Hello Greatness,

The beauty of building a good friendship is in getting to know one another. This can only be done when there is an agreement, howbeit it’s sometimes an unspoken agreement, but an agreement nonetheless. You don’t get to know someone in just one day, it takes an intentional effort on the part of both parties for it to work. After communicating and spending time together, it then becomes easier to pick up on cues, you can easily interpret the other person’s feelings, and you know the right things to say when they need you to.

Well, if we work on building great relationships like that and working at getting to know one another, what about getting to know God? I recently discovered something, “there is a difference between talking about God and talking with God.” You see, a lot of what we do is tell so many people about our God. It’s like a parent who is out of a child’s life or does not have a relationship with their child, but is so proud to let everyone know of their accomplishments. This is how we are sometimes. We let everyone else know how great God is and we witness to them- partly because we truly love God, and then because we are told to be witnesses of Christ here on earth. This is remarkable by the way, it’s good to be proud of our Living and Loving God.

However, we have to be careful not to get caught up in letting people know of God that we fail to build a relationship with Him as well. One thing God told me this year is not to be immune to His goodness that I fail to be awed by Him anymore (basically, He was warning me against having a relationship of “see finish” with Him). I know I love God, I mean, it’s hard to have a complete day without involving God so I was quite shocked by this revelation. Well, knowing me and the way I process things, God gave me a picture of a tourist. Sometimes, it takes a new person coming to where you are and seeing what you’ve basically overlooked with fresh eyes for you to start appreciating it yourself. But I’ve drifted from the topic.

I was reading the book of Acts 17 and I saw something in verse 23 I had never paid attention to. Besides, the words were written in all caps so it was hard to miss.

For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him I declare unto you (KJV).
When I arrived here the other day, I was fascinated with all the shrines I came across. And then I found one inscribed, TO THE GOD NOBODY KNOWS. I'm here to introduce you to this God so you can worship Him intelligently, know who you're dealing with (MSG)

When God reminded me not to lose sight of who He is, I started reading a lot of books about Him– books are centered around the miracles and power of God. I understood that people built altars for various gods because seeing those gods made them feel closer and there were instructions about what to do to appease them. That inscription was there at the time because it was hard to truly worship God when they didn’t know much about Him- I mean, He was unknown to them. This is actually different from having an imaginary friend, at least with that you create what you want. They didn’t know Him and didn’t know how to worship Him so He was just there. The interesting thing about that inscription was that they acknowledged that there was a God, but they just didn’t know Him.

It takes a great understanding of who God is to properly worship Him. Do you know what makes Him happy? How does He speak to you? Do you feel connected to Him even when you are in a rowdy environment? The truth is, if you don’t work on building a relationship with God, He might remain as unknown to you as He was to the Athenians who had that inscription. Communication is enhanced when there is an understanding. The only way to get the best out of God is to get to know Him. I know one of the best relationship advice anyone can ever give is to spend time with your partner and get to know them. Considering this is also a vital relationship– my advice to you is to get to know God.

Do you want to know one thing about God? Well, I’ll tell you. He wants to get to know you as well, which is why He gave you His Holy Spirit. So why don’t you ask the Holy Spirit to reveal Himself to you and take it from there?

With all my love,

Mz_Ola.