The Ladder of Love: Invited In
Friends, because of the sacred place we hold in God’s heart—the place that is ours alone—we’ve been invited by Him both to know Him more than we currently do, and to rest in being known by Him. It is a great honor.
I think we all have some sense of the deep, holy truth that there is in every human heart a sacred chamber that God alone can fill. It is this chamber that Saint Paul had in mind when he prayed, “Christ will make his home in your hearts” (Ephesians 3:17 NLT).
Stay with me now, for this will take your breath away: There is a holy, sacred corresponding place in the heart of God that you alone have access to. God does not make people the same; we are each unique, peculiar. We are made for God, and made to know him as only we can know him. As George MacDonald, the great Scottish pastor, poet, and mentor to C. S. Lewis, wrote, “Each man has his peculiar relation to God. He is to God a peculiar being . . . hence he can worship God as no man else can worship him, can understand God as no man else can understand him.
There is a chamber also—(Oh God, humble and accept my speech)—a chamber in God himself, into which none can enter but the one, the individual, the peculiar man—out of which chamber that man has to bring revelation and strength for his brethren. This is that for which he was made—to reveal the secret things of the Father. . . . Each can come to him alone, and speak with him face-to-face, as a man speaketh with his friend.”
Some of your hearts are leaping. Others have strong doubts about the veracity of this. Let’s explore onward. What does it mean for each of us to know God?
One of my all-time favorite verses is Ephesians 1:17: “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.”
The invitation is to know God well.
Hosea 2:19–20 promises, “I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord” (ESV).
The Hebrew word used for “know” here is yada. There is knowing about and then there is the knowing of. Said differently, there is the informational level of knowing, like when you look something up on the internet, and then there is the knowing that comes from intimacy. Facts versus experience. One is interesting. The other is life itself.
To varying degrees, many people know my husband, John. They might know he is an author, a counselor, and the founder of Wild at Heart Ministries. They may know that he enjoys fly fishing, that he’s a father and a besotted grandfather. They may know much of what he’s accomplished, certainly that he is a deep lover of Jesus. But I know the contours of his face. I know the sound of his footsteps and often the choice of the word he will use. I know the nuances of his gaze. I know what the slightest shift in his countenance conveys. I know what makes him laugh, what makes him angry, and what moves him to tears.
I yada John.
God wants this sort of deep, experiential knowing with us. He wants it for us. “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John17:3). Jesus explains that to know him like this—yada, know—is life and life everlasting. In the New Testament, the Greek word is gnosis. It shares the same meaning as yada and is a recurring theme in the Scriptures.
Yada or gnosis means to know by experience, through many encounters. It’s a personal, relational knowledge of God that becomes the kind of knowing that transforms our hearts and lives so that we love Him in return.
Beloved friends, we need to know Jesus more deeply than we do and, from that, know who we truly are in Him.
But this kind of intimate knowing doesn’t roll in on a tray. While grace and love are unconditional, intimacy is not. Intimacy with Jesus takes a willingness to hope again. It takes a longing that runs so deep it gives us the courage to risk believing him once more. Intimacy takes an awakened heart in order to respond to God’s invitations to encounter Him. Sometimes it takes a desperate heart; it certainly requires a thirsty one.
The Ladder of Love: A Pathway to Emotional Healing and Spiritual Intimacy with Jesus. Copyright © 2026 by Stasi Eldredge. Published by Thomas Nelson. Available wherever books are sold.
