[The text below represents an edited transcript of this Tomorrow’s World program.]
Why and How to Seek God
We live in stressful times. In a world of political chaos, warfare, pandemics, and civil unrest, we need a source of stability, calm, and peace that is bigger and greater than all of our concerns. That source is God.
A deep and profound relationship with the One who created you, loves you, and has a purpose for your life really IS possible. Join us today as we reveal “Five Keys to Knowing God.”
Seeking God Will Bring Peace of Mind
The world as we know it seems to be unraveling at the seams. Our streets see growing unrest. Our halls of government are alternately filled with either incompetence and gridlock or chaos and conflict. Wars and conflicts rage as our leaders seem increasingly incapable of managing the growing number of crises around the globe.
Even outside of government, the institutions at the heart of civilization seem to reveal themselves on a weekly basis as untrustworthy at best and agenda-driven at worst.
Our educational institutions often seem more devoted to indoctrinating and programming our children than they are to actually educating them. Many fields of science increasingly seem to be driven more by social agenda and political activism than a sincere desire for truth and a devotion to reality.
The chaos of our world isn’t merely abstract or academic, and it doesn’t stay within the pages of our newspapers. It impacts our lives. Our food and other staples of life seem to cost increasingly more money, even as we seem to have less money to spend. Parents look at their children and understandably wonder what sort of world they will inherit.
And while there are always ups and downs, Bible prophecy reveals that the trend is exactly as it appears: things really will get far worse before they get fundamentally better. Nations that were once sources of global stability in the world, such as the United States or Great Britain, will continue their decline, and no change in the presidency or premiership of these nations is going to completely halt the decline and solve the growing chaos. Because that decline and that growing chaos is fundamentally not due to policies or politics or economic plans or anything of the sort.
The chaos and decline is due to the sin of these nations. And unless there is fundamental national repentance on the part of the people themselves and a turning of their hearts to the laws of their Creator, then expect that chaos and decline to continue!
So, what can we do to find peace of mind and stability in a world so lacking in peace and stability?
In fact, there is only one source of such reassurance and hope: The God who created you, who loves you, and who has a remarkable plan for your life.
On today’s program, we are going to give you five keys to truly knowing God—five keys you can use to unlock a deep and profound relationship with the Eternal God who very much wants to build a relationship with you.
Far from being a God who is far away and inaccessible to us, our Creator is near and very accessible. But we must do our part to seek Him. God explains this through the prophet Jeremiah, encouraging His people,
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart (Jeremiah 29:11–13).
But every search has to start somewhere! And if you are willing to take advantage of these five keys, you will find yourself well on your way to a deeper and more invigorating walk with your Creator.
1. Know God by Spending Time in Nature
The first key you can use to know God is creation.
The entire world around us is the work of the master Creator of all things, and He tells us in His word that we can come to know Him better by spending time soaking in His Creation.
In Romans 1:20, the Apostle Paul addresses the ridiculous denial of those who look at the Creation around us and deny the reality of God:
For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse….
Indeed, so many of God’s invisible attributes can be clearly seen and understood by the things that are made—including his eternal power and Godhead, or His divinity and deity.
Regrettably, in our world today, most of us are increasingly separated from the natural world. We live much of our lives with concrete under our feet and fluorescent lights above our heads. But if you would like to really know God, consider spending some time with His Creation.
Take a walk at a local park, if you can—get outside, in natural surroundings. Look up on a clear night sky and let your eyes wander through the stars. Consider the astonishing variety of complex lifeforms that make their home with us on Planet Earth. The Creation is a physical, living hymn that praises its Creator with a beautiful clarity for those who are willing to listen to its song.
The consistent and dependable order of the world and the cosmos tells us that God is orderly and lawful. Its complexity and design speaks to His unimaginable intelligence. The variety we see around us speaks to a God who loves creativity and beauty. For those who long to know their Creator, the Creation, itself, is one of the best-kept secrets around.
If you want to know God, then take advantage of the key of creation, and let His craftsmanship teach you about who He is and your relationship to Him. As King David, the Warrior Poet of ancient Israel, wrote in Psalm 19:1, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork.”
2. Know God by Studying the Bible
Our first key is the creation.
The second key to knowing God is the Bible—God’s sacred word.
