Why Knowing God Matters for Every Believer Today!

THE KNOWLEDGE

OF GOD

────────────────────────

A Journey into Divine Revelation

Part Two: Why It Matters, What Hinders, and How to Ascend

────────────────────────

"But the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits."

— Daniel 11:32

Who is God?

If I may ask — what would you tell me?

Part One of this series mapped the four levels of the knowledge of God — gnosis, ginosko, epignosis, and oida — from the first awareness of His existence through to the settled, unshakeable certainty of a soul that has been thoroughly formed by God. Now we press further.

In this second part, we examine four essential questions: Why does knowing God matter so urgently — what does it actually cost not to know Him? What barriers arise that must be identified and overcome? What specific pathways does Scripture provide for pressing deeper? And what is the role of the Cross as the eternal doorway through which all genuine knowledge of God must pass?

These are not academic questions. They determine the depth and quality of your entire spiritual life. The invitation has been issued. The veil is torn. The Spirit is calling — not to casual proximity, but to holy intimacy. The question is whether you will press through.

 

Chapter One

Why Knowing God Matters

Four Reasons the Knowledge of God Cannot Be Treated as Optional

The greatest pursuit of the believer is not ministry, not miracles, not even heaven itself. It is God. To know Him. Because all else flows from this fountain. Salvation itself is defined not merely as escape from hell but as entering into the knowledge of God. Jesus declared: 'This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent' (John 17:3). Eternal life is not a place — it is a Person. And the heart's unending discovery of that Person is the substance of life.

Scripture gives at least four reasons why this knowledge must be pursued relentlessly — each sufficient in itself, together forming a case that is unanswerable.

 

1.  BECAUSE IT PRODUCES TRANSFORMATION

You Cannot Truly Behold God and Remain the Same

The most visible fruit of genuine knowledge of God is change — not the change that comes from discipline alone, but the change that comes from sustained encounter with the living God. Paul describes the mechanism precisely: 'We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord' (2 Corinthians 3:18). The beholding produces the transformation. The knowledge is not cold information — it is fiery encounter that reshapes the one who enters it.

The reason many believers remain carnal and unchanged after years in the church is not insufficient discipline. It is insufficient beholding. They have attended services without encountering God. They have heard sermons without meeting the God the sermons describe. They have accumulated doctrine without the experience that makes doctrine transforming rather than merely informative. Consider Enoch — he walked with God, and he was not, for God took him (Genesis 5:24). The closer the walk, the more the flesh dies and the more Christ lives.

"Hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments."

— 1 John 2:3

Transformation is the first and most reliable fruit of true knowledge. The proof is not the testimony. It is the life.

 

2.  BECAUSE IT IS THE SOURCE OF ALL GENUINE POWER

Exploits Follow Knowledge — Never the Other Way Around

'The people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits' (Daniel 11:32). The sequence is irreversible: knowing God produces strength, and strength produces exploits. The exploits do not generate intimacy. The miracles do not create the knowledge. The knowledge creates everything else.

Elijah stood alone before four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal — not because he had superior courage, but because he knew the Living God. David ran toward Goliath — not with confidence in his skill, but with the certainty of one who knew the covenant God personally. When you know God, exploits follow. Not because you are seeking them, but because His life flows through you and cannot be contained.

"That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death."

— Philippians 3:10

Paul, who had already experienced apostolic power at an extraordinary level, was still crying: that I may know Him. Not that I may have more power — that I may know Him. Because he understood that the Person is the goal, and power is the consequence. This is the fundamental error of the modern church: pursuing power as a goal divorced from the intimacy that makes power righteous and effective.

 

3.  BECAUSE IT PRODUCES THE INTIMACY THAT REDEMPTION WAS DESIGNED TO RESTORE

The Friendship That Was Lost in Eden

There is a dimension of relationship with God that goes beyond obedience, beyond duty, beyond gratitude. Jesus named it in John 15:15: 'Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.' The goal of redemption is not merely servants restored to usefulness — it is friendship restored. The fellowship shattered in Eden, reconnected through the cross.

"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me."

— John 10:27

Intimacy means recognition — He knows you, you know Him. The voice in the secret place. The whisper in the night. The companionship that makes even the furnace navigable because He is present in it. Many believers know church but do not know His presence. They know prayers but not His voice. They are comfortable with the language of intimacy without its substance. But the language without the substance is the most dangerous spiritual condition — because it produces the false assurance of those who will one day hear: I never knew you.

