That I may know Him

In my desire to know God, I often get tangled up in trying to "figure Him out" in the process. In my continued reading through Charnock (working on "omnipresence" still) I found some great excerpts that help keep me pursuing HIM rather than merely a cerebral understanding of Him (which is impossible anyway!).

"God sits above the cherubims (Ezek. 10:1), above the fulness, above the brightness, not only of a human, but a created understanding. Nothing is more present than God, yet nothing more hid; he is light, and yet obscurity; his perfections are visible, yet unsearchable; we know there is an infinite God, but it surpasseth the compass of our minds;...How can we then comprehend God, who exceeds all, and is exceeded by none; contains all, and is contained by none; is above our understanding, as well as above our sense? as considered in himself infinite; as considered in comparison with our understandings, incomprehensible...God is greater, and we cannot know him...He is known by faith, enjoyed by love, but comprehended by no mind...

"How should we never think of God without a holy admiration of his greatness, and a deep sense of our own littleness! and as the angels cover their faces before him, with what awe should creeping worms come into his sight! and since God fills heaven and earth with his presence, we should fill heaven and earth with his glory; for this end he created angels to praise him in heaven, and men to worship him on earth, that the places he fills with his presence may be filled with his praise: we should be swallowed up in admiration of the immensity of God, as men are at the first sight of the sea, when they behold a mass of waters, without beholding the bounds and immense depth of it."