Knowing God...

I started back to school recently. After mmmmm, lets just say a lot of years since last stepping into a classroom, it's been interesting.

I am one that looks for opportunities to share my faith with people. I love God and I love God because He first loved me. Loved me enough to create me, to form me in His image, to send His perfect sinless Son to die for me so that my sin could be forgiven and that I could know Him, that I could have the kind of personal relationship it takes to claim love for someone. That's God.

Well, I was excited that my new professor was also of strong faith. He spoke of mission trips, of working within his denomination as a fundraiser for a faith based group and said he had formerly held a professional position leading a church. He spoke about recently being a guest minister at a church.

He is a professor of Theology, he did a "practice lecture" intended to help the class hone their note taking skills. His lecture was on his definition of religion. He said that religion is: A personal faith stance regarding the issues of ultimate concern.

It's a very theological and professor-ish definition...okay, I can live with that.

But, as he went word my word through his definition, he explained faith as 1.) believing without knowing and 2.) believing without the possibility of knowing. Okay, STOP, that's where I have to argue...

Yes, it takes faith to believe in God, and faith requires trusting in something you can't see or maybe touch. BUT-I will argue that not knowing and not having a possibility of knowing are 2 entirely different things. I believe that I KNOW God, I know His character, I know He has a sense of humor, I know that I feel loved and that He has answered prayers and worked miracles in my life that are beyond any human explanation. I know God.

I argued the fact in class a bit, but it really resulted in no level of agreement on the issue.

I'm writing about this for one reason...to make you think. Do you believe that you can't know God? Why? Have you asked Him about Himself? Have you read the Perfect Book He left for us to tell us about Himself and His will in our lives? I do, but not often enough. I don't ask for Him to reveal Himself to me and speak into my life as much as I should...but it sure isn't because I feel like I can't or I'm not 100% sure He will. For me it is more about what He may say when He answers. What will I be called to do, what will he want to teach me next? I love God, but I also know how little I am compared to the plans He has for me and that's scary. Because I know God, I also know that I don't need to be big enough for Him because He is big enough on His own...He doesn't need me, He wants me-all of me. That's what I know, and that's why I want to know more each day.