If you really want to know the real God, this key is absolutely crucial. Too often today, people say they “know” God, but they don’t. What they think of as “God” is a product of their imagination—it’s what they imagine God to be. But if God is real—and He is—then we want to know the real God. The One who created the universe. The One who has the power to work in our lives.
And that God has given us His word to help us do that. The Bible is like God’s mind in print. When we read it, we discover how He thinks, what matters to Him, what makes Him happy or angry, what His plans and desires are—both for the world, and for you. Reading the Bible is a key to unlocking these things for us.
But we have to read it RIGHT. In Isaiah 28, God inspires the prophet to speak about understanding the divine message:
Whom will he teach knowledge? And whom will he make to understand the message? Those just weaned from milk? Those just drawn from the breasts? For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little (vv. 9–10).
We have to be willing to put it all together.
Read the Whole Bible: Old Testament and New Testament
You can’t just read part of the Bible—say, only the New Testament or the Old. You have to be willing to consider the entire book, as a whole, to get an accurate understanding of the mind of God.
Consider owning a large collection of letters written by a great-grandfather who died before you were born. Reading only one or two letters wouldn’t really give you a full picture—and might even give you a wrong idea or cause you to draw a conclusion about him without enough context.
Many people do this with the Bible, being fooled into thinking they understand God by studying only the New Testament, perhaps, or throwing in the Psalms or a few other Old Testament books.
But in 2 Timothy 3:16, we’re told the following:
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness….
The Scripture—all Scripture—is “given by inspiration of God”—or, as some translations have it, is “God-breathed.”
If you find the idea of studying the entire Bible intimidating, then I’d recommend you start by visiting our website at TomorrowsWorld.org. We have a number of free resources to help you begin, including today’s free DVD.
Yet, simply reading and studying is not enough. Knowledge, by itself, does nothing but make us prideful. We must act on what we learn!
3. Know God by Keeping His Commandments
That brings us to our next key to knowing our Creator: keeping God’s commandments.
God’s word contains His Law and His commandments—the Ten Commandments.
It’s too easy (and wrong) to simply think of God’s commandments as a list of “dos and don’ts” when they are so much more. God’s laws represent a way of life that forms an integral part of the journey to eternal life. They also help us to understand the mind and character of God. But they only reveal that mind and character to those who do more than read about them—they must be obeyed and lived. As verse 10 of Psalm 111 says, “A good understanding have all those who do His commandments.”
Unknown to most of mankind is the purpose of God, which involves His reproducing His own character inside us. Paul pointed to an element of this purpose when he wrote in Philippians 2:5,
Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus….
Seeking to live by the commands of God is a part of the process by which God duplicates the mind and character of Jesus Christ in us. It is how we learn how God and Jesus see right and wrong, how They want to be worshiped, and how They want us to interact with Them and with others. And obeying those commands is how we begin to make Their character our own.
But it can’t be just an academic pursuit. It isn’t just a matter of learning to know God through what we read with our eyes or hear with our ears. It’s a very personal matter of getting to know Him through what we choose to do with our hands and where we choose to go with our feet.
Keeping God’s commands is so crucial to knowing God that He inspired the Apostle John to warn us very clearly:
Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him (1 John 2:3–4).
Those are strong words, straight from your own Bible! Anyone seeking to know God must keep His commandments, and that includes you and me.
4. Know God by Praying Wholeheartedly
Let’s review our first three keys.
First, we pointed you to creation, encouraging you to truly open your eyes to all you can learn about the God who made you by taking the time to soak in the majesty and design of the world around you.
Next, we directed you to God’s word, the Bible. The Holy Scriptures represent God’s own mind in print—telling us His thoughts, plans, and purposes. Though our world is increasingly forgetting the miracle this book represents, it remains a powerful and necessary key to understanding the God who inspired it.
Third, we highlighted the necessity of keeping God’s commandments. The Bible strongly declares that those who claim to know God but who do not keep His commandments are liars—whether they know they are liars or not. God’s character and heart is taught to us by not just knowing His commandments, but by keeping them ourselves.
Our fourth key today to knowing God, personally and intimately, may seem increasingly difficult in a busy world that demands more and more of our time, from the second we wake up to the moment we collapse on our beds for a short night of sleep before we start all over again. But this key is a necessity, and we cannot come to know God without it.
