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It Is Written

Sabbath School 2nd Quarter 2026: Growing in a Relationship With God

Nina Atcheson

Eric Flickinger

01 Reality Check

02 To Know God

Welcome to Sabbath School brought to you by It Is Written.

We're glad that you are here with us today.

We are continuing this week with another lesson in growing in a relationship with God.

This week is lesson number 2, to know God.

How do we get to know God and how does that help us in our relationship with him?

We're going to find out in just a moment, but let's begin with prayer.

Father, we thank you for guiding us to study your word once again and to learn more about you and how we can have a deeper and more fulfilling relationship with you.

We ask that you'll be with us today as we study your word and guide us into that relationship.

We're glad that you are here, but we are also delighted to have the author of this quarter's Sabbath school lesson with us, Nina Atchison.

She is a curriculum specialist and an author.

We're talking about how to have a relationship with God, and this week we're looking at how to know God.

If we want to have a relationship with Him, why is it important to know who He is?

We have to know something about someone to have a relationship with it, but we're talking about God here.

It really is important, as you say, for the very reasons that for me to know someone, I think about when I was getting to know my husband all those years ago, I had to know who he was as a person before I wanted to be in a relationship with him.

And a person's character is central to having a relationship.

So naturally, in order to know God and have a relationship with him, We need to know about him.

And of course, the Bible talks about so many parts of God's character.

We know that he is a God of justice, a God of mercy.

He is a God that has great loving kindness towards us.

It really is crucial for us as growing Christians in a relationship with him to know more about him in order to grow closer to him.

So there's much in the Bible that gives us a clearer picture of who God is, because not only, of course, do we want to have a relationship with him, he also wants to have a relationship with us.

And so he reveals himself to a greater or lesser extent to us through his word so that we can get to know him and have that relationship.

Now of course we want that, he wants that, but there is someone who doesn't want that to happen, who wants to keep us from having that relationship with God, to distract us or to maybe muddy the waters as to who God is.

Why does the adversary like to do those things?

The enemy, Satan himself, really was the first 1, Lucifer, who cast doubt on God's character.

And this really led to the greatest battle that there is in the universe.

In fact, in Testimonies for the Church, Volume 5, Ellen White says, it is Satan's constant study to keep the minds of men occupied with those things which will prevent them from obtaining the knowledge of God.

In other words, Satan doesn't care what kind of picture we have of God.

He just wants us to not know God's true character, whether it's through pantheism or atheism or deism or whatever it might be.

He wants our picture of God, our understanding of God's character to be distorted and twisted.

I think we can look back in Scripture too.

We see this from the very beginning when he came to the garden, to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the serpent really was telling her, God is lying to you.

He was, of course, casting doubts on God's character.

Ever since then, he does the same for us too.

As we try to understand God's character and have a relationship with him, He doesn't want that.

Another really powerful quote from Patriarchs and Prophets, page 338, we read, from the opening of the great controversy, it has been Satan's purpose to misrepresent God's character and to excite rebellion against his law.

The enemy doesn't want us to know God's character because he knows that when we see God, when we truly see God for who he is, we will be drawn to him, we'll be drawn to his loving kindness and he doesn't want that.

He's been working overtime to make sure that that doesn't happen.

Even in our vernacular today, when we talk about natural disasters, they're often referred to as acts of God.

He has done a good job of even in the lives, the general lives that we live, misrepresenting God to the point where we don't even necessarily think of that and it's just a natural part of the lives that we live.

So let's talk for a moment about God's characteristics.

The Bible gives us very clear pictures of who God is.

But many times we, and I use this in more of a collective we, humanity, when we think about God, we get some other ideas, other characteristics that we think of when we think of God, especially sometimes people say the Old Testament God, and he's this vengeful, impatient, hard God.

And a lot of times, even today, people think of God that way.

I mean, it's going to vary from person to person, but what are some of the general viewpoints of who God is today?

I think when people have a somewhat healthy picture of God, the first word they would naturally think of is a God of love.

Perhaps this is because the Bible itself in 1 John 4 says, God is love.

It doesn't say God is loving, although it does say that elsewhere, but it says God is love.

His character, the very essence of who he is, is love.

Yet for many people, the picture of God wrapped up in the concept of love sometimes emerges from a human definition of love, which is not always very healthy.

In the secular world, we see all these unhealthy pictures of love that emerge, and It's distorted and imperfect.

Really, our definition of love should always be shaped from what we read in the Bible of God, what he reveals about himself from the inspired word.

In fact, There's a beautiful passage in 1 John 4, 7-19 that explains love to us.

I'm wondering if you would be willing to read that for us.

Beloved, let us love 1 another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love 1 another.

If we love 1 another, God abides in us, and his love has been perfected in us.

It's a beautiful image here I think we get of this God who is love, but he is also loving.

In our hearts we also have a desire to love and be loved by our Creator God.

In Hebrew, the 1 major word for love is hesed.

Our viewers may have heard this as well, but this describes this covenant love for humankind, which encompasses traits of loyalty and tenderness and protectiveness, steadfastness.

I think for me, growing up, ever since I was a child, I had a very healthy picture of God, probably because my earthly father had all these traits, that he represented a good picture of God.

My heavenly father was reflected through my earthly father.

But for those of our viewers who may not have had that experience, I encourage you to look in the scriptures because the Bible, as we read all across the different books of the Bible, And as our picture of God expands and grows, we will see that truly God is a God of love.

And he loves you and he loves me, he loves us so much.

So the word love frequently associated with God.

What other words are frequently associated with him?

It's interesting, if we do a study into the attributes that most often describe God's character, we'll discover that 1 of the most regular descriptions or attributes that is used in the Bible is actually holiness.

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Series

Sabbath School 2nd Quarter 2026: Growing in a Relationship With God

02 To Know God

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Parts

01 Reality Check

28m

02 To Know God

28m

Sound Doctrine