The pursuit of knowing Christ must be a firsthand, personal experience. There is a wide difference between what is true and what we know is true, between what we say is true and what we embrace in our hearts to be true. The Scripture tells us what is true about God, but only by experience can we know it for ourselves. God is not satisfied with our second-hand knowledge; he wants us to know him personally.
“O taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps 34:8).
The testimony of the saints down through history is that God is good. But we don’t “know” it until we experience it (taste it) through defining moments in our own life journey.
Growing up in mid America in the 1950s, we rarely traveled outside of the state. The interstate highway system was just being built and traveling cross-country on 2 lane highways was slow and dangerous. One year our family got a subscription to National Geographic magazine. The slick layout and colorful pictures was an immediate attraction to me. I am not sure I ever read any of the articles, but I sure looked at the pictures. National Geographic took the eyes of my mind to places I never thought I would see in person: places like the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Glacier National Park.
The following summer my parents announced that we were going to make a road trip to California. Five of us piled into a 1952 two-door Chevy and headed west on “Route 66.”
Along the way we stopped and saw places we had seen in National Geographic. I remember looking down from the edge of the Grand Canyon and standing next to a giant Sequoia tree thinking, “The pictures were great but no comparison to seeing it myself.”
In some ways the Scripture is an inspired National Geographic magazine. It gives us snapshots of men and women in biblical history who encountered God and discovered something about him. We read the text and vicariously gain a picture of the reality of God as it is illustrated in the lives of the saints of old. However, that knowledge was never meant to be a substitute for our own experiences. We, too, should be taking our own pictures and writing our own stories about our personal encounters with God.
John, one of the apostles who walked with the incarnate Son of God, wrote about this principle in his first letter,
From the very first day, we were there, taking it all in—we heard it with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands. The Word of life appeared right before our eyes; we saw it happen! And now we’re telling you in most sober prose that what we witnessed was, incredibly, this: The infinite Life of God himself took shape before us. We saw it, we heard it, and now we’re telling you so you can experience it along with us, this experience of communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. (1 John 1:1-3 MSG)
John is telling us that he encountered Christ firsthand. Now he wants his experience to be ours, taking our own pictures and writing our own story. Too often as Christians we are just reading or telling other people’s stories about their encounters with Christ. We have not stepped out by faith and tasted the reality of God though our own experience and story.
The familiar story of Peter walking to Jesus on the water is as amazing to us today as it must have been to the other eleven men sitting in the boat. I am sure they told this story often as they sat around their family dinner tables. We may be hard on Peter for his lapse of faith when he took his eyes off Jesus and focused on the storm – resulting in more than just wet feet. But only one out of the 12 ever actually walked on water! Peter knew firsthand what they could only talk about.
The apostle Paul summarized his spiritual journey in Philippians 3 when he said, “… I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil 3:8). The “all things” were not just his past claims of righteousness but included his present success of ministry. Paul was not content with his original understanding of Jesus. He wanted to continue to personally know him in a deeper way both in experience and knowledge.
Along our journey of discipleship, we will encounter storms that threaten our boat. The stories of how others met Jesus at their point of need serve as good catalysts to strengthen our faith and give us hope. However, they can never substitute for our own personal encounters with God. It is vital that we, too, “taste and see that the Lord is good.”
Reflection:
Think of a defining moment in your life when God showed up. How did he do it and were you surprised? What is the picture of God that was created by that encounter?