A Sure Fire Formula for Knowing God

Proverbs 2:1-5

My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.

1. God’s Word deserves our full acceptance as being utterly true, infallible, inerrant and inspired from the first words in Genesis through the last words in Revelation. If you cannot honestly do that you will never be able to “find the knowledge of God.”
2. To store up God’s commands does not necessarily imply a rote memorization, but putting to memory certain key verses will be of benefit. Better still is to understand the context of great passages of Scripture and the doctrinal truths taught therein.
3. When we avail ourselves of worship services, Sunday School classes, home or neighborhood Bible studies or mentoring sessions with a knowledgeable Christian, we are “turning our ears to wisdom.”
4. To apply one’s “heart to understanding” takes a bit more effort. Instead of simply listening to what some one else has learned and is passing on, we must have a love for, and a desire to learn from, God’s Word during a daily personal time of Bible study.
5. It is through prayer, prior to and during our personal time of study that we “call out” and “cry aloud” to the Lord for “insight” and “understanding.” Insight implies a look inside our heart to see how what we are learning applies to us.
6. When King Solomon wrote the book of Proverbs, those slaves mining silver and gold in his mines had to do so on their knees in narrow passages cut in the earth, holding an oil lamp in one hand and a pick in the other. It was hard work but the treasure made the effort profitable. So it is with the study of God’s Word. We need to cross reference and use reliable commentaries to get the most out of the lesson. Studying the Hebrew and Greek lexicons will also give greater meaning to the scriptures since the original Old and New Testaments respectively were penned in those languages.

By putting those six relatively simple, yet important steps into practice we will not only grow in a personal knowledge of our triune God, but we will also mature more steadily and be more effective Christians. Jesus put it very simply and clearly when He prayed to our Father, Sanctify  them by the truth; your word is truth. (John 17:17)