This is nothing new, but I’m in awe again of how vast God is over our knowlege of God.  Listen to these words from the apostle Paul:

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
“Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?”
“Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?”
For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.  (Romans 11:33-36)

Jesus came to reveal God fully, but in that very understanding Jesus showed that God is one whose “paths are beyond tracing out”.  We all became casualties of the Enlightenment when we tried to break God down to a formula instead of seeing how God revealed Himself in Scripture; as the Creator who goes beyond His creation in significant ways yet left His fingerprint in all that He made.

Another way to put it is that we get caught up with the map when God wants to be our guide.  Many times we want something that is set – a pattern of doing things that never changes.  But when we examine Scripture, we find people who were obeying the commands (the map) but whose hearts were far from God (the guide).  Jesus said it this way in John 5:39-40:

You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

According to Jesus, we can form a false sense of comfort from Scripture, without realizing that the Scripture’s goal is to sum up all things in Christ, (Colossians 1:15-20) who spoke in the past and who is speaking now.  So knowing God becomes a journey of listening, and allowing God to reveal Himself to us.

If we understand that this is really about Jesus, then the Scripture and prayer take a new life.  We can go beyond reading Scripture to “fulfill a quota” in order to be a good Christian.  We now take the time to prepare our hearts to approach Scripture and prayer.  We are asking God to speak to us.  We recognize that unless our guide opens our hearts, the maps become irrelevant to our lives.  It would be like being fascinated with Paris and studying a road map of the city.  It may be fun at first, but it eventually becomes irrelevant until we actually go there and decide to explore the streets of France ourselves.

The Scripture teaches us WHO God is to our lives before HOW things should be done.  The HOW comes after the WHO.  Once we connect with WHO God is, the HOW of life becomes life giving and relevant.  As we get to know the God of Scripture then the Scripture of God makes sense.

That’s the challenge and the life in God.  We ultimately need Him.