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Seeking After
the Knowledge of God
s you will see in the Scripture verses I will list in this article, God the Father places an extremely high value on the pursuit of knowledge - especially spiritual knowledge. He says that gaining knowledge is greater than all the silver, gold and material things of this world.
The Bible tells us we have to grow in the knowledge of God. Once you get saved - that is just the beginning. From there, God expects you to grow in the knowledge of Him, His Son Jesus Christ, His Holy Spirit and all of Their ways.
As I mentioned in our article "The Power of the Word of God" - the number one way that you will grow in spiritual knowledge on this earth is by reading and studying the Bible for yourself. There is simply no other way.
God has arranged to have all of the spiritual knowledge that we will ever need about Him, His Son and His Spirit to all be contained in this one Book. You also grow in the knowledge of God through your own personal adventures that you have with Him in your own daily walk, along with learning from other Christians - especially those who are anointed and gifted to be able to teach from His Word.
Once again, God is using some very intense language in these verses. You can really tell that He is trying to let all of us know the extreme importance of growing in this knowledge. The reason for this is that God's ultimate aim for us after we get saved is our sanctification and transformation. He wants us to become more holy like Himself. He wants to transform us into the express image of His Son Jesus.
However, before God will allow this sanctification process to really kick into full gear through the Holy Spirit - He wants you to fully understand exactly what He is doing and why He is doing it. In other words, you have to have the knowledge as to what God is doing and exactly why He is doing it.
Even small children will pick up on this principle very quickly. Tell a child that he is not to do something - and what is the first thing he will do? He will ask you why he can't do that particular thing. And then if the child is old enough to understand what that reason is - you then proceed to tell him why it is not in his best interest to do that particular thing. In other words, you are giving your child the specific knowledge that he needs to have so he knows exactly why he should or should not be doing that specific something.
It's the exact same way with God the Father. God loves to transmit knowledge to His children across the board on anything that they may need His knowledge on in this life - but what prevents many of His children from receiving this knowledge directly from Him is that they have never been taught how to hear from Him when He does start to try and communicate with them or they do not press in and enter into a seeking mode with Him to try and get Him to release this knowledge to them.
If there is one major secret I have learned from the Lord on getting Him to release more of His knowledge to you - is that you have to be willing to go into some type of seeking mode with Him to get it. God will not spoon-feed you forever.
The Bible says to ask - and then you will receive. Seek - and then you will find. Knock - and then the door will be opened to you. Notice in all three of these conditions that you have to be the one to initiate it. You have to be the one to ask, to seek and to knock. If you do - then God will answer you, open doors for you and let you find the answers to your questions and problems.
King David tells us that we have to meditate on the word of God. To meditate does not mean to blank your mind out waiting for God to talk to you. Meditate means to think about, to chew on, to try and figure out what the different Scripture verses mean and how they can specifically apply to your life.
What I have personally found out is that the Holy Spirit will literally guide your thoughts into the revelation that you are seeking after as you are trying to figure out what the answers are. In other words - you will find the knowledge you are needing as you are seeking after it. The Holy Spirit can either guide your thoughts into what the correct answers are by you just using some of your brain power to try and figure things out or He will guide you as to where those answers are located at.
You can literally learn how to "pull" knowledge directly from the Lord by going into these seeking modes with Him! As you will see in some of the Scripture verses I will list below, it is the job of the Holy Spirit to teach us all things in this life. In other words, the Holy Spirit is our personal Guide and personal Teacher in this life. The Holy Spirit can and will communicate to you if you are open to receiving this kind of direct supernatural communication from Him.
I will be doing a much more in-depth article in the near future on the wide variety of ways that the Holy Spirit will communicate to you - especially in the area of receiving knowledge from Him. But for this article, I just want to give you the main foundational verses from the Bible to let you know that God does want to transmit His knowledge to you across the board on anything that you will need His knowledge on in this life. Not only can God give you all the spiritual knowledge that you will seek after - but He can also give you His knowledge across the board on anything else that you may need His knowledge on in this life.
God can give you His knowledge on how to become better parents for your children, better spouses for your mates, and better at whatever specific job or jobs He will be calling you to do for Him.
If God is calling you to be a policeman, an attorney, a doctor, a nurse, a stay-at-home mom, an architect, a laborer, a sports star - He can give you His knowledge in each of those specific areas so as to make you better at each of those jobs. There is absolutely nothing that God cannot give you His knowledge on if you are open to receiving it and are not afraid to start seeking and pressing in after it!
