Knowing God Through His Word Is the Most Extraordinary Experience
The Creator of the universe reveals Himself not through spectacle, but through Scripture and that changes everything.
What’s the most extraordinary experience a human being can have?
Climbing Everest? Seeing the Northern Lights? Hearing your newborn cry for the first time? These are all awe-inspiring moments. But none of them compare to the staggering reality that you can know the living God not just as a distant deity, but as a personal, transforming presence. And perhaps even more surprising? This experience doesn’t require a plane ticket or a spiritual spectacle. It begins by simply opening your Bible.
That’s the radical claim embedded in three seemingly simple passages: 1 Samuel 3:21, 2 Corinthians 3:18, and 2 Corinthians 4:4. Together, they pull back the curtain on how we truly encounter God and how that encounter reshapes our lives from the inside out.
God Reveals Himself by His Word
Let’s begin where it all starts revelation.
“The Lord appeared again at Shiloh, for the Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the Lord” (1 Samuel 3:21). This short verse contains a universe of meaning. God revealed Himself not just information, not just instructions, but His person through His word.
Think about that: the infinite, holy God of the universe chose to make Himself known through words. Not through fire from heaven or thunderous manifestations, but by speaking. And today, He continues to do that not through audible voices in the night, but through the pages of Scripture.
This is not dry data collection. This is not religious ritual. This is encounter. The same way Samuel came to personally know the Lord through the word, you and I are invited into a living, breathing relationship with God by meeting Him in the Bible.
But it doesn’t stop there.
Seeing Glory, Being Changed
Paul connects the dots in a breathtaking way in 2 Corinthians 3:18:
“We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”
We are changed transformed not by trying harder, but by beholding. And what do we behold? The glory of the Lord. Where? Just a few verses later, Paul tells us:
“The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” (2 Corinthians 4:4)
So, to put it all together: We see the glory of God in the gospel of Christ, as revealed in God’s Word. That’s the lens through which transformation happens. When we open the Bible and the Holy Spirit opens our hearts, we see Jesus and in seeing Him, we are made more like Him.
Real Sight, Real Change
But what does that look like in real life?
It means that reading Scripture isn’t an academic exercise. It’s an act of spiritual sight. It’s asking God not just to teach you, but to show Himself to you. It’s saying with the psalmist, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18).
It also means that change doesn’t come from white-knuckled morality, but from worship. From the daily beholding of God’s beauty in the Word. Just like Samuel, we may start out hearing God’s voice without recognizing it. But as the Word becomes real, God becomes real and the knowing becomes personal.
Paul writes in Colossians 3:10, “Put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” Again, the theme is the same knowing God through His Word leads to becoming like Him.
And the inverse is just as sobering. 1 John 3:6 says, “No one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.” In other words, the absence of transformation signals the absence of true sight. The Word was there, perhaps, but the seeing wasn’t.
This Is the Experience We Were Made For
Throughout history, humanity has asked, “Can I know God?” Every religious system, every philosophy, every soul-searching question circles back to this: Is there a way to personally know the One who made me?
The Bible’s answer is a resounding yes and that yes is found in Christ, through His Word.
So when you sit with your Bible in the quiet of morning or the stillness of night, you are not doing something small. You are stepping into the most extraordinary experience this life offers. You are encountering the living God. You are beholding His glory. You are being changed little by little, day by day, into the image of Christ.
One day, we will see Him face to face, and in that moment, we will be fully transformed (1 John 3:2). But until then, we glimpse Him in the mirror of His Word and each glimpse changes us.
So ask. Seek. Open the Word and say, “Lord, reveal Yourself to me.” Not for a thrill. Not for facts. But for fellowship.
Because knowing Him is not just the greatest experience you can have it’s the one you were created for.
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