God Speaking

“I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.” (Jeremiah 24:7)

I was reading an article recently about how isolated we are becoming in this present generation where people are more attached to their smart phones than to “face to face” friends. I was surprised and dismayed to read that our city, Vancouver, BC was high on the list of the most unfriendly cities in Canada and the survey noted the number of people who admitted to not even knowing their neighbours, particularly those living in high rises, and how newcomers had great difficulty in making friends. Getting to know people was obviously not high on most people’s priority lists. While I was reading this, a song from that sweet movie “The King And I” popped into my head, it was called, “Getting To Know You!” The song was always a favourite of mine and its theme of deliberately setting out to learn all about new friends and to learn to like them and hope they would like you, was such a powerful message in breaking down barriers between people.

Getting to know people does always require effort on one’s part. It is very easy to know, “of” somebody, even to know their names, without really having any intimate knowledge of that person. Our Heavenly Father is very anxious that his relationship with us is a deep and meaningful one. He even tells us he has designed our hearts to want that relationship. (Jeremiah 24:7) He doesn’t want us to know of him or even just to know his name, he wants so much more than that. The first most important thing to know is that he made us, loves us and protects us

“Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.” (Psalm 100:3)

One of the verses in the song, Getting To Know You, uses these words:

Getting to know you

Getting to feel free and easy

When I am with you

Getting to know what to say.

When you have an intimate relationship with someone, one of the blessings is complete freedom of words between each other, and feelings can be honestly expressed. This only happens when both parties know each other deeply. Our Heavenly Father already knows us in this way, what he really desires for us is to know him so our friendship flourishes. How do we do this? Get to know him. We need to pursue our knowledge of him.

“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord, our Saviour, Jesus Christ…” (2 Peter 3:18)

David, was a man after God’s heart and he craved to know the Lord in a real and personal way. His prayer is a wonderful one for us to use in our next conversation as we get to know the Lord.

“Show me your ways O, Lord, teach me your paths; guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Saviour and my hope is in you all day long.” (Psalm 25:4)