of God and what we can expect from Him through our pursuit of fellowship with Him. One of the basic principles of Christianity is that God is love and we can count on that love to accompany the other attributes of Christ.

Knowing the character of God through print and experiencing the character of God are completely different. We can know what someone else thinks of a person with whom we have limited contact but we cannot experience that person’s character until we get into fellowship with that friend. All we have on which we can depend is the word of someone else. The same exists with our relationship with Christ. No one can know Christ for you.

Job 42:5 states “I’ve heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees you.” Although I have always heard of God and been a Christian it wasn’t until 3 ½ years ago when I pursued personal fellowship with Christ in an effort to experience Him that I was able to bring His character into spiritual focus. When it comes to learning who God is and what attributes for which we can depend we must be visual learners and open our spiritual eye so God’s characteristics can leap off the pages of the Bible and into our circumstances.

When you cannot depend on your circumstances, you can depend on God to deal with your circumstances based on who He says He is…compassionate, gracious, abounding in love, faithfulness…the list goes on and on.