We continue to read Knowing God by J.I. Packer at the dinner table. Chapter three is “Knowing and Being Known.”

What were we made for? To know God. What aim should we set ourselves in life? To know God. What is the ‘eternal life’ that Jesus gives? Knowledge of God. ‘This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true god, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent’ (John 17:3). What is the best thing in life, bringing more joy, delight, and contentment, than anything else? Knowledge of God.

Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life’s problems fall into place of their own accord.

You can have all the right notions in your head without ever tasting in your heart the realities to which they refer; and a simple Bible-reader and sermon-hearer who is full of the Holy Ghost will develop a far deeper acquaintance with his God and Saviour than more learned men who are content with being theologically correct.

God does not exist for our ‘comfort’, or ‘happiness’, or ‘satisfaction’, or to provide us with ‘religious experiences’, as if these were the most interesting and important things in life.

What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it—the fact that He knows me.

There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench His determination to bless me.

Grace and Peace