How can I know God personally?
The short answer
You can know God personally through Jesus Christ, whom God sent to make him known. Jesus defines eternal life as knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he sent, Jeremiah calls knowing God the one boast worth having, and Scripture tests that knowledge by a life that keeps God's word.
The fuller answer
You can know God personally because, in the Bible, knowing God was never mainly about collecting information about him. It is a relationship word, used for the knowledge between close friends and between husband and wife. Jeremiah says the boast worth having is not wealth, strength, or cleverness, but understanding and knowing God himself, the LORD who exercises kindness, justice, and righteousness on the earth, and who delights in those things. The possibility itself is startling when it is stated plainly: the Creator of everything invites creatures to know him, not merely to know about him or to obey him from a distance.
This is what the LORD says: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, nor the strong man in his strength, nor the wealthy man in his riches. But let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD, who exercises loving devotion, justice and righteousness on the earth— for I delight in these things,” declares the LORD.
Jeremiah 9:23-24 (BSB)
Jesus defined eternal life itself in these terms in John 17:3: knowing the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom God sent. Eternal life, in his words, is not merely living forever. It is knowing God, and that knowledge comes through Jesus, the one who makes the unseen Father known. Nobody in the New Testament claims to know God personally while bypassing the Son God sent to reveal him.
Now this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.
John 17:3 (BSB)
John also gives the relationship its tests, and they are practical rather than mystical. Whoever says I know him but does not keep his commandments is mistaken, while the one who keeps his word finds God's love made complete in them (1 John 2:3-5). Hosea had made the same point centuries earlier: God desires steadfast love and the knowledge of God rather than empty ritual (Hosea 6:6). Knowing God shows in a life bending toward his ways.
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you as My priests. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children.
Hosea 4:6 (BSB)
Hosea's warning that God's people were destroyed for lack of knowledge was aimed at people who had religion without relationship. So the path to knowing God personally is the one Scripture lays out: come to him through Jesus in repentance and faith, learn of him in his word, speak to him in prayer, and walk with his people. It begins by God's invitation, grows by ordinary faithful means, and is measured less by feelings than by a life increasingly shaped by the God now known. Such knowledge is never finished in this life, and Scripture treats growing in it as the normal shape of a Christian life from the first day to the last.
Sources
- Berean Standard Bible (BSB)
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