The fourth key is the practice of regular prayer.
Here at Tomorrow’s World studios, we know that this program is broadcast to peoples and nations all around the world. And when I say “prayer,” many of you may have different ideas about what that means. For some, it might be memorized words or a formula that you recite, perhaps in connection with something like prayer beads. It might even involve some sort of ritualistic chant. But none of these are biblical, nor are they sufficient to help you know God.
Jesus is plain about this in Matthew chapter 6:
And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words. Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him (vv. 7–8).
No, the sort of prayer the Bible is speaking of is a wholehearted conversation with God, speaking to him about what is on your mind and in your heart.
Consider how you came to know your spouse while you were dating, or how you became close to your nearest and dearest friends. Those relationships took time and included conversation—a sharing of thoughts, ideas, concerns, hopes, and dreams. If you want to know God, you need to spend that sort of time in prayer to Him, as well.
Not many do—at least not the sort of time we’re talking about. In fact, one of God’s complaints about His people in prophecy reflects such a lack of heartfelt prayer. As the Moffat translation of the Bible renders His words in Hosea 7:14, “They never put their heart into their prayers.”
But there is so much to be gained by doing so. By humbling ourselves, kneeling before God, and pouring out our heart to Him. That sort of wholehearted contact not only invites Him to lift our burdens from us, but also opens up an avenue through which we can grow to find Him and know Him. As He said to ancient Israel, “You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord…” (Jeremiah 29:13–14).
To some extent, this key of prayer can work with our second key today, the Bible, and act as a sort of electrical circuit.
If you remember your studies from high school science, you might recall that electricity needs a closed loop to flow through. For a light bulb to glow, the electricity needs to flow through the bulb, which isn’t possible when the circuit is broken. In a similar way, prayer can work with our study of the Bible. As God shows us more about Himself in His word and shares with us, then we, in turn, can talk to Him about what we are learning and how we see it reflected in our lives, and we can share with Him our questions, hopes, and concerns. Then He, in return, can share more with us.
So many who claim not to be able to find God have not truly sought to build a relationship with Him in this way. But if that relationship is what you seek, then you must turn the key of prayer.
5. Know God by Understanding Jesus Christ
The last key adds power to all the others, and without it, we can only go so far in truly coming to know God.
That last key is the Son of God, Jesus Christ, Himself.
The Bible tells us that long before this world, or this universe, ever existed, the Being we now call Jesus Christ lived in eternity past with the One we now call God the Father. In the very beginning of his gospel account, the Apostle John calls the pre-incarnate Christ “the Logos” or “the Word” of God, and he describes the intimate union between these two God Beings that they shared before the world was:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1).
This member of the Godhead became flesh and blood, walking and teaching among us 2,000 years ago as the Son of God. Part of His purpose in doing so was to reveal the Father more intimately to us. As He says, Himself, in Matthew 11:27,
All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.
If we truly want to know God, then the teachings of Jesus Christ are an indispensable key. In fact, in John 14:9, He tells His disciples, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father….”
He wasn’t saying that He was the Father! Rather, Christ is saying that everything we need to know about God the Father was revealed through Him!
Jesus Christ was the perfect revelation of God to mankind. In His love, mercy, and compassion for others; in His wisdom, insight, and remarkable teachings; and in His character, example, and obedience to the laws and ways of God; Jesus Christ is the revelation we need of God’s own love, wisdom, and goodness. And having been resurrected from the grave and glorified, and reigning over His Church from heaven until His soon coming return, Jesus is alive today, right now—able to empower all who will sincerely yield to Him and come to know their Creator.
If you truly long to have a relationship with God, then Jesus Christ is the only way to fully do so! In fact, your knowledge of and relationship with God will fall far short if you do not seek the Son of God in your life, as well. As Jesus says in John 14 and verse 6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
Seek God With Your Whole Heart
These five keys—creation, the Bible, keeping God’s commandments, prayer, and Jesus Christ—can help start you on your way to a relationship with God that will not only carry you through today’s hard times, but right on through to the Kingdom of God for all eternity.
All of us here at the Tomorrow’s World studios work very hard to help you understand your world through the pages of your Bible.
If you’re interested in our free DVD “Claim God’s Promises,” you can get that DVD by going to TWTV.org/claim or just clicking on the link we have in the description.
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