Knowing the God You Worship

Paul then stood up...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 unknown, I am going to proclaim to you. -Acts 17:22-23 (NIV)

In Paul's day, as in ours, people made claims to worship a god that they did not know. The altar reference above was erected by the Athenians just in case there was a god out there of which they were unaware. The Athenians didn't want this god to feel overlooked or neglected, less this god either choose not to bless them or (even worse) choose to punish them for their lack of worship.

It is easy to say that I am religious, to claim that I worship God. And yet when I fail to begin each day with God in study and prayer, I am missing an opportunity to know God better. If I claim to know, love, and worship God but am not disciplined enough to actively know God more intimately, I am doing nothing more than giving lip service to God. I don't want a relationship with God that is nothing more than covering my bases, seeking either this God's blessing or avoiding this God's punishment. I want to more intimately know the God I worship. I don't want to worship a God that I'm not seeking daily to know.

May God grant you the grace to know the God you worship.



You can sign up to receive these daily devotionals by email each morning by scrolling to the bottom of this page and entering your email into the yellowish box.

If you're interested in reading through the Bible in a year, tomorrow's suggested readings are Job 15 and Acts 19-20.