New City Churchs Summer 2012 Online Book Club

JI Packers Knowing God ~ Chapter 3: Knowing & Being Known Before reading: What were we made for? How would you summarize the answer succinctly? What are some answers that people in your city would give? How would you define eternal life? Purpose: To understand what it means to know God Outline: I. We are made to know God II. A. B. C. D. III. IV. What it means to know God listening to Gods word and receiving it in application to oneself noting Gods nature and character as His word & works reveal it accepting His invitations, and doing what He commands recognizing and rejoicing in the love He has shown us Knowing God necessarily means knowing Jesus Christ Knowing God is a matter of A. personal dealing B. personal involvement C. grace V. What matters supremely is that God knows me Key Quotes: The world today is full of sufferers from the wasting disease which Albert Camus focused as Absurdism (life is a bad joke), and from the complaint which we may call Marie Antoinettes fever, since she found the phrase that describes it (nothing tastes). These disorders blight the whole of life: everything becomes at once a problem and a bore, because nothing seems worthwhile. knowing God is a relationship calculated to thrill a mans heart. We do not make friends with God; God makes friends with us, bringing us to know Him by making His love known to us. What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies itthe fact that He knows me. I am graven on the palms of His hands. I am never out of His mind. All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me. I know Him, because He first knew me, and continues to know me. And the money quote: There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to 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. There is, certainly, great cause for humility in the thought that He sees all the twisted things about me that my fellow-men do not see (and am I glad!), and that He sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself (which, in all conscience, is enough). There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, He want me as His friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given His Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose.

Reflection Questions: 1. Packer insists that knowing God is a relationship calculated to thrill a mans heart. What do you make of this quote? Is there evidence of this in your life? Have you tasted and seen that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8). 2. What does it mean to say that knowing God is a matter of personal dealing, of personal involvement, of personal grace? How would you describe this to a friend who was not yet a Christian but is interested in knowing what you believe? 3. What is Packer getting at when He says whats supremely important is not so much that we know God, but that He knows us?

4. What stirs in you when you read the money quote above? What words would you use to describe your thoughts of that paragrah?