 

4.  BECAUSE IT DETERMINES ETERNAL DESTINY

The Only Currency That Outlasts Time

When the books are opened and time is no more, there is only one question that will matter. Not: did you work in His name? Not: did you fill seats or build buildings? Not: were your theology examinations passed? But: did you know Him?

"Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity."

— Matthew 7:22-23

They prophesied. They cast out demons. They did wonderful works. All in His name. And He never knew them. They had power without intimacy, gifts without the Giver, ministry without the God the ministry was supposed to represent. Jeremiah's declaration settles it: wisdom perishes, riches fade, strength fails. Only the knowledge of God endures (Jeremiah 9:23-24). Without it, religion is empty ritual and destiny is lost. With it, even obscurity becomes glorious, weakness becomes strength, trials become testimony.

The most sober question for every believer:

Has your knowledge of God actually transformed you? Are you more like Christ than you were five years ago — not by religious performance, but by deep inner character? Have you heard His voice this week — not in a service, but in the secret place? Do you know Him, or do you know extensively about Him? The difference is not semantic. It is eternal.

 

Chapter Two

The Barriers to Knowing God

The Chains That Hold Multitudes in the Outer Court

The call to know God is open to every believer. The veil is torn. The Spirit is crying: Come up hither! Yet multitudes linger in the outer court, hindered by chains they have not named and therefore cannot break. The Word of God names them — and names also the way to overcome each one.

 

Barrier One  SIN

The wall that shuts God's face from those who cherish it

'Your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear' (Isaiah 59:2). The separation is not metaphorical — it is real and spiritually structural. Adam and Eve walked with God in the cool of the day. After disobedience, they hid among the trees. Sin produced shame. Shame produced hiding. And hiding produces the distance that feels like God's absence but is actually self-imposed separation.

The most dangerous form of this barrier is not the sin that drives a person to brokenness and repentance. It is the sin that is cherished — held in the heart, made peace with, managed rather than dealt with. Psalm 66:18: 'If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.' Regard means to set the heart upon, to hold dear, to refuse to release. This is the sin that most effectively blocks the knowledge of God.

"He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy."

— Proverbs 28:13

The remedy is confession and forsaking — both. Confession without forsaking is the performance of repentance without the reality. The blood of Christ cleanses the conscience (Hebrews 9:14), and walking in the light keeps fellowship unbroken (1 John 1:7). The wall can come down. But you must be willing to name what built it.

 

Barrier Two  PRIDE

The blindness that heaven itself stands against

Pride is the subtlest and deadliest barrier because it cloaks itself. It presents as confidence, theological competence, spiritual experience, the justified evaluation of one's own gifts. The Pharisees searched the Scriptures diligently — they studied, memorized, debated — and they missed the Christ who stood before them. Pride blinds. It always has. It always will.

"God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble."

— James 4:6

To be resisted by God is not a minor spiritual setback. Heaven itself stands against the proud. Every prayer offered in pride encounters resistance at the highest possible level. Pride in ministry, pride in theology, pride in spiritual experience — each builds the same wall: the wall that says, in whatever language it chooses: I do not need more of You. And God, who gives grace to the humble, withholds it from the self-sufficient. The antidote is not the performance of humility but the genuine crucifixion of the self that requires pride to sustain itself.

 

Barrier Three  WORLDLY DISTRACTION

The thorns that choke without appearing hostile

This barrier does not announce itself. It creeps in as legitimate concern, necessary activity, reasonable engagement with life. Jesus described it in the parable of the sower — seed that fell among thorns, choked by 'cares and riches and pleasures of this life' (Luke 8:14). Good seed. Real reception. Genuine beginning. And then — suffocation.

Martha was not doing wrong things. She was serving the Lord. But she was doing it to the exclusion of what Mary chose. And Jesus' verdict was unambiguous: 'Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her' (Luke 10:42). Service that crowds out sitting at His feet is not devotion — it is distraction wearing devotion's clothing.

"Enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly."

— Matthew 6:6

The secret place requires protection — deliberate, guarded, non-negotiable. The believer who says they have no time for the secret place has made a statement about what they value. You cannot know a person through busyness in their house. You know them by sitting with them, listening to them, attending to them without competing agenda.

