God the Gracious Initiator

Over 27 years ago, as a brand new believer in Jesus Christ, I picked up a copy of J.I. Packer's classic book Knowing God.  In those early days of my faith, I remember God using this book to shape my understanding of Him, and creating in my heart an awe that such a majestic and holy Being would stoop to love me.

But that was a very long time ago, and after so many years, I had forgotten the specific parts of the book that impacted me.  Recently, however, I took it up again to read and discuss it with some lovely college girls at my church. And I have to say that I am being blessed all over again.

Chapter 3, called Knowing and Being Known, was such an encouraging reminder of God's gracious treatment of us. God is so gracious that He takes the initiative to reveal Himself to sinful, undeserving human beings.  When He makes us to know Him, our lives are changed forever.

     "What happens is that the almighty Creator, the Lord of hosts, the great God before whom the nations are as a drop in a bucket, comes to you and begins to talk to you through the words and truths of Holy Scripture.  Perhaps you have been acquainted with the Bible and Christian truth for many years, and it has meant little to you; but one day you wake up to the fact that God is actually speaking to you--you!--through the biblical message.  As you listen to what God is saying, you find yourself brought very low; for God talks to you about your sin, and guilt, and weakness, and blindness, and folly, and compels you to judge yourself hopeless and helpless, and to cry out for forgiveness. 
     But this is not all.  You come to realize as you listen that God is actually opening his heart to you, making friends with you and enlisting you as a colleague...a covenant partner.  It is a staggering thing, but it is true--the relationship in which sinful human beings know God is one in which God, so to speak, takes them onto his staff, to be henceforth his fellow workers (1 Cor. 3:9) and personal friends.  The action of God in taking Joseph from prison to become Pharaoh's prime minister is a picture of what he does to every Christian: from being Satan's prisoner, you find yourself transferred to a position of trust in the service of God.  At once life is transformed."  (page 36)

Packer returns to this idea (that God is the gracious initiator in our relationship with Him) as he wraps up chapter 3. This should wash over our souls with a sense of joy and comfort and gratefulness:

     "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 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.  He knows me as a 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 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 humans do not see...and more corruption in me than ...I see in myself.  There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, he wants 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."    (page 41)

What can I say after that except to repeat the words of this Christ Tomlin song, "You see the depths of my heart, but you love me the same. You are amazing God!"