Day 88/100: You Need to Know God for Yourself

I have often wondered how many people are carrying a version of God they never met for themselves. Not necessarily because they rejected Him. Not because they hated Him. But because someone else introduced them to a person who does not exist in Scripture.

It is very possible to spend years loving God and still not know Him. It is possible to spend years fearing God without understanding His heart. It is even possible to build an entire faith around things He never said.

I have seen people describe God as though He is impossible to please. Every mistake becomes another reason to expect punishment. Every difficult season is treated as proof that He is angry. Every unanswered prayer becomes evidence that He has turned away.

After hearing those ideas often enough, they begin to feel true. The problem is that confidence does not make something correct. A loud voice can still be wrong. A respected person can misunderstand Scripture. A preacher can love God sincerely and still explain a passage incorrectly.

That is why I believe every believer has a responsibility to open the Bible for themselves.
No relationship grows through secondhand conversations.

Imagine trying to know your closest friend only by listening to other people's opinions. One person tells you they are impatient. Another describes them as cold. Someone else insists they cannot be trusted.
You believe every story without ever sitting down to have a conversation with the person themselves.

Years pass. One day you finally meet them. Instead of the harsh person you expected, you discover someone kind, patient, and deeply compassionate.

You immediately realize that you built your opinion on borrowed information. I sometimes wonder how many people will experience that same feeling when they truly begin reading Scripture.

Some of us have inherited ideas without asking where they came from. We accepted them because the people teaching us sounded certain. We assumed they had already done the work of studying.
So we stopped searching. We stopped asking questions. We stopped opening the pages for ourselves.

That is a very dangerous place to be.

Because the people speaking are still human.
Human beings have preferences. They have traditions. They have experiences that shape the way they understand Scripture.

Sometimes they explain the Bible faithfully. Sometimes they add their own conclusions without realizing it. Let me not even start to talk about most of the instagram reels I have been seeing lately. You begin to think if it’s the same bible you are reading that they are reading.

Sometimes fear is passed from one generation to another until it begins to sound like truth. I think one of the saddest things that can happen to a believer is becoming afraid of a Father they have never truly met.

There are people who approach prayer with fear instead of confidence because they expect rejection. There are people who believe every hardship is God's way of getting even with them. There are people carrying guilt for things Scripture never even calls sin.

Their hearts are exhausted. Their faith feels heavy.
Their relationship with God becomes something to survive instead of something to enjoy.

Then something beautiful happens.
They decide to read. Not to prepare a sermon.
Not to win an argument. Not to prove someone wrong. But simply because they want to know God.
And that changes everything.

The Bible begins to tell a different story.
They find a Shepherd who goes looking for one lost sheep. They meet a Father who runs towards His returning son before a single apology is finished.
They see Jesus sitting with people religion had already rejected. They watch Him touch those everyone else avoided. They hear Him speak words that heal broken hearts instead of crushing them.
The God they encounter in Scripture is far greater than the version fear created.

There is sadness in realizing how many years were spent believing things God never said. There is pain in remembering prayers filled with fear when they could have been filled with trust. There is disappointment in recognizing how easily human voices replaced the written Word.

I do not believe every person who teaches Scripture has bad intentions. Many teach with sincerity. Many genuinely want people to know God.

Some are passing down what they were taught because nobody encouraged them to search the Scriptures for themselves. That is why studying the Bible is not an act of rebellion against spiritual leaders. It is an act of love towards God.

It says, "I want to know You as You have revealed Yourself."

That desire protects your heart. When someone claims that God is cruel, you can search the Scriptures.

When someone says His love depends on your performance, you can search the Scriptures.

When someone insists that grace has limits you have never read about, you can search the Scriptures.

The Bible becomes your measure instead of another person's confidence.

Faith becomes deeply personal when Scripture is no longer something you hear only on Sundays. It becomes the place where your questions meet God's character.

It becomes the place where fear is corrected, the place where confusion finds clarity.

There have been moments in my own life when a single passage challenged ideas I had accepted for years. Not because the verse was new. Because I had finally taken the time to read it without assuming I already understood it.

That reminded me that knowing about God is different from knowing Him. One comes from collecting information. The other comes from meeting Him through His Word.

There are many voices competing for our attention today. Some speak with wisdom. Others speak with certainty but without truth. The difference is not always obvious at first. That is why every believer must return to the source. Regularly.

Not because reading the Bible earns God's love.
It doesn't. We read because we want to recognise His voice for ourselves.

The greatest loss is not misunderstanding a difficult verse. The greatest loss is spending your life serving a version of God created by human opinion while His true character has been waiting for you in the pages of Scripture all along.

Open the Bible. Read it with humility. Ask questions.
Take your time. Allow the words to challenge what you have always believed. If something you have heard cannot stand beside Scripture, let it go without fear.

God does not need our assumptions to defend Him.
He has already revealed Himself. Our responsibility is to know Him as He truly is, not merely as others have described Him.

That changes the way you pray. The way you worship. The way you see yourself. The way you love other people.

Most of all, it changes the relationship itself.
Because there is a world of difference between hearing about God...
...and finally meeting Him for yourself.