Questions About Knowing God

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Kate In our society - not just American, in my case, but also much of the world influenced by Christianity - we have a tendency to throw the phrase "knowin…moreIn our society - not just American, in my case, but also much of the world influenced by Christianity - we have a tendency to throw the phrase "knowing God" around flippantly. The homeless and needy need to "know God", the emotionally driven spiritualists "know God" from a religious experience, and many churches throw around the phrase in a way that does not encourage true intimacy and knowledge, but a cliche.

In Chapter 3, Packer talks about what it means to genuinely know God and discusses many of the barriers, tendencies, and truths of this narrow path. In many ways it is a chapter long thesis statement he takes apart throughout the rest of his book.

1. Knowing God does not narrow your world into a dour set of sufferings we have to stoically bear until we meet our Judge. (This idea was common in the 1800s and carried into our time)

2. Knowing God does expand your world, remove boredom, and set on fire a desire to love, honor, and obey Him. Without God everything is a bore; He alone can catch our imagination and claim our allegiance without disappointment. He has swept us into a cosmic epic played throughout the ages.

3. He is not a neighbor, peer, something unknowable or inanimate, but he is above us. To know Him means he first knew us.

4. Knowing God involves knowing God's Word, the Bible.

5. You can only know God if you know Jesus.

6. Knowing about God does not mean you know God.

7. Knowing God is a matter of personal dealing - each person has their own relationship

8. Knowing God is a matter of personal involvement - Mind, will, and feeling. Like really knowing people, you must involve all of yourself in knowing God. With God you can't hide though, and bits of you are broken before him. Sometimes it is a mind obsessed with doubt or the emotions unable to feel for good things after years of abuse. Knowing God means he will clean those wounds and they will heal in time, but it is not usually a comfortable process.

- On the emotional note he puts - There are two camps - extremes - either God is an emotional experience or you can't truly 'know God' if your emotions are too high. Both are self absorbed, one dependent upon their own feelings about God and the other on lofty thoughts. Like all things there is a balance. The things is when people are broken in one area they favor the other, like a crippled leg, because it hurts to heal.

After all of this what really matters as Packer wrote, "is not... the fact that I know God, but the larger fact... that He knows me."

To sum it up, "There is tremendous relief in knowing His love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me , so that no discovery can disillusion him about me , in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me. "

The first time I read this I couldn't finish the book because this chapter was so absorbing. It answered questions I didn't know how to word and expressed my own self absorbed crippled state.

The rest of the book is just as beautiful if only because Packer constantly draws us back to Christ.
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This isn't an AR book, which is the standard method in schools these days for grading a book on reading level and appropriateness. What reading level and appropriate ages would get something out of this book? I read it a long time ago and vaguely remember it being rather wordy. Do you think a 6th grader, for instance, could read and understand it well?

Dorothy Brewster Ummm... probably bot. There is some deep things about it, and some very difficult words. I would recommend at least 8th or 9th grade.

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how many attributes of God were discussed in the book?

Julie Vena I took the following off Wikipedia. These are the names of the chapters so I hope that helps!
Part I: Know the Lord
1."The Study of God"
2."The People w…moreI took the following off Wikipedia. These are the names of the chapters so I hope that helps!
Part I: Know the Lord
1."The Study of God"
2."The People who Know their God"
3."Knowing and Being Known"
4."The Only True God"
5."God Incarnate"
6."He Shall Testify"
Part II: Behold Your God!
7."God Unchanging"
8."The Majesty of God"
9."God Only Wise"
10."God's Wisdom and Ours"
11."The Word is Truth"
12."The Love of God"
13."The Grace of God"
14."God the Judge"
15."The Wrath of God"
16."Goodness and Severity"
17."The Jealous God"
Part III: If God Be For Us -
18."The Heart of the Gospel"
19."Sons of God"
20."Thou our Guide"
21."These Inward Trials"
22."The Adequacy of God"(less)

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Is there much difference between the 1974 version and the 1993? Language? Biblical resources? thanks!

Dorothy Brewster There is no difference. My mom has the 1974 version , and i have the 1993 version. They are the same :)

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Unanswered Questions (1)

HHow can I read it?

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