“If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been on my side, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed. God saw my affliction and the labor of my hands and rebuked you last night.” – Genesis 31:42
Isn’t interesting what Jacob didn’t say in this verse? He never called God “my God”. He talked all about the God of his father and his grandfather, but clearly didn’t consider Him to be his God. Jacob knew plenty about God. He’d even made a deal with God decades before. He was very aware that God was working on his behalf and blessed him enormously. And yet, for all that, Jacob didn’t know God. He had no real faith yet. He had no meaningful relationship with the God of his father and grandfather. In other words, he was missing everything that mattered!
It is all too easy to substitute knowledge about God for a relationship with Him. It’s all too easy to know a lot about the Bible without actually have real faith and trust in Who it reveals. I personally could answer endless questions about Jesus without believing in Him, loving Him, or knowing Him. This is exactly what Jesus lamented in the Sermon on the Mount, when He warned that people would one day demand entrance into His Kingdom based on everything they knew and had done for Him without ever having known Him. Nobody gets into the Kingdom without knowing the King!
Think carefully about this verse and don’t let it happen to you. Do you know Jesus? Not just know about Him, but truly know Him? What about people you know and love? Do they know Jesus or know about Him? There can be a huge distance between head knowledge and a heart relationship. If you aren’t sure about this, slow down, meditate on Scripture, pray for as long as it takes, and enter into fellowship with your Lord. #FollowJesus