- Those who are getting to know Him better day by day will likely be the key to building the bridges for “unknown” to become “known.”
Paul remarked to the Athenians, “as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.”
“An unknown god” should haunt all of us, one way or another.
First, do those of us who say we have been saved by Him, know Him as we ought? Are we investing time and commitment in that relationship?
Most Christian groups recognize the importance of practices commonly referred to as “the means of grace”: daily attention to the Word of God (private, family, public); daily prayer (private, family, public); habitual fasting; regular participation in corporate worship, in the Lord’s supper, and in Christian fellowship; and consistent engagement in works of mercy and compassion. These patterns provide the basic framework which, when practiced in faith and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, constitutes a path towards a deepening relationship with God.
Herein lies the problem: most Christians, while acknowledging their importance, rarely engage in these spiritual exercises with any kind of regularity or fervor. Hence, while we call God Father, King, Judge, Lord and, yes, even Jesus…we know Him not.
There is a powerful word in the Hebrew – yada – that is typically translated “to know.” Like many biblical words, it has a meaningful backdrop. Yada/know might be better rendered “to experience” or “to encounter.” To know God, as Paul indicated, takes more than hearing a sermon and saying a prayer to allow Him into one’s heart.
We need to experience Him, encounter Him, on a regular basis. One of the New Testament passages that helps me understand this concept is Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. I once polled a dozen people about the meaning of meek. The consensus answer was “wimp.” Yet that does not reflect its true definition.
Some scholars suggest that, at the time of Jesus, meek was a term associated with the training of animals. Though initially wild, they were tamed and trained to work productively alongside of man. A horse could be strong, vivacious, rippling with muscles…and yet be meek because that power was now under control and purposeful.
How did an animal become meek? In terms of beasts of burden, they were frequently yoked with a trained animal. Tethered to that partner, the beast would learn – by encounter and by experience – when and how to speed up, slow down, turn, or halt on command.
And so the Christian, when yoked to Jesus through the means of grace, learns to walk in the Spirit. Our thinking, our feeling, our doing become like Christ as we walk step by step with Him.
Second, there are those who don’t know the knowable God because they haven’t been told or they don’t want to know Him or they are too enamored with their earthly pursuits to look up and pursue Someone of far greater value.
Those who are thus lost desperately need to encounter God. Those who are getting to know Him better day by day will likely be the key to building the bridges for “unknown” to become “known.”
Paul planted churches everywhere he went. But apparently not in Athens. Ministry can be like that sometimes. The task would be left for others, later. But my bet is that those who finally did establish the Church there were saints who both knew Jesus and had a broken heart for those who didn’t.
“Make us, O Lord, like that. Those who have experienced and encountered You and want others to do the same. Amen.”
Matt Friedeman