Many, many Christians are missing out on this part in their walk with the Lord. God will supernaturally communicate His knowledge to you - but you first have to realize that He does want to communicate His knowledge to you, and then you have to learn how to pick it up and properly read it when He does start to try and communicate to you.
Again, I will go into much more detail on how to really hear from God in another article - but in this article, I want to show to you by the Scripture verses I will list below, that God really does want to impart and transmit His knowledge to you.
As you will see in the way that I will present the appropriate Scripture verses on this subject to you, we are dealing with an incredible profound reality - in that God Almighty Himself, a Being with perfect knowledge on all things - is willing to communicate and transmit His knowledge to us through the Holy Spirit, who is literally living on the inside of us!
Think about this - that you already have the knowledge of God residing on the inside of you in the Person of the Holy Spirit who is already living on the inside of you!
The Scripture verses I will list below will show you the extreme importance that God is placing on that each and everyone of us seek to obtain this kind of knowledge from Him. In some of these verses, God is making some very powerful and profound statements. He says:
That we are to GROW in the grace and KNOWLEDGE of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
That His people are literally destroyed and will go into captivity for having lack of knowledge.
That gaining His knowledge and wisdom will help you walk safely in this life, help preserve you and help keep you on the right path that He has set up for you to follow in this life.
That gaining knowledge, wisdom and understanding is better than all of the gold, silver and rubies of this world and that it does not even begin to compare to anything else that you may desire in this life! In other words, gaining the knowledge of God in this life is bigger and better than any materialistic thing that you could ever buy, want or desire in this life!
To think that God Himself is making this kind of extreme, intense, radical statement in that acquiring His knowledge is more important than anything else that we can acquire in this life is as big and powerful of a statement that He can make about what is really most important in this life!
Notice in the first bullet point above that we are to grow in the knowledge of God. I believe the main reason God is telling us that gaining His knowledge is more important than anything else we can seek after in this life is because we cannot spiritually grow in the Lord unless we first obtain His knowledge, and then seek to implement His truths into our lives and walk with Him.
After you get saved - God then expects you to start to spiritually grow and mature in your walk with Him. You cannot become more holy, more transformed and more sanctified unless you are spiritually growing. And you cannot start to spiritually grow unless you are first seeking after the knowledge that will cause this spiritual growth to occur in the first place!
If you really study the people who are most alive in this life - it is the seekers - it is the people who are constantly learning, constantly trying to improve their knowledge base on whatever it is they are seeking after.
It is the knowledge-seekers that are making the great discoveries that are changing the course of our human history. And they could not have made those discoveries without first seeking after the knowledge that would eventually lead them to those specific discoveries.
As you will see in some of the profound Scripture verses I will list below - God will make you seek and search after knowledge, much in the same way that treasure hunters will seek and search for buried treasure.
Talk to any true knowledge seeker, and they will tell you that most of their joy comes from the journey of trying to find the knowledge that they are seeking after. Once the discovery has been made and they have found everything that they may need on a particular subject, then it's off to the next great adventure.
Nothing will stimulate your mind and emotions and make you feel more alive than seeking after the knowledge on something that you may really be interested in and be very passionate about. However, many in our country have become "brain dead" and mentally lazy as a result of becoming couch potatoes by watching too much TV. God has incredible knowledge adventures set up for each and everyone of us if we would only be willing to get up out of our ruts, step out of our safe boats and start seeking after the things that He wants us to seek after.
Before I go into the Scripture verses on all of this, I will leave you with one last thought.
The knowledge of God is like a treasure chest that has no bottom to it! There is no limit to the amount of knowledge that God can release to you if you are willing to dive into this treasure chest and start seeking after it.
Think about this long and hard - that the one and only all-powerful and all-knowing God of the entire universe is willing and able to transmit His knowledge to you on whatever it is you are wanting His knowledge and wisdom on.
Every single Christian has this incredible treasure chest of knowledge and wisdom literally residing on the inside of them in the Person of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is only too anxious and just waiting for you to tap into Him to get this knowledge to start to be released to you!
This incredible knowledge adventure is just waiting for each and every Christian who is willing to get off the couch and start using the brain power that the Lord has given to us to start to seek after this kind of knowledge.
I'll go ahead and list these Scripture verses under their appropriate captions below so that you fully grasp what the Lord is trying to tell in you these profound verses.
These verses are major door openers for each and every Christian - as they are showing you that God can supernaturally impart and transmit His knowledge to you through the Holy Spirit if you are open to receiving it, and are willing to go into a seeking mode to pull it from Him. Once again, these verses mean exactly what they are saying.
