Much of the time, the spiritual wisdom of the world wants us to believe that God (if He exists at all) is unknowable. You can’t really know Him—what He’s like, what He cares about, what wants for humanity. You just can’t know.
But what if you can? What if God—who would otherwise be unknowable to humanity—actually did make Himself known? That’d be great news, wouldn’t it?
Now, imagine if the people who say they believe in this God and have easy access to the source of knowledge about Him… just ignore it?
So many of us struggle to read the Bible—we try different reading plans, to no avail. We ask for prayer and accountability, but things don’t change. We know we should read the Bible… but is it sometimes that we just forget what the Bible really offers us?
What the Bible, and especially the New Testament, offers us is an actual knowledge of God. We are to know him as our Father. “No man,” says Christ, “cometh unto the Father, but by me.” So I can know God, not as someone who is far away in the distance, of whom I am frightened, a tyrannical someone who is set against me, but I can turn to him and trust him as my Father. “Ye have received the Spirit of adoption,” says the apostle Paul, “whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15). In other words, we realize that God loves us with an everlasting love, that he is so concerned about us that the very hairs of our head are all numbered, and that nothing can happen to us apart from God and outside his will.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Let Your Hearts Not Be Troubled (Kindle Edition)
We can know God—really know Him as our Father. We don’t really need to look elsewhere for knowledge of Him—not to books (even good ones), mountaintop experiences, or vague spiritual activities.
God wants us to know Him, and really know Him and the everlasting love with which He loves us in Jesus Christ. What further encouragement do we need to read our Bibles?
