Taste and See

Psalm 34:8a (ESV)

⁸ Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!

Yesterday, I heard great teaching about how important it is for us to grow in our knowledge of God through personal experience.We naturally think we grow in the knowledge of God through His written Word and certainly we learn about Him that way, but look what A.W. Tozer says in The Pursuit of God:

The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.

No matter how much we learn about the Lord, we cannot truly know Him until we have experienced Him for ourselves. Let me illustrate it this way: On Saturday, my girls had the most wonderful french fries for the first time at a local restaurant. I never tasted the fries, but it was obvious how wonderful they were by the way they looked and smelled, by the way they crunched, and by the way the girls raved about them. Later, I remarked to someone that the fries were wonderful. The truth is I had no idea how good they were, because I had never tasted them. I only knew about them. Isn't that what Tozer and my Bible study teacher were trying to say? It is not enough to just know about Him. Of course, the first experience in knowing the Lord is to accept His free gift of salvation and in that moment to have His Holy Spirit come to live inside us. Isn't that the experiential knowing of John 3:16 and Romans 6:23? It's hard to imagine more knowing than that, but over time and time spent in His Word, we come to know by experience truths like "I will never leave you or forsake you," "I will uphold you with my righteous right hand," and "I can do all things through Christ who give me strength." What truth of His Word is He waiting for you and me to take hold of today? What personal experience with our Lord awaits us? Whatever might come our way today, let's take it as an opportunity to apply His truth and get to know Him better!