To know something or somebody requires a commitment to a learning process because there can be no ‘Knowing’ without a ‘Learning’.
Apostle Paul was so driven by the desire to know who God is that, above all else, he became fully committed to obtaining the full knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ from the day of their encounter on the way to Damascus. And the great apostle had a great teacher in the person of the Holy Spirit
“However, when He, the Holy Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.
He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you” John 16:13-14.
Little wonder he was so equipped to write at least half of the New Testament epistles.
Apostle Paul didn’t just desire to know the power of His might, but also the fellowship of His sufferings with added express desire to be conformed to His death.
“That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death,” Philippians 3:10.
To the apostle, Jesus Christ was like a textbook that he sought, read, and assimilated over and over again until it consumed his entire being, till his last breath.
He was so fervent with this preoccupation that when he stood making his defense before King Agrippa, Festus, one of his listeners was so amazed at his overwhelming logic that he exclaimed, “… Paul, you are beside yourself! Much learning is driving you mad!” Acts26:24
Equally interesting was Paul’s responses to Festus in verse 25, “But he said, I am not mad, … but speak the words of truth and reason”
Truth and reason? Remember that this was the same Paul who was Saul of Tarsus the chief persecutor of the followers of the ‘way’. But something changed and here he was calling what he once fought against as being a falsehood, truth, and proper reasoning. Many so-called atheists and the religious outside Christ ought to read the biography of Apostle Paul. But, unfortunately for them, the full text is only available in the scriptures they hate to acknowledge as the extant and infallible word of God.
His reasoning from the scriptures was so true and accurate that King Agrippa was equally taken by his arguments and exclaimed, much like his counterpart Festus, “… “You almost persuade me to become a Christian”.
Perhaps Paul did succeed in persuading him to become a Christian indeed, in the long run. There is no telling now whether the King who was so moved and convicted, would not turn to Christ before his death for the seed, which is the undiluted word of God that leads to repentance, had been sown by a man who loved the Lord enough to make Him the object of all his affection. Now that was a workman that needed not be ashamed but rightly dividing the word of truth. 2Timothy 2:15
It is pertinent to note that despite Paul’s vast knowledge of the scriptures, however, he never presumed to have apprehended the full extent of the knowledge of God as he explains in 1 Cor 13: 9-10 “For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect comes, then that which is in part shall be done away”.
Also, we hear the same view about the unsearchable riches of Christ in Ephesians 4:13 where he wrote, “till we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”
Even so, Paul had never doubted the need for the pursuit of full knowledge of God as a primary requirement for faith building throughout his ministry. When therefore it came to his knowledge that some people from Ephesus had accepted, the Lord Jesus as their Lord and saviour, he was excited and gave thanks to God in prayer for them.
But he did something else in his prayer that is very important for our study today, he prayed to God to grant them the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.
Now I actually would have expected Paul who knew what was coming for this young congregation, to be seeking God’s protective power and preservation over them. That would have been a logical and natural thing to do but not with apostle Paul who knew that the key to real protection and preservation lies with having the full knowledge of God which has the power to sustain them through any trials.
So, he prayed instead saying, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him” Ephesians 1:17
Knowing the Lord as the Truth, the Life, and the Way requires a basic understanding of each of these personality traits in the Lord and requires all the prayers and intercessions we can possibly offer for the saints, in every clime and tribe.
When the Lord was on earth, He once challenged a woman of Samaria at Jacobs well saying, “You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews” John 4:22.
The same blindness that held the lost tribes of Israel captive even till the coming of the Messiah is still gripping many in the Christian fold today, who do not know, and neither are hungry enough to know who they worship but are rather satisfied to go through the motions of faking it until you make it. So, do you still wonder why some professing Christians today cannot worship Him in Spirit and in Truth?
The many struggles we witness in the body of Christ today among Christians have much to do with a lack of basic knowledge of who they have believed, more than the works of Satan because although Satan is a defeated foe, many still accord him much power that he does no longer possess. Hosea 4:6 has much to say about people who perish, needlessly, for lack of knowledge.
Knowing the Lord is a journey that begins from the book of Genesis to Revelation. Each of the 66 books of the bible was written in contemplation of the son of God who was slain from the foundation of the world. Jesus’ death on the cross wasn’t an unexpected event because it was prophesied as a necessity for the redemption of man, right from the very beginning in the book of Genesis.
It is important to know that the Lord Jesus was the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world for knowing this truth would help to clear the air for those who argue that if God cared enough as the bible says, he would have done something decisive from the beginning of Satan’s rebellion and disruption of the world. This group of naysayers often argue that God did nothing to destroy the author of the confusion in the world today. But He did and does care but lack of knowledge of the truth has remained the worst problem of Faith because Faith, although seemingly without substance, is based on knowledge. Without knowledge, you cannot have faith in God because unless you know Him, you can’t truly believe in Him.
