On the official website of the United States Marine Corps, there is a story about a Marine, identified only as Ashley, who was chosen to escort home the recovered remains of a World War II Marine. Private First Class Whitehurst was killed in action on November 20, 1943. His remains were excavated from the island of Betio, Tarawa, in the South Pacific.

As part of his assignment Ashley studied everything he could find about the fallen hero he was escorting home to Alabama. “I started to get to know who I was escorting and began to relate to him,” Ashley said. “As an escort, your main focus is to get the Marine home. For four straight days, this was my only concern. Nothing else mattered. [I was] bringing back an American hero.”

Ashley expected to do his duty without recognition, but that’s not what happened when he met Whitehurst’s family. “It was hugs and tears…. It was a welcoming experience, almost like I was part of their family…. Whitehurst’s nephew, he told me I wasn’t just a Marine that escorted his uncle, that I was now kin.”

“I never met Whitehurst,” said Ashley, “but in the short time I spent with him and his family, I felt as if I knew him personally.”¹

Have you ever studied a person, read about them, perhaps watched their career? A politician, newscaster, celebrity, or athlete? You spend so much time with them that you feel as if you know them—though you’ve never actually met. During the Golden Age of local television, the 1960s–1980s, many viewers developed deep affection for local anchors and weathercasters who served for decades at the same station. They considered them friends though they never personally met them.

When it comes to the greatest Hero in history, it’s possible to study Jesus but never really know Him. The same thing is true for God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. I feel great concern over the fact that some of the people who listen to my sermons or read my books or even read this magazine have an academic interest in the Lord or a cultural identity with Him. But they may not actually have a firsthand, personal, vital, saving relationship with Him.

Jesus warned that not everyone who says to Him, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the Kingdom of heaven (Matthew 7:21). When it comes to our Lord, we need firsthand knowledge. We need to develop a personal relationship with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. As Psalm 105:4 says, we need to “seek the Lord and His strength; seek His face evermore!” He is not a dead hero; He is a risen Lord with whom we can have constant fellowship.

Know God’s Word

First, we have to come to know God’s Word as a living book. When we open the covers of the Bible, we are opening a door to conversation. It’s not like reading Mark Twain or Agatha Christie. We can’t shout through the pages of Tom Sawyer or Murder on the Orient Express and communicate with those deceased writers. But when we open our Bibles, we can whisper a prayer over its pages, saying, like the boy Samuel, “Speak, Lord, for Your servant hears” (1 Samuel 3:9).

And speak He will! In Genesis, He will tell us how He started everything. In Exodus, He’ll tell us how He parted the seas, established His law, and guides us. In Ruth, He’ll show us how He can take us from bitterness to blessings. In Psalms, He will show us how to praise Him.

In Lamentations, He’ll remind us of His mercies that are new every morning, even when disaster strikes. In Habakkuk, He’ll show us how to walk by faith. In John, He reminds us He is our good Shepherd. In Romans, we’ll hear Him explaining His gift of eternal life to us! In Hebrews, He’ll remind us to come to His throne of grace with boldness. And in Revelation, He will give us a glorious glimpse of His throne and His future home for us.

Prayer and Bible study are prime ingredients for a personal relationship with a living Savior!

Know God’s Son

Having received Christ as Savior and with an open Bible before us, we’ll come to know God’s Son more deeply and intimately as long as we live. The psalmist said, “One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple” (Psalm 27:4).

Let me give you my paraphrase of that verse: “My utmost priority in life is to seek the Lord daily, gazing at Him in His Word and coming before His throne to inquire of Him and praise Him and tell Him my needs.”

The only way to become closer to someone is to communicate with them. As you spend time with someone, getting to know them, you understand them better and love them more. Francis Cassilly recognized an important truth when he wrote, “Prayer is a conversation with God, and so is a beginning on earth of what will be our constant occupation in Heaven.”² Our friendship with the Lord begins with conversion on earth and with conversations with Him in our times of Bible study and prayer. But this is only the beginning of an exciting, eternal friendship in which we’ll spend forever in getting to know Him better.

Know the Holy Spirit

As we become more deeply attached to our Lord and His Word, our understanding of the Holy Spirit will grow, as will our walk with Him. Galatians 5:16-25 is one of the Bible’s premier passages about the Holy Spirit. There Paul tells us to “walk in the Spirit” (verse 16), to be “led by the Spirit” (verse 18), to display “the fruit of the Spirit” (verse 22), to “live in the Spirit” (verse 25), and again, to “walk in the Spirit” (verse 25).

Surely this involves a personal relationship! The Holy Spirit is not a force, an influence, or an idea. He is a Person who lives with us and within us (John 14:17). He is our “Helper” (John 14:16).

In his book Life in the Spirit, Robertson McQuilkin wrote, “It’s quite possible to know all the facts of Scripture about the Holy Spirit and not be excited about Him, not appreciate Him, not see the connection between His life and mine…. [But] there is a wonderful Person who wants to be our encourager, our instructor, our companion. He wants to fellowship with us and share a love relationship.”³

Allow room for the Holy Spirit to move, convict, and display His power in your life.

Every day when he awoke, Dr. John Stott prayed a prayer to the Triune God: “Heavenly Father, I pray that this day I may live in Your presence and please You more and more. Lord Jesus, I pray that this day I may take up my cross and follow You. Holy Spirit, I pray that this day You will fill me with Yourself and cause Your fruit to ripen in my life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”⁴

I want to encourage you to move beyond mere interest in knowing about the Godhead. Come to know the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as constant companions who abide with you continually. Nothing can compare to firsthand knowledge of your infinite Friend.

In the ninth century, a German monk named Rhabanus Maurus wrote a prayer, asking for a deeper relationship with the Holy Spirit. It was translated into English in 1549 and included in The Book of Common Prayer. Christians have been offering this prayer to the Lord for more than a thousand years. I thought it might be helpful for you. The words say, in part:

Grant us the grace that we may know

The Father of all might,

That we of His beloved Son

May gain the blissful sight;

And that we may with perfect faith

Ever acknowledge Thee,

The Spirit of Father, and of Son,

One God in Persons Three.⁵

May the Lord grant us the time, the effort, and the surrender required to know Him in His immeasurable fullness, that we may be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:19).

¹ Nathan Hanks, “Marine Recalls Experience Escorting Fallen WWII Vet Home,” United States Marine Corps, April 21, 2017.

² Francis Cassilly, Religion: Doctrine and Practice (Loyola University Press, 1926), 157.

³ Robertson McQuilkin, Life in the Spirit (B&H, 2000), 8, 10.

⁴ Quoted in Christopher J. H. Wright, Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit (IVP Books, 2017), 1.

⁵ Rhabanus Maurus, “Come, Holy Ghost, Eternal God,” Hymn Time.