"Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me...?" John 14:9
It is of the greatest importance for the Lord's children to recognize fully that, above all other things, His object is that they should know Him. This is the all-governing end of all His dealings with us. This is the greatest of all our needs.
Our minds are so often occupied with service and work; we think that doing things for the Lord is the chief object of life. We are concerned about our lifework, or ministry. We think of equipment for it in terms of study and knowledge of things. Soul-winning, or teaching believers, or setting people to work, are so much in the foreground. Bible study and knowledge of the Scriptures, with efficiency in the matter of leading in Christian service as the end in view, are the matters of pressing importance with all.
All well and good, for these are important matters; but, back of everything that the Lord is more concerned about our knowing Him than about anything else. It is very possible to have a wonderful grasp on the Scriptures, a comprehensive and intimate familiarity with doctrine; to stand for cardinal verities of the faith; to be an unceasing worker in Christian service; to have a great devotion of the salvation of men, and yet, alas, to have a very inadequate and limited personal knowledge of God within. So often the Lord has to take away our work that we may discover Him.
The ultimate value of everything is not the information which we give, not the amount of work that we do, not the measure of truth that we possess, but just the fact that we know the Lord in a deep and mighty way. This is the on thing that will remain when all else passes.