Speaking on the rejection of the Son of God by Israel that was originally prepared to receive Him, Paul wrote, “How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a Preacher?” Romans10:14
It is about hearing, preaching, teaching, and receiving before there could be a ‘believing’ which again points back to knowing the Lord as truth and grace.
That I may know Him must become the new slogan of the ongoing third revival movement, and maybe the last before the coming of the Lord. Without true knowledge of God apostasy which has been predicted in Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians will come quicker than we would imagine, and it is already afoot in the world today. The only way true children of God shall be delivered from the various misconceptions and twisting of the scriptures that have become rampant even among the most respected clergy today is by rededicating ourselves to the search for the truth without fear of repression by those who are in the business of sowing tares among the wheat.
In case you are still wondering about the direction of this article, do you know, for instance, that some Christians are still of the notion that only bad people go to hell? That good people, of whatever religious persuasion and inclinations, are qualified candidates for heaven?
But how far from the truth can that be? Those who champion this notion, among whom, unfortunately, are professing Christians have spurned the words of the One they call Lord which He clearly stated in John 14:6 saying,
“…I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me”
I said spurned because the scripture which is the existent word of God is not hidden except to those who are perishing and that they do by choice. Political correctness has nothing to do with what is ‘written’ – the word of God.
Ask yourself for a moment, how could a ‘Christian’ who strongly believes and argues that all religions are from God and that none in particular points the way to Him, ever preach to an unbeliever that Jesus Christ is the only way to the Father? Impossible, isn’t it? To such persons, as long as you are a good Muslim, Buddhist, traditional religion worshipper, and the like, and give arms to feed the poor and do all manner of ‘good’ work even if you are an atheist, you are a qualified candidate for heaven. These are the ‘Christians’ that daily crucify the Lord anew, for they posit by their twisted notions, that He had suffered and died in vain. For if indeed there was another way, God the Father would never have permitted His only begotten Son to suffer the shame and agony of the cross. Yet, these sounding cymbals dare to spew such heresy and speak from their carnal minds.
But the word of God is clear about the righteousness of man without the atoning blood of Jesus when Isaiah 64:6 called it a filthy rag in comparison with the righteousness which is of Christ Jesus.
Apostle Paul’s burden for the Ephesian church should form our burden for today’s Christian, ‘that we may know Him …’
This earnest pursuit shall be the driving force behind this blog and by His special grace, we shall continue to confront, in love every lie that denies the truth and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. But all will be done in love and rightly dividing the word. 2 Timothy2:15.
There is no better way to defend the faith than to defend its very foundation, which is the knowledge of the word of God. And our defense of the gospel is not necessarily against those who are outside, these ones cannot hurt the branches of Christ. Rather, our defense shall be and ought to be, against those who have come into the body of Christ to sow ‘tares’ among the ‘wheat’. These twisters of the truth, according to Apostle Paul are the true enemies of the faith. Philippians 3:18-19
Jude, the brother of our Lord was of the same mind and shared his concerns for the church. He was so anxious about it that he wrote urging the church to ‘contend’ for the faith. It was a battle cry to the believers not to allow those he described as having crept into the body to destroy the gospel as it was handed down by the fathers. Jude 3-4.
Then to show the similarity between the present calling and the calling that the Israelites received being the root that holds the branches, (John 4:22) Jude observed in verse 5 that that as it was with those who didn’t ‘believe’ in God’s leading during the wilderness journey, so shall it be with those who are now called to another kind of journey that is of faith in the Son of God, Jesus Christ but have chosen a lie because they hated the truth.
We must at this point observe that many stumble out of ignorance though as observed in Hosea 4:6. Again, we see that the reason why they didn’t know the ‘way’ of the Lord, was because they didn’t seek him in a proper light of the truth that was available to them, for God didn’t leave them in the dark about his precepts and ordinances.
For this category of believers, their situation deserves our attention and intercessory prayers because God will judge righteously on the day of his revelation at the redemption of the purchased ones.
We know, for instance, that in the secular world, there is no excuse for ignorance of the law. It is not necessarily the wickedness of the judge that would warrant such a statement before sentencing the offender but rather the reasoning that says, you ought to know… but you just didn’t care to know what the law says because you would rather live lawlessly and independent of any rule or responsibilities.
And just as the law is no respecter of any person even much more is the Lord impartial in His judgment and would judge the unjust for his unjust ways when the morning comes.

We shall continue with this topic in part 11 and stretch the argument that only the truth you know can set you free. John 8:32.

We love and wish you God’s amazing grace.
Blessings…