This has happened to all of us: Someone or something or some situation which became part of our life gets better over time. It’s not that we disliked the person or circumstances when we first encountered them, it’s just that we were surprised to learn there was more than we first expected.

Let’s say you were set up on a blind date. You didn’t anticipate ever seeing the person again but agreed to a second date. And a year later, you announced your engagement.

Or you take a new job with the anticipation that it will be a temporary “place holder” while you continue to search for a better fit. Within a few months, you are called by a recruiter with an offer from a competing company. But you turn down the offer because you have come to love your “temporary” job so much.

Finally, your work promotes you to a new position of responsibility—but it’s in a city you’ve never even visited. By the time moving day arrives, you are thoroughly excited about moving to the new city. Your research has convinced you this is going to be a great new adventure.

There is a difference between knowing and knowing—the latter happens over time and by experience. In the preface to his classic book, Knowing God, the late theologian J. I. Packer explained the difference this way: It’s the difference between theory and practice. Theory is what the people who sit on a balcony and watch people pass through their small town on the road below know. But practice is what the travelers themselves have to deal with—weather, directions, provisions, lodging, and the like. Both those on the balcony and the travelers know the road, but the travelers know it better because they need to. And their knowledge comes with experience and time.

Christians are travelers, not onlookers. Christians need not only to know about God; they need to know God Himself. The problems and experiences they will have while on their journey through this world will require them to build up a catalog of ways in which God meets the needs of His people. Yes, they need to know about God—His attributes. But they also need to experience God’s attributes in their own lives. Take John the Baptist’s experience with Jesus.

Even though John the Baptist and Jesus were cousins, John didn’t really know Jesus that well at the beginning of His ministry. (John had lived in the deserts until his own ministry began—Luke 1:80.) In fact, John said he wouldn’t have even known Jesus as the Messiah if he hadn’t seen the Spirit descend on Jesus at His baptism (John 1:32-34). Even later, when Herod had put John in prison, he wasn’t totally sure about Jesus. John sent two of his disciples to ask Jesus if He was the one they were expecting. Jesus answered by describing what He had been doing: The blind, deaf, and lame were healed; lepers were cured; the dead were raised; the poor had been given the Good News (Luke 7:18-23).

Seeing and hearing about the demonstrations of Jesus’ attributes—His love, compassion, power, and anointing—convinced John that Jesus was the Messiah of Israel. Jesus was no longer a “theoretical” Messiah; He was the actual Messiah by virtue of revealing His divine attributes.

Knowing God’s Attributes

Like the examples I mentioned above—getting to know people, jobs, cities—we can know God better the more time we spend with Him. And while we don’t usually think in theological terms like attributes, it is His attributes that we come to depend on the more deeply we know Him.

What is an attribute? Simply put, an attribute is a feature or characteristic of a person or a thing. Think about yourself or people you know. Every person has attributes like wisdom, faithfulness, talent, intellect, love, helpfulness, and more. We could compile a long list of human attributes possessed by people, and we could also group them into categories of similar attributes or most prominent attributes.

Theologians have done the same when it comes to describing God’s attributes. Since the Bible doesn’t contain an exhaustive list of God’s attributes, theologians have created lists based on the words and works contained in the Bible—lists that might contain twenty or more attributes based on how God has revealed Himself in Scripture and creation.

What are some commonly named attributes of God? God is immutable (never changes), self-sufficient (not dependent), omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), omnipresent (everywhere present), faithful (dependable), loving (compassionate, merciful, forgiving), good (holy), just (righteous), gracious (generous), beautiful (glorious), and more.

These attributes define the character of God. And character is how we formulate our perceptions of who people are and who God is. But it’s one thing to sit on a balcony and discuss the character of God. It’s another thing to travel the road with God and experience His attributes in our life.

Experiencing God’s Attributes

Without actually thinking in theological terms, we experience God’s attributes in our life all the time:

• Finances: God is good and resourceful; we trust Him to provide.
• Failures: God is loving and forgiving; we trust Him to be merciful.
• Future: God is all-knowing; we trust His plans for our life.
• Fears: God is always with us; we trust Him to protect us.
• Fairness: God is just; we trust Him to resolve difficulties in our life.

And the examples go on and on. But what happens when we encounter a new circumstance in life? We depend on at least three ways to develop trust in God’s help: our own past experiences in different and difficult circumstances, the testimonies of others, and the examples we read in Scripture.

Each of those three methods of knowing promotes different disciplines in our spiritual walk: journaling (keeping a record of God’s faithfulness in our life), being involved in the lives of other Christians to hear their testimonies (small groups), and Bible study. The more we experience God in our life, the lives of others, and through Scripture, the better we come to know and trust Him.

Growing in God’s Attributes

Because God is infinite, the process of knowing Him better will never end. We can never exhaust all the dimensions of God’s attributes. Our challenge is to constantly make the transition from knowing about God to knowing Him personally and experientially. Nowhere is that transition illustrated more practically and beautifully than in the life of the apostle Paul.

Paul tells the story of transitioning from knowing about God to knowing Christ personally in Philippians 3:5-15. In verses 5-6 he lays out his religious credentials as a Hebrew scholar, a Pharisee with an impeccable resum?. When it came to the Old Testament, his knowledge was encyclopedic; when it came to keeping the law, he was “blameless.” He knew all about God, but he didn’t know God personally until he met Christ on the road to Damascus and in the subsequent years (Acts 9:1-19).

But he came to count all that knowledge as “loss” after he met Christ (Philippians 3:7-8). It became his lifelong goal to “know [Christ] and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings” (verse 10). He admits, at the time of his writing of Philippians, that he had not “attained” that goal or “perfected” his knowledge of Christ. “But I press on.... Reaching forward to those things which are ahead... toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (verses 12-14).

There it is! Pressing on, reaching forward, to know Christ better and better. Paul wanted to know Christ so well that he was willing to suffer, even die, like Christ if necessary (verse 10). Paul was consumed with one thing in His life: to know Jesus Christ and to make Him known to others. Not just to know about Christ, but to know Him better and better every day.

We begin by knowing the attributes of God—those I’ve mentioned in this article and others. Then we continue by watching God reveal His attributes in our life personally and in the circumstances we encounter. Time, increasing knowledge, and deepening experiences with God will lead to knowing Him better.

Don’t be just an observer on the balcony of life. Be a traveler! Let God reveal His attributes to you with every twist and turn of the road that is your life. The better you know Him, the more you will trust Him.