Knowledge Is Power

Scripture: Ephesians 1:15-23

“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.  I am graven on the palms of his hands.  I am never out of his mind.  All knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me.  I know him because he first knew me, and continues to know me.  He knows me as friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment therefore when his care falters.  This is momentous knowledge.  There is unspeakable comfort – the sort of comfort that energizes, be it said, not enervates – in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good.  There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love for 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.”

—J. I. Packer, Knowing God

“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.”

—Jeremiah 9:23-24

“Knowing God is a relationship calculated to thrill a person’s heart.”

—J. I. Packer

“Why is power a gift? Because power is for flourishing.  When power is used well, people and the whole cosmos come more alive to what they were meant to be.  And flourishing is the test of power . . . I pray that when you put [this book] down, you will be one step closer to the flourishing for which you were created, and that as we, together, make something of the world, the cosmos itself would groan a bit less and sing a bit more, as the whole creation awaits the revealing of the children of God.”

—Andy Crouch, Playing God