 

Barrier Four  FALSE TEACHING

The counterfeit that replaces the living God with a substitute

Paul warned Timothy: 'For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables' (2 Timothy 4:3-4). We live in those times. From prosperity distortions to hyper-grace extremes, from personality cults to cultic deceptions — error abounds. And it always presents itself as a superior, more relevant version of the truth.

"Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world."

— 1 John 4:1

The safeguard is the Word of God handled with the discipline of the Bereans, who searched the Scriptures daily to verify what they heard (Acts 17:11). Not passive acceptance. Active, personal engagement with Scripture that tests every teaching against what God has already spoken. And here the barrier of false teaching intersects with the necessity of personal knowledge: the person who has encountered God for themselves carries an internal reference point that false teaching cannot easily displace. They have tasted the real. The counterfeit does not satisfy.

 

Barrier Five  LACK OF HUNGER

The comfortable poverty of those who feel spiritually rich

Complacency is the most dangerous barrier — not because it is the most dramatic, but because it is the most deceptive. It produces not distress but comfort. A settled adequacy. The feeling that spiritual needs are sufficiently met. And it is precisely this feeling that makes it fatal.

The church of Laodicea boasted: 'I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing.' Christ's assessment devastated the boast: 'Thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked' (Revelation 3:17). The gap between their self-assessment and Christ's is the measure of how thoroughly comfortable Christianity can blind a person to their actual spiritual condition. And His response was not gentle correction — it was: 'I will spue thee out of my mouth' (v.16).

"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled."

— Matthew 5:6

The filling is contingent on the hunger. You cannot be filled with what you are not hungry for. The remedy is the prayer for divine hunger — asking God to create the thirst that will not be satisfied by substitutes. Fasting disciplines appetite and sharpens desire. Meditation in the Word kindles flame. Fellowship with genuinely hungry believers is contagious — because both satisfaction and hunger are contagious.

 

Barrier Six  PRAYERLESSNESS

The silence that starves intimacy before it begins

This barrier is directly connected to lack of hunger but distinct enough to name separately: the simple, practical failure to pray. Not because prayer is not understood intellectually, but because the flesh resists it, the schedule crowds it out, and the result is that the primary channel of intimacy with God remains largely unused.

Samuel said to Israel: 'God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you' (1 Samuel 12:23). He named prayerlessness as sin — not weakness, not negligence, but sin against God. The prayer closet is not optional enrichment for the particularly devout. It is the place where God is encountered, where His voice is heard, where the knowledge that transforms is received. Without it, every other pathway to knowing God is diminished.

"Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not."

— Jeremiah 33:3

There are dimensions of God's character and purposes that are accessible only in prayer. They are not in the theology books. They are not in the sermons. They are waiting in the secret place, available only to those who go there and remain long enough for the revelation to come.

 

Chapter Three

The Pathways Into Deeper Revelation

Seven Divine Roads That Lead Into the Heart of God

God has not hidden Himself to frustrate His people. He has veiled Himself that they may hunger, seek, and press in — until the veil is rent and His glory is revealed. 'Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart' (Jeremiah 29:13). He is not far. But He waits to be sought with holy intensity. And He has provided clear, specific, tested pathways.

 

Pathway One  THE WORD OF GOD

The surest map into the mind and heart of God

The Word of God is not merely a document about God. It is His self-disclosure — His mind, His heart, His ways, expressed in language that human beings can engage. 'All scripture is given by inspiration of God' (2 Timothy 3:16) — literally, God-breathed. The same breath that created the universe breathed the Scripture. To engage it seriously is to handle the breath of God.

But the posture of engagement determines the depth of the result. Reading Scripture for information yields gnosis — knowledge that can become proud and rigid. Reading it with the prayer of the psalmist — 'Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law' (Psalm 119:18) — yields ginosko and oida: illumination, encounter, and certainty. When you read Scripture not mining it for principles but seeking the Person it reveals, the text opens in a way it cannot open when treated as mere information.

"Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

— John 5:39

The meditation that produces transformation:

Joshua 1:8 connects meditation with success: meditate in the Word day and night, observe to do it, and then you will prosper. Meditation is not speed-reading. It is returning to the same passage, turning it over, asking it questions, allowing it to ask you questions. It is the difference between skimming a letter and sitting with the person who wrote it, asking what they meant, listening to their voice in every word. Meditate until the text speaks. Then meditate until it burns.

