On Nodding Terms with God

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Back in the day, neighborhoods were close-knit, and neighbors knew each other well. Today, most neighbors are on nodding terms, living side by side for years but only feeling comfortable enough to say hello, wave, or nod. These relationships are casual and shallow.

 

That's the relationship many have with God. They know about God, but knowing about God is not the same as knowing God. A superficial knowledge of God without intimacy is to be on nodding terms with God.

 

It's good to know God intellectually. But we also need to know Him personally through a relationship of love and fellowship. To know God intimately is man's highest calling because it is the reason He created us. Made in His image (Gen. 1:26–27), we have the capacity to know, worship, and walk with our Creator.

 

David, a man after God's own heart (1 Sam. 13:14; Acts 13:22), could never be content to be on nodding terms with God. “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1). The psalmist expressed the same longing in Psalm 42:1-2: “As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.”

 

The apostle Paul shared this burden that God's people know Him intimately, praying that He would give them "the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened" (Eph. 1:17-18). Later, he prayed they would "know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God" (Eph. 3:19).

 

J.I. Packer once asked, "What were we made for? To know God. What aim should we set ourselves in life? To know God.” Yet many settle for being on nodding terms with God. Packer describes the tragedy this way: "the world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God…you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfold, as it were, with no sense of direction, and no understanding of what surrounds you.”  But even more tragic, we sacrifice the greatest experience and highest calling of our lives: intimacy with God.

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Written by Craig Ressler