September 10 2025

Wednesday September 10

Knowing God

Ephesians 1:15-18a

“Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: 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, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know…”

Welcome to Pastor's Chat today. Today we're talking about one of the most important subjects in the entire Bible, and that is that we might know God. As a matter of fact, the Bible itself is a revelation, an unveiling. It tells us who God is, how we can know God, how we can walk with God, how we can live for God, and how we can have eternal life by knowing God. We cannot underestimate the importance of knowing God.

Paul's very first prayer for the church in Ephesus, and the first of his four prison prayers, is found here in verses 15-23. He begins by saying, "I do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers." Now, it's amazing how to most of churches that he wrote to, or that he was part of founding, and that he was encouraging, that he talks about praying for them “without ceasing”. Paul must have had an awesome continuous prayer life as he prayed for the different saints in the different churches in the different places of the world. He was a man of prayer.

What did Paul pray? His prayers were not for their material needs, that they would have money, not that they could pay their bills, not that they could build better and bigger buildings or churches. Those things could have been important and maybe were important at times, but his prayer was that “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to them the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him”.

I couldn't help but think of Hosea chapters 4 and 6. God said, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). That is what happens when we fail to know who God is. Then Hosea gives this invitation from God in chapter 6: "Come, let us return to the Lord" (v. 1). In verse 3, "Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord." And then God speaks in verse 6, “For I desire mercy and not sacrifice and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings”. God wants us to “know Him”.

Though the knowledge of God is the highest knowledge possible, the atheist claims there is no God for us to know. The agnostic states that if there is a God, you cannot know Him. But Paul met God in the person of Jesus Christ. And he knows that a man really can't understand much of anything else without a knowledge of God. The knowledge of God is the beginning of wisdom. The “fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”.

Romans 1 tells us that this willful ignorance of God led mankind into corruption and condemnation. Paul describes the beginning of this progression with these words: “Who suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (v. 18). “Because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (v. 21).  And then Paul goes on to show the development of how willful ignorance leads to idolatry, substituting a lie for the truth, exchanging God the creator for a worship of the man who was created. It then develops into immorality and indecency. And it all begins with an unwillingness to know God as Creator, as Sustainer, as Governor, as Savior, and as the Judge of our lives. There is tremendous danger and consequences when the believer does not grow in the knowledge of God.

In Philippians 3:10, Paul said, "That I might know Him and the power of His resurrection," meaning to be intimately acquainted with God. To know God personally is salvation. Jesus prayed in John 17:3; “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent”. To know God is to increase in sanctification (Philippians 3:10). And to know God leads to ultimate glorification (1 Corinthians 13:9-12).

My friend, we are made in the image of God. And the better we know God, the more satisfied we are in Him, and the more satisfied we are even in ourselves. And that is how we bring the greatest glory to Him. That's what God desires. That is what Paul prayed for the believers at Ephesus. We should pray this for ourselves. We can pray this for others.

“That I might know Him”—God, the true, the only God. May the Lord help us today to love and live for Him with all of our hearts.

God bless!