 

Pathway Two  PRAYER AND COMMUNION WITH GOD

The place where knowledge becomes encounter

Prayer at its deepest is not primarily asking — it is beholding. The soul presenting itself to God not with a list of needs but with itself — open, attentive, still, waiting. And in that stillness, revelation comes. When Moses communed with God on the mountain, his face shone (Exodus 34:29). He was not aware of the shining — he could not see his own face. But others could. The time in God's presence had changed something visible from outside before it was known from inside.

This is what happens in the prayer that becomes beholding: transformation leaves a mark that others see before you know it. 'They took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus' (Acts 4:13). Not from a certificate. Not from a statement. From what was visible on them. The knowledge of God, received in prayer, becomes visible on the person who prays.

 

Pathway Three  OBEDIENCE AND WALKING IN THE LIGHT

Revelation is not given to the rebellious

God shows His ways to those who walk in them. Revelation is given not to the curious but to the obedient. The person who walks in all the light they have received positions themselves to receive more. The person sitting on received light, choosing not to act on it, does not receive additional revelation — because they have not done anything with what they were given.

"He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest himself to him."

— John 14:21

Manifest — to make visible, to reveal in a way that cannot be missed. Obedience is the pathway to manifestation. Disobedience darkens. Obedience illuminates. 'The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day' (Proverbs 4:18). The path shines more as you walk it. Stand still and the light does not increase. Turn around and the darkness returns.

 

Pathway Four  THE FEAR OF THE LORD

The key that unlocks God's secrets

'The secret of the LORD is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant' (Psalm 25:14). The Hebrew word translated secret — sod — refers to intimate counsel, the kind shared only with a trusted confidant. God confides in those who reverence Him. Not in the casual, not in the comfortable, not in those who treat His presence as a commodity to be accessed on demand.

Abraham feared God and was shown the plans for Sodom before their execution. Moses trembled before God's holiness and was shown God's ways — not merely His acts. The fear of the Lord is not merely the beginning of wisdom. It is the gateway to the secrets that wisdom itself cannot access without it.

 

Pathway Five  FASTING AND CONSECRATION

Silencing the flesh so the spirit can see

There are revelations that do not come until the flesh is silenced. Daniel fasted three full weeks — no pleasant bread, no wine, no oil. After this consecration, an angel came declaring him 'greatly beloved' and proceeded to deliver one of the most profound prophetic disclosures in all of Scripture (Daniel 10:2-12). The fasting created interior conditions of sensitivity and quieted flesh that made the encounter possible.

"Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting."

— Matthew 17:21

There are kinds of revelation — not merely deliverance — that are accessible only through the consecration that fasting produces. The crucifixion of appetite strips away the veil of carnality and sharpens the eyes of the spirit. Some realms of divine knowledge are reserved for those who value knowing God enough to fast in order to receive Him.

 

Pathway Six  THE HOLY SPIRIT — THE SPIRIT OF WISDOM AND REVELATION

The ultimate pathway into all that God is

Above all pathways — governing all of them, empowering all of them, rendering all of them effective — is the Holy Spirit. Without Him, the Bible is a sealed book. With Him, the Scriptures blaze with light, the mysteries of God are unveiled, and Christ Himself is made known in the heart of the one who yields.

"That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: The eyes of your understanding being enlightened."

— Ephesians 1:17-18

Paul's prayer names exactly what the Spirit does: He gives the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God, and He enlightens the eyes of understanding. The Spirit takes the knowledge of God available in Scripture and in encounter, and He makes it penetrate — past the surface of intellectual comprehension, into the deep places where it reshapes character and transforms the person who receives it. He is not a doctrine to be believed. He is a Person to walk with, a Teacher to yield to, a Guide whose leadings are more valuable than any theological education.

The urgent question:

Have you yielded to the Holy Spirit today? Not in a general sense — in the specific, practical, moment-by-moment surrender of your agenda, your reactions, your plans to His governance. He does not force His way. He waits to be invited. The believer who has learned to walk with the Spirit, sensitive to His voice and responsive to His corrections, is the believer who advances most rapidly into the knowledge of God.

