Knowing God

Last week, I came across an article in the NY Post with the title, South Florida is the Organized Fraud Capital of America. Once I got past the irony of a New York newspaper calling out another state for organized crime, I found myself both fazed and unfazed at the infamy of my beloved home town.I was unfazed at this revelation because we are a unique culture down here. Besides the fact that we’re barely recognized as a part of the greater state of Florida — notice that Florida isn’t the organized fraud capital…but South Florida — but anyone who’s familiar with SoFlo (think 80s Miami Vice) knows that it’s all about the hustle down here.Everyone’s in a hurry to get where they’re going, both in the car and the bank account. Morality is just an obstacle. Not a surprise. However, this article made me think about how living in a culture like this impacts us. How do you know what’s real and what’s a fraud? When you think “everyone is out to steal from me,” what does that do to you? It’s no wonder we South Floridians have a reputation for being untrusting, cynical, angry and rude. Maybe it’s all the migrated New Yorkers (I’m one of them.) 

We live in a world, not just in South Florida, where the line between truth and lie is a matter of perspective. There is nothing concrete. Nothing secure. Nothing sacred. We glory in our ability to simultaneously know everything — thanks Wikipedia — and believe in nothing. Even though we as Christians know the problems with this worldview, we can find ourselves swept away with the culture’s current. And if we’re not careful, our minds become dull and our hearts callous towards the most foundational truths of our faith. 

So what’s the remedy? A renewed passion and purpose for knowing God. Jeremiah 9:23-24 says, “Thus says the Lord: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.” 

We’re all tempted to find significance in our abilities, accomplishments and possessions. They become our ultimate goals and functional gods. We want to shout from the mountains, “Look at me! Look what I’ve done.” But God reminds us that our joy cannot be wrapped up in these things. Our boasting, what we shout from the mountains, needs to be that we know God. We need reminding that our significance, qualification and approval does not come from what we’ve been given, but because of who we’ve been given. 

Jesus was given to us so that we could truly know God. He came to restore the broken relationship between man and his Creator. Jesus Christ is the only truth that can break through a world wrought with fraud. We need to know Him because it’s through knowing God that we will live the most satisfying and joy-filled life imaginable. It’s through knowing Him that our ethics will rightly be defined, and we will with confidence be able to say yes to the right things and no to the wrong. Most importantly, rightly knowing God will lead us to rightly worship Him and to rightly love Him and others. We need to know God not so that we can get more stuff from Him but so that we can get more of Him.Do you know Him?

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