• Knowing God: Without knowing God, all activity in life and ministry will be wicked. “Surely such are the dwellings of the wicked, and this is the place of him who does not know God.” (Job 18:21) The greatest need in the kingdom of God today is men that know their God. So often, we profess to know God, but our works deny Him. “To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled. They profess to know God, but in works they deny Him, being abominable, disobedient, and disqualified for every good work.” (Titus 1:15-16) If we do not know God we will be disqualified from every good work.

The definition of “Knowing God” is one who has a growing relationship with God through His Son Jesus Christ; one who acknowledges the Lord Jesus Christ for who He is - both Savior and Lord - and through the drawing of the Father and the working of the Holy Spirit accepts Jesus as Savior and submits to His Lordship. All sincere believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, at the time of salvation, begin a relationship with Christ and an ever growing knowledge of Him. This knowledge is called “ginosko” in the New Testament Greek and is described as: be aware (of), feel, (have) know (-ledge), perceived, be resolved, be sure, understand; to have personal acquaintance or experience with. In Philippians 3:7-15, Paul's major passion is to get more knowledge of Christ by experience. “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 3:7-15) Andrew Murray said, “Our one need is to study and know and trust the life that has been revealed in Christ and the life that is now ours.”

In addition, ginosko means: to "know" (absolutely) in a great variety of applications and with many implications; frequently suggests inception or progress in "knowledge"; a constant and progressive experience of "knowing"; an active relationship between the one who "knows" and the person or thing "known". We, therefore, do not believe that you can measure “knowing God” simply through praying a prayer of salvation or through going to church but by the fruit that faith in the Lord Jesus Christ produces and an ever growing relationship with Christ. “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” (James 2:26)

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