Know Before Whom You Stand

“Prayer: Know Before Whom You Stand” That was a chapter title in a book I finished reading last night, Between God and Man, by Abraham Joshua Heschel. Heschel was a Jewish rabbi and I am a Christian pastor, and so there were some things in his book where he and I agreed, and other areas where I would see things differently. But that chapter title grabbed my attention, particularly as I read it the evening before the Jicarilla Apache Prayer Run. 

Yesterday morning I was invited to come and give an opening prayer for the Prayer Run that the tribe’s Department of Youth would be hosting this morning. As a Christian pastor living in a place where many different religions are practiced, including a Jicarilla Apache understanding of God, I am conscious that all understandings of the person of God are not equal. A corollary of that is that all persons prayed to as God are not really God, but gods. People may turn to them and worship but they are what the Bible would call false gods. They are given the honor, respect, or what have you, of God but they are not truly the God of the Bible, the One True God.

Can a person know God? According to Heschel, perhaps, but he also noted other rabbi’s who found God to be unknowable.

Can a person know God? My answer would be “absolutely!” Taking a step back I would say that a person can know much about God, without really knowing God. The Bible has much to say about who God is and what His character is like. As we read the Bible we learn of God’s holiness, power, beauty, love, righteousness, justice and goodness, to name just a few of His attributes. Throughout history many pastors and theologians have written on the topics of God’s attributes, and I have been richly blessed in reading some of them, particularly Stephen Charnock and Herman Bavinck. Similarly, many excellent sermons have been preached and published on the character and attributes of God. And so it is possible to much about God, but not really know God at all.

But can a person know God? Again, absolutely, for He is revealed to us most clearly in the person and work of Jesus. And as we read of Him in the New Testament and take to heart the truth of who He is and why He came, trusting in what He did to forgive our sin and heal us, we pass from “knowing about” to “knowing” and in doing so we find that He has sent His Spirit to be with us, His dearly loved children, forever.

This, then, is the God before whom I stood this morning, offering prayers to Him on behalf of the gathered people. Again, speaking from my point-of-view as a pastor, everyone at the Prayer Run was not a believer in Jesus, but my prayers were offered in the name of Jesus, and in my own times of prayer I pray that one day all the people of this place may know and love Jesus as their Savior and Lord. Amen.