Our prime purpose is knowing Jesus —that’s why we were created. It’s not without reason that Genesis makes walking with the Lord in the cool of the day important. We may be His Bride now, but we will be His wife.

Outside of Jesus, my oneness with my wife was the best thing in my life. That’s what I miss now that she went home—walking with and talking to my wife. That’s what Jesus desires from us also.

It’s no accident that Jesus’ definition of eternal life was, “This is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.” [John 17:3 MEV from His priestly prayer before the night in the garden of Gethsemane]. The word know here is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew used in Adam knew Eve, his wife. Knowing was slang for sex. But, it was referring to the close intimacy of marriage—used for the relationship where a man and a woman become one flesh.

Our prime purpose is knowing Jesus intimately

I wrote a book on this relationship and how we need to deal with it named The Wife of Jesus. This is one of the purposes of Paul’s injunction to “pray without ceasing” in I Thessalonians 5: 17. We are to be conversing with Jesus constantly. If I’m His fiancée, I want as much intimacy as He will give me, as soon as possible.

Here’s an excerpt from the book talking about Matthew 7: 21-23

“Ministry gifts are peripheral, knowing is what matters

“For many people, ministering in power like this [ed: as seen in verse 22] is the major goal of their Christian life. But Jesus cuts that out from under them in the next verse. His stunning comment to them in verse 23 reveals the heart of the matter:

“I will tell them, ‘Depart from me you evil doers, I never knew you, who practice lawlessness.’

“Whoa! So, you can do works of spiritual power, seemingly by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and still not know Jesus? That certainly seems to be the obvious conclusion.

“Of course, the fact is that satanists can do works of spiritual power. Pharisees can do works of spiritual power. Heretics can do works of spiritual power. Christian leaders who have fallen into sin can do works of spiritual power. We won’t get into the source of this power. Often the power comes from the enemy. But in my experience, carnal believers can often work in the true gifts of the Holy Spirit. The principles of the Bible simply work often with little or no regard to the worker of those basic concepts.

“This why Jesus tells us to be fruit inspectors—not gift inspectors. God gave the gift of speech to an ass to speak to Balaam [Numbers 22:22–32]. Jesus said the rocks would cry out [Luke 19:40]. Gifts can go to many places—almost anywhere in God’s creation.

“Obviously it’s pretty important that we know Him. In fact, it is the core of the Christian walk. Without this, you are wasting your time with everything else.”

Here’s a link to a search in this site for Knowing Jesus. It will give you some other posts to read on the subject.