1. Growing in the Knowledge of God
This first verse will completely set the stage for you to be able to receive direct knowledge from the Lord. This first verse is literally telling us that God is wanting us to grow in the knowledge of Him and His Son Jesus.
"... but GROW in the grace and KNOWLEDGE of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." (2 Peter 3:18)
This verse is only one short sentence long, but a lot is being said in it. After we get saved, God expects us to start growing in the knowledge that He wants to transmit to us. And the only way we can spiritually grow is by seeking after the knowledge that will cause this growth to occur in the first place!
This right here is why many Christians are not make much spiritual growth over the course of their lives after they initially get saved - because they are not seeking after the knowledge of God that will cause this spiritual growth to occur in the first place.
2. The Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Receiving Knowledge and Wisdom
Now that we know that God wants us to grow in the knowledge that He wants to give to us, these next two verses will tell us the first step that needs to be met before God will even begin to release His knowledge to us.
These two verses are specifically telling us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of being able to receive knowledge and wisdom direct from the Lord. Here are the two verses:
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction." (Proverbs 1:7)
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." (Proverbs 9:10)
Notice in both of these verses it says that the fear of the Lord is the "beginning" of being able to receive knowledge and wisdom from God. In other words, if you don't have a healthy fear of the Lord - then chances are, God is not going to be working with you very closely in releasing His knowledge to you. This first condition right here is another reason why many of God's people are not getting more knowledge, revelation and wisdom being transmitted to them.
What exactly is God meaning when He says that we must have a healthy "fear" of Him? He obviously does not want you to be so afraid of Him that you then become to afraid to approach Him for prayer and to enter into a healthy personal relationship with Him. What I believe God means by the phrase "fear of the Lord" is that we are to have an extremely reverent respect for Him and all of His ways!
Many Christians have a good healthy fear of God Himself, as they know that He is all-powerful and that He is God Almighty Himself. But where many Christians are getting into trouble off of these two verses is that they do not have a healthy fear of all of God's ways. And one of God's ways for us is that we try and stay out of sin - especially some of the heavier sins.
If you are out committing adultery behind your spouse's back, literally breaking one of God's ten commandments - then chances are, God will not be imparting much of His revelation and knowledge to you since you are living in an obvious sin. If you are out committing this type of sin against God, then you are not showing much of a fear of Him, or else you would never have considered falling into this type of heavier sin to begin with. Your actions may be speaking louder than your words to Him.
If you have a true, healthy fear of the Lord, then you will not want to tempt your fate and what He wants to do with your life by directly disobeying some of these obvious commandments such as adultery, cheating, scamming others, verbally and/or physically abusing your spouse or your children, holding extreme unforgiveness towards others, abusing alcohol or doing drugs.
If you have a good healthy fear of the Lord, then you will make every effort to try and live your life right and stay out of the heavier sins that you know will get you in major trouble with Him. We are all sinners and none of us is perfect. I believe that there is a certain amount of "slack" with the Lord on our own imperfections and some of the stupid things that we will do in this life.
However, where some of us will get into trouble with the Lord on the above two verses is when we blatantly enter into what I call "unacceptable" sins and behavior. And some of the sins mentioned above are unacceptable sins and behaviors in God's eyes, and they thus could cause God to pull back on you and what He wants to do with your life.
God will not be mocked! If you don't fear Him and His ways and the way He wants you to live this life - then He may just choose to withhold any knowledge and revelation that He may want to impart to you. This is why the above two verses are so important for those who would really like to start seeking after the knowledge of God for their lives.
God will be more than willing to open up His storehouse of knowledge for you in this life - but only if you are willing to do your part - and your first step will be to make sure that you have a good, reverent, healthy fear and respect of Him and all of His ways.
3. God's People Are Destroyed For Lack of Knowledge
These next two verses are extreme - and I mean extreme! These two verses are telling us that God's people are literally, and I mean literally, being destroyed for lack of knowledge. The second verse below says that God's people can literally go into captivity as a result of not having the right amount of knowledge about something.
God the Father is giving all of us a major warning with the way that He has these two verses worded. A perfect example of these two verses in actual operation are the Muslim suicide bombers. Many of these suicide bombers are young kids. They have been brought up being brainwashed by the extremist element of Islam, and they really do think they are going straight to heaven if they are willing to blow themselves up and anyone else they can take with them.
This is a perfect example of these young kids being led into "captivity" as a result of not having the appropriate knowledge to fully understand what they are getting into in the first place. And then when they actually do take their own lives in these suicide bombings, they are literally being "destroyed" as a result of this lack of knowledge.
