Written That You May Believe

What happens when you take the Bible at its word. Not a single loophole for worry or fear is left to the soul that knows God.

"Ah, yes," you say, "but how am I to get to know Him? Other people seem to have some kind of inward revelation, but I never do; and no matter how much I pray, everything seems dark to me. I want to know God, but I do not see how to manage it."

Your trouble is that you have got a wrong idea of what knowing God is, or at least the kind of knowing I mean. For I do not mean any mystical interior revelations. Such revelations are delightful when you can have them, but they are not always at your command, and they are often variable and uncertain. The kind of knowing I mean is just the plain matter-of-fact knowledge of God's nature and character that comes to us by believing what is revealed in the Bible concerning Him.

Facts, Not Theories

The Apostle John at the close of his gospel says, regarding the things he had been recording:
Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. John 20:30-31
It is believing the thing that is written, not the thing that is inwardly revealed, that is to give life. The kind of knowing I mean is the knowing that comes from believing the things that are written.

I mean that when I read in the Bible that God is love, I am to believe it just because "it is written" and not because I have had any inward revelation that it is true. And when the Bible says that He cares for us as He cares for the birds of the air, and that the very hairs of our heads are all numbered (Mt. 6:26-29, 10:30), I am to believe it just because it is written, no matter whether I have any inward revelation of it or not.

It is of vital importance to understand that the Bible is a statement not of theories but of facts. Things are not true because they are in the Bible; they are only in the Bible because they are true. A little boy, who had been studying about the discovery of America, said to his father, "If I had been Columbus I would not have taken all that trouble to discover America."

"What would you have done?" asked the father.

"Oh," replied the little boy, "I would have just gone to the map and found it." This little boy did not understand that maps are only pictures of already known places. America did not exist because it was on the map; it could not be on the map until it was already known to exist. And similarly with the Bible. It is, like the map, a simple statement of facts. When it tells us that God loves us, it is only telling us something that is a fact; that fact would not be in the Bible if it had not been already known to be a fact.

It was a great discovery when I grasped this idea. It seemed to take all uncertainty and speculation out of the revelation given us of the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ and to make all that is written concerning Him to be simply a statement of incontrovertible facts. And facts we can believe. What is more, we do believe them as soon as we see that they are facts.

From Knowledge to Conviction

Although this may seem very dry and bare to start with, it will, if steadfastly persevered in, result in very blessed inward revelations and will sooner or later lead us out into such a knowledge of God as will transform our lives. This kind of knowing brings us convictions; to my mind convictions are far superior to any inward revelations, delightful as these last are.

An inward revelation may be upset by the state of one's health or by many other upsetting things, but a conviction is permanent. Once convince a man that two and two make four, and no amount of dyspepsia or east winds or anything else but actual lunacy can upset his conviction. He knows it just as well when he has an attack of dyspepsia as he does when his digestion is in good working order. Convictions come from knowledge, and no amount of good or bad feelings, of good or ill health, can alter knowledge.

It is not a question of acquaintance with ourselves, of knowing what we are or what we do or what we feel; it is simply and only a question of becoming acquainted with God and getting to know what He is, what He does, and what He feels.

About the author:
Hannah Whitall Smith (1832–1911) was a writer and speaker active in the American Holiness movement. Her book The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life (1875) remains a popular devotional guide today.

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