I have walked with God for a long time.
I have prayed, studied His Word, served in ministry, taught, worshiped, and walked with Him through some of the most significant seasons of my life. My relationship with God isn’t new. And yet one of the things I continue to discover is just how much more of Him there is to know.
I wonder sometimes if those of us who have walked with God for many years can become so familiar with what we know about Him that we stop being intentional about getting to know Him.
We go to church. We attend Bible study. We read the Bible and devotionals. We listen to sermons, Christian podcasts, and Christian music. We pray. These are all good things, and each can be part of developing our relationship with God. But doing things that involve God is not necessarily the same as spending time developing our relationship with Him.
Think about any relationship that matters to you. If you met someone you wanted to know better, you would spend time with them. You would talk. You would listen. You would ask questions. Over time, you would learn what matters to them, how they respond, what brings them joy, and what you can trust about their character.
You wouldn’t expect closeness simply because you knew a lot of facts about them. And you certainly wouldn’t expect the relationship to continue deepening if you stopped investing time in it once you decided you knew them.
Why would our relationship with God be different?
Years ago, God brought this home to me in a very personal way. I had a real relationship with Jesus. I had a real relationship with Holy Spirit. But I came to recognize that I had not been as intentional about developing my relationship with my heavenly Father.
I have written about that part of my journey before, and I won’t retell it here. What matters is what it taught me: there was more of God for me to know. There still is.
Knowing Him isn’t something I accomplished years ago when I gave my life to Him. It isn’t something I completed through years of ministry or Bible study, and it isn’t measured by how many Scriptures I know or how comfortable I am talking about faith. Relationship continues, and relationship requires time.
Knowing About Someone Isn’t the Same as Knowing Them
I can read a biography about someone and learn an extraordinary amount about that person’s life. I might learn where they grew up, what they accomplished, what they believed, what they struggled with, and what other people thought of them. But I still don’t know them. I know about them.
The Bible reveals God to us. It teaches us His character, His promises, His ways, His heart, and His relationship with His people. I cannot imagine truly knowing God while ignoring His Word. But even reading Scripture can become something we do rather than an encounter with the One we want to know.
I can open my Bible because it is part of my morning routine. I can read today’s devotional, underline something meaningful, say a prayer, close the book, and move into my day.
Or I can come to His Word with a different desire:
Father, what do You want me to know about You?
Now I am not simply looking for something that applies to my circumstances. I am looking for Him.
There are times we approach Scripture wanting an answer, encouragement, confirmation, direction, or perhaps a promise we can hold onto. There is nothing wrong with bringing our needs to our heavenly Father. He invites us to come to Him. But what if sometimes we came with no agenda other than wanting to know Him?
Not simply, “What can I get from this today?” but “Who are You showing me You are?”
Relationship Requires More Than Talking
Prayer can become a conversation in which we do most of the talking. We tell our heavenly Father what happened and what we need. We ask Him to help the people we love, to heal, provide, protect, guide, give us wisdom, and show us what to do next.
I do those things too.
But imagine sitting down with someone you love, talking through everything happening in your life, asking them to help you with several things, thanking them for what they have done, and then saying goodbye before allowing them to speak. We probably wouldn’t call that intimacy.
Relationship includes talking, but it also includes listening, being present, and sometimes simply being together.
I have learned to ask my heavenly Father questions because I am in relationship with Him. I talk to Him. I listen. I pay attention. I have learned to recognize the ways He speaks to me, and sometimes I sit with something rather than rushing to fill the silence myself.
The more time I spend with Him, the more I learn His character. And the more I know His character, the more I recognize what sounds like Him.
Jesus said in John 10:27:
“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”
There is so much relationship in that one verse. They hear His voice. He knows them. They follow Him.
We often want to know how to hear God’s voice more clearly. We want to discern whether something is from God, ourselves, fear, desire, or simply another thought passing through our minds. Discernment matters. But perhaps learning to recognize God’s voice has less to do with figuring out how to hear Him and more to do with knowing Him well enough to recognize His character.
The God I Know Today
God hasn’t changed, but I have.
The questions I bring my heavenly Father today aren’t all the same questions I brought Him twenty years ago. Life has given me experiences I hadn’t yet lived then. There have been prayers answered exactly as I hoped and others answered very differently. There have been doors opened, doors closed, people who stayed, people who left, seasons that made sense while I was living them, and others I understood only much later.
Through all of it, I have had opportunities to discover more about who God is. Some things I once knew intellectually, I now know experientially.
Reading that God is faithful is one thing. Experiencing His faithfulness when you don’t know what comes next is another. We can say God is our source, but there are seasons when we discover what those words really mean because something we were depending on disappears. Trusting God takes on a much deeper meaning when we choose to trust Him even though we don’t understand what He is doing.
The more I know God, the more I love Him. The more I love Him, the more I trust Him.
And there is still more.
Familiarity Isn’t Intimacy
Those of us who have known God for a long time can become familiar with Him without continuing to pursue intimacy with Him.
We know the stories and recognize the Scriptures. We know Christian language and what we believe. We may even be the people others come to with questions about faith. But familiarity can quietly convince us that we already know.
Think about the people you have loved for years. In a healthy, growing relationship, you are still discovering them. Experiences reveal things. Conversations go deeper. You notice something you hadn’t noticed before. You wouldn’t say, “I’ve known you for thirty years. There is nothing left for me to learn about you.”
And we are talking about God.
How could we ever reach the end of knowing Him?
Perhaps the question isn’t simply whether you know God. Perhaps the more revealing question is whether you are still getting to know Him.
Are you still curious about His heart? Do you spend time with Him when you aren’t asking for something? Do you listen? Do you open His Word because you want to encounter Him there, not merely complete what you planned to read?
And here’s a question we may not ask very often:
Do you enjoy Him?
That question matters to me because relationship with God can become so serious, so structured, so focused on growth, obedience, purpose, calling, healing, and getting life right that we can forget the beauty of simply loving Him and enjoying being with Him.
I don’t want my relationship with God to become another thing I manage well. I want to know Him.
There Is Still More
Maybe you have walked with God most of your life. Maybe your relationship with Him is relatively new. Maybe you know Scripture inside and out. Maybe you’re still learning where the books of the Bible are.
This isn’t about how much you know, and it isn’t an invitation to add another obligation to your day.
It is an invitation to relationship.
Make room for Him. Talk with Him. Listen. Ask your heavenly Father questions. Read His Word wanting to know the One who gave it to you. Pay attention to His character. Notice His presence. Remain curious.
Not because you have to prove your faithfulness, but because you love Him. And when we love someone, we want to know them.
I have walked with God for a long time, and I am grateful that I can say this today:
I am still getting to know Him.
And I never plan to stop.