Can you enjoy God if you do not know Him?
Brian Borgman explains in this video that you cannot enjoy God unless you first know God. For instance, you cannot worship a God that you do not know. There is a direct correlation between knowing God and enjoying Him.
God teaches us about Himself through His Word, through pastors, and even through times of affliction. There is never a time we won't stop learning about God. Sometimes, the times that we enjoy Him most are the times we are in the midst of suffering.
Philippians 3:10 (NKJV) - "[T]hat I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death"
You know, I would say that you really can't enjoy God at all unless you know him as he is. So in other words, there's a direct correlation between what we know of God and enjoying God. I can't enjoy a God I don't know. I can't worship a God that I don't know. And so I believe that you can actually increase the joy that you have in God by learning more about God, by learning more of who He is, what He is like.
And of course, God will teach us. He teaches us through His Word. He teaches us through our pastors. He teaches us through, you know, good theology books, but He also teaches us through the fires of affliction. And it is really a wonderful, almost a paradox, I think, that some of our deepest times of enjoying God are really in the midst of some of our lowest times in this life And so you want to increase your joy in God, increase what you understand to be true about God.
This is why actually I think, along with Jonathan Edwards, that the saints will actually experience an eternal increase of joy because we will be eternally learning more and more and more about God in His presence.