 

Pathway Seven  FELLOWSHIP WITH THE SAINTS

The dimensions of God no single believer carries alone

Revelation is released in corporate fellowship in ways that individual piety cannot fully replicate. Paul longed to see the Roman believers 'that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift' (Romans 1:11). The early church devoted themselves not only to prayer and the Word but to one another (Acts 2:42). There are dimensions of God that no single believer carries in isolation — the fullness of Christ is expressed in the body, not in any one member.

"Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend."

— Proverbs 27:17

The sharpening happens through contact — the pressure of one truth against another, the challenge of a perspective that differs from yours while remaining anchored to the same foundation. The believer who only encounters God in isolation is limited to their own capacity for receiving revelation. The believer who encounters God in genuine community with others who are also pressing in receives dimensions of revelation that solitary prayer could never generate.

 

Chapter Four

The Cross: The Eternal Doorway

The Place Where All Knowledge of God Must Come To — and Must Begin

Every pathway described in this document leads to one place. Not merely to more knowledge. To the cross. Because the cross is not an event in history that we look back upon with gratitude — though it is certainly that. It is the eternal doorway through which all genuine knowledge of God must pass to become real.

"For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified."

— 1 Corinthians 2:2

Paul's declaration was not intellectual limitation. It was the declaration of a man who had explored every avenue of human wisdom and understood that all genuine knowledge of God flows through this single point. Not because the cross is the only thing God has said — but because the cross is where God said everything. His holiness — displayed in the severity of the price required. His love — displayed in the willingness to pay it. His justice — satisfied in the punishment of sin. His mercy — revealed in the substitution of the Son for the sinner.

Men may speculate about God, build philosophies, and study religion — but until they come by way of the Cross, they remain blind to His true nature. The Cross is where God unveiled His heart.

The cross also deepens every subsequent step of the journey. Every time you return to it — every time the knowledge of what Christ bore becomes fresh and present rather than historical and distant — your knowledge of God deepens. Because the cross is the fullest revelation of who God is: 'God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us' (Romans 5:8). There is no deeper truth about God than this. Every other dimension of His nature is illuminated by it.

Paul's ambition in Philippians 3:10 is the ambition of every mature believer who has truly understood the cross: to know Christ in the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings — to inhabit, experientially, what the cross opened. The resurrection as daily power. The sufferings as fellowship with the One who suffered. The cross not merely as historical fact but as present reality into which you have been invited to enter.

The standing invitation:

Hebrews 10:19-22 shows that the cross established a new and living way that remains permanently open: 'Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh.' Draw near — present continuous. The invitation is not past. It is the standing invitation of the torn veil and the risen High Priest who ever lives to make intercession.

 

The Invitation

Will You Walk These Pathways?

The Question That Determines the Rest of the Journey

God is not difficult to find. He is not hiding behind a theological puzzle. He is not withholding Himself from those who seek with genuine hunger. He is saying, as He has always said: Draw near. Call to Me. Seek Me with all your heart. And I will be found.

The barriers named in this document are real. Sin. Pride. Distraction. False teaching. Complacency. Prayerlessness. Each has held multitudes in the outer court when the inner sanctuary was open and waiting. But none of these barriers is stronger than the blood shed to open the way. None can stand against a soul that has decided it will not settle for less than the fullness of the knowledge of the living God.

"Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith."

— Hebrews 12:1-2

The question is not whether God desires to reveal Himself. He surely does — He has been trying to from before the foundation of the world. The question is whether you will choose to walk these pathways. Whether you will lay aside the weights that are holding you in the outer court. Whether you will press beyond the gnosis of information into the ginosko of encounter, and through epignosis into the oida of settled, unshakeable certainty.

 

Will you choose to walk these pathways?

Will you press beyond what you have settled for?

Will you not stop until Christ is formed in you?

 

Press on until gnosis becomes burning encounter.

Press through every barrier that has held you in the outer court.

Walk every pathway with the hunger that will not be satisfied by substitutes.

Come to the Cross — and let it be not only your beginning but your daily dwelling.

 

✦  ✦  ✦

"Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you."

— James 4:8

 

"That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death."

— Philippians 3:10

 

Press in. Press on. Press through. Until knowing becomes burning.

And burning becomes living.

And living becomes Christ in you — the hope of glory.

 

Share your testimony — what has God revealed to you as you pressed in to know Him? What barrier did you overcome? Let us encourage one another.

Follow us also on our youtube channel - Walking in His Light - 

https://youtube.com/@walkinginhislight-b1r?si=sgBOnMklXzo1MX6V