Knowing God in practise: Everyday Theology (part 4)
We have seen that we are not simply thinking minds, but embodied, relational creatures. And we have seen that knowing God is not just a matter of gathering information, but of living relationship with the God who makes himself known. If both of those things are true, then it follows that knowing God must take shape in practices, not merely propositions.
Over time, what we do trains our attention—what we notice, what we value, what we return to. And our attention, in turn, shapes what we come to know and love. My friend, Rev. Dr Matt Aroney speaks to this in his reflections on the process of sanctification.* During a home renovation, he was working in the garden for many hours—tilling, turning, tending. Over time, that repeated physical labour became a kind of prayer: a way of attending to what God was doing in his own heart. The slow work of cultivating the earth became a meditation on the slow work of God cultivating him.**
In Scripture, to know God is not simply to master facts about him. It is to behold him with unveiled face, and in that beholding to be changed— “being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”*** Even our growth in knowing is not a self-driven project, but a response to God’s self-revelation and the Spirit’s transforming work.
A friend once told me that during a difficult season in her marriage, she began praying each day for her husband. But she wasn’t only asking God to change him. She was asking God to change her vision—to give her eyes to see her husband rightly, to notice what was good, and to recognise the ways God was at work in his life. Over time, that practise reshaped her attention. She began to see more clearly what she had been missing. It was a reminder that what we repeatedly do can deepen our love, and our knowing.
This is how much of life works. What we do trains our attention. Because attention is central to knowing, these patterns quietly shape the kind of knowing we live by.
We see something similar in the way shared practices shape us together. When people sing together, their breathing can begin to synchronise, and even their heart rhythms align.**** Something of their life becomes patterned together, not primarily through analysis, but through participation. This does not replace understanding, but it reminds us that knowing is not something we do with our minds alone. It is something we grow into, with our whole selves, in shared rhythms of attention and response.
The same is true in our life with God.
Prayer, church attendance, confession, hospitality, rest, generosity, singing, reading our Bible—these are not “extra credit” activities for especially committed Christians. They are the ordinary means by which our knowing, our loves, and our lives are formed together.
Because we are embodied, finite, relational people, we come to know God as creatures who listen, respond, remember, gather, speak, sing, and receive. This kind of bodily, relational knowing is also reflected in the way Paul understands his ministry. He reminds the Thessalonians that he shared with them not only the gospel, but his very life, like a nursing mother caring for her children.***** Sharing the gospel was not simply something spoken, but something lived and embodied in toil and relationship.
That is why these practices matter. They are not separate from knowing God, but part of its ordinary shape in human life.
Yet we need to be careful here. Christian practices are not techniques for producing holiness on demand. We do not make ourselves into Christlikeness. In these ordinary rhythms, we place ourselves again before the God who is already at work in us.
The Lord of heaven and earth is free to work wherever he pleases, yet he has shown us the ordinary paths where his grace tends to run.****** Christian practices do not work because we wield them successfully, but because God, in his kindness, has promised to meet his people in them. And as he does, we come to know him more truly—not just in what we say about him, but in what we have learned to see, trust, and love as we contemplate his glory.
Let’s pursue God, not because we think we must scramble for his grace or into his presence. He has already moved heaven and earth to be near to us. But let’s pursue him because we get to. These ordinary rhythms are where we return, again and again, to receive what he freely gives: knowledge of himself.
* Matt Aroney, Renovated: How God Makes Us Christlike (Kingsford, NSW: Matthias Media, 2024)
** For similar reflections on this kind of practise, see Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2016
*** 2 Corinthians 3:18
**** “Many Hearts, One Beat: Singing Synchs Up Heart Rates,” Time, July 8, 2013, https://time.com/archive/7135834/many-hearts-one-beat-singing-synchs-up-heart-rates/
***** 1 Thessalonians 2:7-8
****** David Matthis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines (Wheaton IL: Crossway, 2016)
Question for reflection:
Which ordinary Christian practice has shaped you most deeply over time?
Practical invitation:
Pay attention today to the habits and rhythms already shaping your life.
Ask yourself: What is training my attention most powerfully at the moment?
Then consider one small way to make space for a more life-giving Christian rhythm.
Prayer:
Heavenly Father, help me to know you today.
Heavenly Father, help me to know you today.
Heavenly Father, help me to know you today.
In Christ, Amen.
Invitation:
Share your reaction or thoughts in the comments below.