I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. Ephesians 1:17

How well do we really know God? Nowadays, in our culture, you would have to ask, “which God?” But I dare say, the gods of other religions aren’t all that knowable. Their gods are mystical, sometimes fearsome, to be appeased. In ancient times people sacrificed their children to the flames to appease the wrath of their god. Today, people engage in all kinds of works or practices to do the same thing, to become one with their chosen deity.

The apostle Paul ran into the problem of foreign gods when he visited the city of Athens. “Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.” Acts 17:22-23

The people of that day worshiped every god imaginable, even one they didn’t know. Perhaps they just wanted to cover their bases, kind of like people today who add Jesus to the mix of their religious experiences, as if he is just another way to get to heaven. People who do that don’t know the true, Biblical Jesus.

Paul prayed for the Ephesian church, begging God to give them wisdom and understanding so that they might know Him better. God wants to know us, to have a living relationship with His children. Paul said again in Philippians 3:10, “I want to know Christ…”

To know Him is essential for salvation.

One day everyone will stand before the risen Christ and find out just how important knowing Him is. “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers! Matthew 7:22-23

All the experiential religions with all their false teachings about Christ might appear on the outside to do wonderful things in His name. They might even talk like Christians, walk like Christians, and look like Christians. But God knows the heart. And in that day, He isn’t going to judge us based on what we did in His name. He’s going to examine whether we knew Him and whether He knew us.

“but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.” John 10:26-28

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man’s design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.” Acts 17:24-31

We can know Him, but it starts by repenting and believing in the man He has appointed, the one God raised from the dead, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Then once we begin that relationship, we seek to follow His commands, which in turn leads us to His Word where we come to know Him better. Exactly what Paul prayed for.