Read the transcript from today's video devotional.
If somebody asked you, "How do you know you know God?" what would your answer be? Would it be how often you read the Bible or how well you know it? Maybe how frequently you go to church, or the number of ministries that you serve in, or how much you give or how much you spend time in prayer?
How do you know you know God? This is a question that I wrestled with for years in my youth. I did all of the church things. I went to multiple services a week. I read my Bible all the time, I prayed nonstop. All of my closest friends were believers, but there was just this nagging thought in my brain: how do I know that I know God?
Wrestling with Doubt
I would think about the parable of Jesus separating the sheep from the goats at the final judgment. That there was some that He would lead into eternal life, and some that seemed like they were part of the flock, but would be pushed aside because they didn't actually know God. There was this feeling in my life that something was missing, and this feeling turned into a worry, and that worry turned into a fear, and that fear began to consume me.
I wanted God. I loved God, but what if I didn't know Him? What if He would say He didn't know me? Maybe you've wrestled with that question before, and I want to turn to 1 John to give us some comfort and guidance in answering that question. The apostle John writes in his letter to the church, 1 John chapter 4, verse 8, “But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
The Embodiment of Love
1 John is one of my favorite books in the Bible. I love hearing from a man who walked with the Lord Jesus in His early days, and now is walking in the Spirit as he ages and wants to lead other people to know God.
If there's anybody that could help us answer the question, "How do I know I know God?" John is going to be one of those people. To understand how we can answer that question, we actually have to start at the end of that verse there. He gives us a truth. He says, "God is love." He's not simply loving. He is the embodiment of love. He defines what it means to love, what true love looks like.
The Guarantee of Our Salvation
As believers, we know that the guarantee of our salvation is the Spirit. How do we know that we have the Spirit? We start to see our lives becoming more like Jesus. If that's true, then that means we will also begin to love like Jesus loves.
If we want to be sure that we know God, we have to look at how we're loving other people. Not by our church attendance, not by how much we read the Bible, or how much we pray. Those are all good things, but they're not the guarantee of our salvation. Jesus says the world will know we are His disciples by the way we love one another.
If you know God, you have His Spirit, and His Spirit will bear fruit, good fruit of love like Jesus, not to earn His affection, but as a result of His love being poured into your life to overflowing. Let's embrace life with God. Let's be confident that we know God because as He first loved us, we can go and love others.
