Knowing That Transforms

Packer reminds us that even “a little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about Him.” Transformational knowing of God comes from the intimate, personal knowing of Divine love. Because God is love, God can only be known through love. To know God is to love God, and to love God is to know God (1 John 4: 7-8). The Christian God is known only in devotion, not objective detachment. This is why Paul’s prayer is that we may know the love of Christ and so be filled with the utter fullness of God (Ephesians 3: 19). This is transformational knowing. Knowing God also requires surrender. Thomas Merton writes that “we must know the truth, we must love the truth we know and we must act according to the measure of our love. Truth is God himself who cannot be known apart from love and cannot be loved apart from surrender to his will.” Genuine knowing demands a response. To know God demands that we be willing to be touched by Divine love. To be touched by God’s love is to be forever changed. To surrender to Divine love is to find our soul’s home—the place and identity for which we yearn in every cell of our being.

—David G. Benner, The Gift of Being Yourself