Tag Archives: yada

To Know God

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To have a greater knowledge of God you can always study more.  This will be a logos word where you can add to your understanding and become familiar with other people’s exploration into who God is and what He does.  Reading more books will also help to expand your knowledge of God.  In these studies you can pick the aspect of God you’re interested in and find many quality books and study-helps that will advance your understanding of God.

Then you could do the WWJD approach.  But here a good foundation in who Jesus is and what He did is required.   After all, if you are asking yourself what would Jesus do you should have read the Gospels several times so you can base your actions on the understanding you have.  One good thing here is if you keep doing it you will grow and change. (I read a post on Facebook recently that said using this approach you should not rule out overturning tables and beating people with a whip.)

I recommend doing what Psalm 46:10 says to do which is Be still and know that I AM God.  The term “be still” has several meanings and can be translated to be silent, be at rest, or to stand one’s ground.  But in Psalm 46:10 it means to be feeble, weakened, or faint.  The term “know” is yada and it means to know by observing, reflecting, or by experiencing something.

This leads back to the studying/experiencing God we talked about before.  There are logos and rhema words/experiences with God.  People who pursue God by just reading about Him will never have more than that and can, they lose that.  But when you have/get a rhema word from God you are changed, it has spoken to your heart and you will not be the same.  Now when this person gets the logos word they find new and deep truths about God and are eager to share them.  It is not easy to quiet yourself and be still but it is the way God suggested that you do it.

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Be Still and Know God #2

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Psalm 46:10 – Be still, and know that I AM God. 

“Know” is yada it means knowing by observing and reflecting on things or by experiencing it.

I really did not deal with the knowing part of the verse in the first study, mostly because I did not have an idea of how too. But talking before a church service with my Pray Partner Team, more or less on this subject it gave me some direction.

How do you know God and how do you know God was the two questions that came out of that conversion.  No, they really are not the same question. Let me try again.

Do you know God by studying, praying and or fasting?  Then, how do you know God: Savior, Healer, Teacher, the Big Man upstairs, is He my Lord or your Lord or Someone you visit three times a year?

A problem I had with this question was the people that read their Bible cover to cover every year and have read it in several translations and do a lot of good things and Jesus will still say, “Depart from me for I never knew you (Matthew 25:41).” Brother Darwin helped with this question when he stated a difference between logos and rhema words of God. People can have a logos word by reading and that is all they ever have; then there are people who have had a rhema word and it changes them. Rhema words are those special words that speak to your heart and change you in some way.

Back to yada and my questions of “how do you know God?” If you want an answer, you will have to have both, as an example let me use two of my favorite examples – Peter and Paul.  Peter “grew up” with Jesus, he walked and talked with Him, healed, ministered and listened to Him teach – truly a logos experience. Peter also denied Jesus but because Jesus loved him after the denials he had a rhema experience.  Paul also had logos as a Pharisee but tried to destroy the church until he had his rhema experience (Acts 9). He then spent the rest of his life experiencing Jesus as he ran his race.