This last week I had the privilege of sharing some of both my story and my wife Amanda’s story with those who attended our adult Sunday School hour. I had shared that story before in other contexts, and I had often reflected on the various ways God has worked through the challenges and suffering He has allowed into our lives. But as I was preparing to share this week, I was struck by something I hadn’t quite put together before: Each time we found ourselves in a desperate place of grief, anger, anxiety, or depression, God provided a way out. That part I already knew. But what I noticed now was that the way out He provided, though it came in different forms at different times, was nonetheless fundamentally the same in every case.

When I was losing my mother to cancer, my soul drifted into chaos and anger because I did not see the purpose and I did not understand how God could do such a thing. I was only able to be at peace – even while I grieved – when I came to truly know and believe that God was good and trustworthy (Romans 8:28-29) even in the middle of difficult circumstances.

That knowledge, through the faithfulness of God in the crucible of suffering, moved from my head and took up residence in my heart. As it did, the storm raging within me began to be still.

Deeper knowledge of God is what Job needed to give him peace in the midst of his anguish. Deeper knowledge of Christ is what the disciples needed when they were panicking in the boat as wind and waves crashed around them. Deeper knowledge of our triune God is what we all need as the difficulties of life crash against us. Deeper knowledge of God inevitably transforms us into the likeness of His Son – and the more we become like Jesus, the more we find our souls at rest.

How do we arrive at the deeper knowledge? Ultimately, only God can deliver this to us – He must reveal Himself for us to have any hope of understanding Him better. What a glorious blessing, then, to have been given the very words of God, His finished and sufficient revelation to us in the pages of Scripture. And, more than that, we have the very Spirit of God Himself dwelling within each of us, revealing the truth of those words to those who believe (1 Cor. 2:12-16).

So what must we do? What is our part? Draw near.

And how do we do that? As Pastor Chris laid out this Sunday, we must approach our God with a sincere desire to know Him through his word; a settled trust that He will do what He says; and a lifestyle of constant repentance whenever sin rears its head.

All three of those elements are critical, and all three are often misunderstood. Deep diving into all three is beyond the scope of this piece, but I’ll illustrate the point by briefly looking at the first: Sincere desire to know God. That's where it has to start, where the process of transformation begins.

We see in 2 Peter 1:3 that through knowledge of God, we are granted “all things that pertain to life and godliness.” Knowledge of God is primarily and ultimately found in the person of Christ (Hebrews 1:1-2, John 1:14), and the person of Christ is revealed to us in the pages of Scripture (Luke 24:27, John 5:39, John 20:31).

That should impact the way we interact with our Bibles. Too often we approach God’s Word like it’s a reference book – we flip it open, read a few verses, and then walk away. That won’t provide a deeper knowledge of who God is any more than slapping some hot water with a tea bag will make tea.

We aren’t called to merely read God’s Word. We’re called to consider it, meditate on it, memorize it, dwell on it, and delight in it (Psalm 1:2, Psalm 119:15, Philippians 4:8-9). We need to approach God’s Word with tenacity and confidence – confidence that it contains everything needed for life and godliness, and the tenacity to wrestle and stick with it until it changes us (2 Corinthians 3:18).

That’s the part that became clear to me as I prepped for Sunday’s lesson – God had faithfully drawn Amanda and me to Himself through our sufferings. As we drew near, we came to know Him not merely with our heads, but with our hearts. And as we came to know Him better, we found the peace that passes understanding.