How come so many Christians don’t really know God?

It seems like a weird, even dumb, question. How come so many Christians don’t really know God? It’s a very important question with a very disturbing answer. It’s all too easy for Christians to not know God! The headline shocked me. 51% of Churchgoers Don’t Know of the Great Commission, according to a Barna survey. I also found it very disappointing. Depressing even.

If we don’t even know, let alone do, The Great Commission, then we really don’t know what Jesus told us to do for His Kingdom. Or, even worse, we know, but we don’t care enough about Jesus’ commands to us to follow through on them.

Check out the adjacent image. Yes, it’s a forest, but it represents our journey through this life. So many paths. A bridge to cross – maybe. It’s dark in parts of the forest. And we can’t see what’s ahead. If we don’t have a map, we can easily get lost.

Plus, in the forest things change. Trees fall down, blocking some paths. New trees grow. There might be bears, mountain lions, snakes, all sorts of hazards. We need a guide to navigate through the huge forest of life. Will it be the Holy Spirit? Or we will go it alone? Maybe even take a “guide” who doesn’t know the way. Or has a different destination in mind.

So many choices!

No wonder the path Jesus tells us about is so narrow. Even many of those who think they’re on it actually aren’t on it at all! They may not even be close!

So, what do we do? How do we get through this forest maze? We’ll see as we go along.

Setting the stage to answer: How come so many Christians don’t really know God?

Let’s begin to set the stage by looking at something Jesus said, and finding it in the image above.

The Narrow and Wide Gates – Matthew

^{Mt 7:13} “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. ¹⁴ But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

And no wonder so many non-Christians look at so many of us and decide they want nothing to do with our God! I’m a Christian, and I wouldn’t want anything to do with the God some self-proclaimed Christians follow. Why not? Because he’s not the God in the Bible. At least, not by their words and actions he isn’t.

Ultimately, only God Himself will decide the fate of all of us. At least, that’s what we’re told. It’s all up to a fickle God. But that’s not really true.

John 3:16

^{Jn 3:16} “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸ Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. ¹⁹ This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰ Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. ²¹ But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”

Some people know only about verse 16 – and say God loves everyone, so we’re all saved. No matter what we do. But that ignores verse 18 – and a whole bunch of other stuff in the Bible.

Others, because they don’t know verse 17, think God’s just out to get us. One wrong move and we’re toast. Human toast in Hell, I guess? But that belief ignores pretty much everything Jesus said.

But my point here is this. Don’t give up on God just because of what you see in people who claim to be following Him.

In case you don’t remember or don’t know, here’s what I mean by the narrow path.

The narrow and wide paths are important to know about for Christians. Not because they’re literal paths, but for what they represent.

Christians cannot know God if we’re on the wrong path

See that picture above? There are many paths there. Some are well-worn. Others are harder to find. Not impossible to find. But we’re not going to go down that path without the Holy Spirit. We’ll learn more about how that happens as we move through this.

The thing is though, the picture is representative of the paths leading to the narrow and wide gates, it’s also representative of the fact that most people won’t get to the narrow gate.

The weird, and sad, thing is, that narrow path isn’t all that hard to see. That is, if we truly want to see it. Especially for someone who goes to church. And it should be even more so for someone who claims to be Christian. And yet, we can be blinded. For instance, blinded by the popularity of the wider path. Blinded by one thing that attracts us to the wide path, because we just can’t imagine living without it. And so, we take that wider path. Sometimes, even when we really should know better.

In other words, most people won’t get to Heaven. No matter how sure we might be that everyone’s going to Heaven, the Bible very clearly says that’s not gonna happen! It even says many people who call themselves Christians aren’t going to make it there. Why? Because so many Christians aren’t on the right path either! They’re on the well-traveled path on the left.

How do we know so many Christians are on the wrong path?

Why do I say lots of Christians are on the wrong path? Because Jesus told us. It’s right here, in the telling of the 10 lepers who were healed. Please notice as you read it, that physical healing is not spiritual healing. Physical healing is not spiritual salvation.

Let’s check it out.