That is why seeking after the true knowledge of God in this life is so important with all the crazy and demonic things that are going on in this world. Having God's specific knowledge on a wide variety of matters is what can keep you from getting entangled into something that could end up turning deadly on you.
These next two verses should be burned into your memory banks so that you never, ever forget what the Lord is trying to tell us.
"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." (Hosea 4:6)
"Therefore My people have gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge ..." (Isaiah 5:13)
If these two verses are telling us that not having the knowledge of God operating in our lives could literally lead us into getting into some kind of captivity - not to mention the possibility of getting killed or thrown into the pits of hell when we die - then the reverse is also true, that having the knowledge of God operating in your life can help keep you out of serious trouble, help keep you free, and possibly help lengthen the number of days that you can live down here on this earth.
4. Knowledge and Wisdom Are Better Than All the Material Things of This World
These next 7 verses are once again making a very radical statement. God is literally telling us that the knowledge and wisdom that we can receive direct from Him is better and more valuable than all the silver, gold and rubies of this world. In other words, the knowledge and wisdom that you can receive from God is better than all the material wealth that this world can offer!
God then goes one step further in this first verse I will list below, and states that knowledge and wisdom is better than anything else you can possibly desire in this life! Think about how radical and extreme this statement really is given the materialistic and money hungry society we now live in.
Grab a hold of these 7 verses - especially the first two.
"Happy is the man who finds wisdom, and the man who gains understanding; for her proceeds are better than the profits of silver, and her gain than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies, and all the things you may desire cannot compare with her. Length of days is in her right hand, in her left hand riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her, and happy are all who retain her." (Proverbs 3:13)
"How much better it is to get wisdom than gold! And to get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver." (Proverbs 16:16)
"There is gold and a multitude of rubies, but the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel." (Proverbs 20:15)
"... but the excellence of knowledge is that wisdom gives life to those who have it." (Ecclesiastes 7:12)
"Understanding is a wellspring of life to him who has it." (Proverbs 16:22)
"Through wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches." (Proverbs 24:3)
"Wisdom strengthens the wise more than ten rulers of the city." (Ecclesiastes 7:19)
Notice in the first verse God says that "happy" is the man who finds wisdom, and that having knowledge and wisdom will help lengthen the number of days that you might be able to live down here on this earth. He then says that knowledge will also bring you peace and be a tree of life to you and your life.
This "tree of life" is what stimulates those who seek after knowledge. There is nothing more challenging, more rewarding and more thrilling than seeking after the knowledge of God on a particular subject or issue you may really be interested in.
And to top all of this off - all of the knowledge and wisdom that you will be receiving from the Lord on the different parts of your life down here on this earth will all be going with you into the next life - which will be heaven.
However, not one ounce of all of the gold, rubies, silver and wealth of this world will be going with you when you die and cross over. All of that earthly material wealth will rot and perish as far as you are concerned - because not one ounce, not one penny will be going with you to the other side!
This is why God is placing such an extremely high value on the pursuit of His knowledge and wisdom for us in this life. This is why God is telling us in the above verses that seeking after His knowledge and wisdom in this life will give you true life.
5. Knowledge, Understanding and Wisdom
Before I go into the next set of Scripture verses - there is one more thing that I need to point out to you. In many of these verses, you will see three key words that are constantly being repeated over and over again. These three key words are:
Knowledge
Understanding
Wisdom
God will first start off by conveying His knowledge to you about something specific. However, knowledge by itself will not get the job done. The next key word is "understanding." Understanding means that you understand the knowledge that is being given to you. If you don't understand the knowledge that has been given to you, then you won't be able to use it or apply it in a real life situation.
The third key word is "wisdom." Once you understand the knowledge that has been given to you, then there is now one more step you will need to have in order to be able to properly use that knowledge - and that step is having the wisdom to be able to use that knowledge in a real life situation.
Many college graduates understand the knowledge that they have learned through many of their college courses - but they lack the wisdom to be able to actually apply it in the real world. You have all heard the term that someone may be "book-smart" - but lack the common sense and wisdom to be able to use this knowledge in the real working world.
Here is an example. Say someone just gave you a perfect manual on how to rebuild a car engine. All of the knowledge that you will need on how to rebuild a car engine is all contained in this one book. However, the next step is that you have to be able to understand the knowledge that is contained in this book. If none of it makes any sense to you, then all of the perfect knowledge contained in this book will be of no real use to you.
However, if you do have the ability to understand all of the knowledge contained in this book - then the next and final step is to be able to have the wisdom to be able to actually rebuild a car engine in a real life situation. All of that knowledge and all of the understanding of that knowledge will be of no use to you if you don't have the actual wisdom to be abl |
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