There’s a debate about whether God is knowable. Even among rabbis who say that he is, there’s still much discussion about what it looks like to really know him.

There are a number of places throughout the Tanakh where God says that he wants to know us. Take this excerpt from Jeremiah: “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart” (29:13). Of course, there are also numerous stories where our patriarchs and prophets had personal encounters with God. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?

Does God still speak personally today? And not just to rabbis and prophets—but can regular people such as you and I hear from him?

Many Jewish believers in Jesus would say yes. Check out these three short accounts and decide for yourself.

Jacob: Freed from Addictions

Jacob used to get hung up on things. Everyone loves music, but for him it was an obsession. Most people enjoy relationships, but Jacob kept up a revolving door of new partners. His experimentation with drugs quickly led to a spiraling addiction.

Jacob wrestled within himself. “I was contemplating—who was God? Who was I? Why weren’t these things of the world fulfilling me?” He then tried to solve his problems through study. In college, he read many secular academic books about Judaism and Christianity.

But all the knowledge he obtained wasn’t enough! Deep down, Jacob always wished that God would just reveal himself.

One day, when he was lying on the basement floor, that hope was answered. He hated his life—hated what he had allowed it to become. In desperation, he cried out, “Yeshua [Jesus], if you’re really God, you need to tell me!”

Then Jacob heard these words: “My son, I am.” A lightbulb went off in his mind and his heart. At that moment, he knew—without a shadow of a doubt—that Jesus was speaking to him. And that voice was better than all the other things he’d chased.

It didn’t happen overnight, but little by little, he kicked his habits. He started to read the Scriptures more and more. The stories of Jesus—and the person of Jesus—became more real than ever before. Throughout that process, God himself answered the question: “Who am I, and who are you?”

Isaac: Chasing Glory

As soon as he graduated from college, Isaac moved to LA to pursue his dream of becoming a musician. But like most artistic hopefuls in big cities, he was also running from something. “I came from a family of six generations of Jewish believers in Jesus, but it was something that I had run from doing myself. I wanted to do things my own way; I wanted to have my own path, with my own ambitions.”

Isaac took a trip to Israel with some friends. He signed up for a few weeks’ immersion into Jewish identity—he was not prepared to give his whole life. But in one moment, everything changed.

At the Kotel, Isaac was praying next to haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews), and he heard God say, “They don’t know.” It took him a little bit to understand that God meant, “They don’t know me—and you’re going to do something about it.”

Once he understood that, the calling of his family became Isaac’s personal calling. It turned into less of an inconvenience and more of a mission. That moment at the wall answered Isaac’s question of why God had put him on this earth.

He hit pause on his music aspirations and started studying the Bible with intensity. He wanted to know enough to discuss it with any Jewish person, from the most secular to the Orthodox rabbi. Isaac has experienced more joy through these conversations than he had ever expected!

“The glory you get after finally achieving your moment [as an artist]—it’s not very long before you have to start chasing something else, because it’s a high—it doesn’t last long. But with God, everything that you do echoes into eternity.”

Laura: Not Forgotten

When she was 12 years old, Laura attended church with a friend and responded to an altar call. She says, “It sounded like a good deal—I could know God! I could have a relationship with him.”

When the pastor prayed with Laura, something in her knew that his words rang true. She had never read the Bible, yet she knew that in that moment, God had come into her life.

Mom, guess what? I became a Christian

She went home and announced, “Mom, guess what? I became a Christian!” That’s when she found out that Jews weren’t supposed to believe in Jesus. Her parents hesitated but ultimately decided to allow her to continue visiting church—on one condition: she must learn as much about Judaism as she did about Christianity.

And she did. She went back to her roots, read all she could about Jewish history, and even traveled to Israel to live on a kibbutz for a year.

In university, Laura went to Chabad and had Shabbat dinners with her fellow Jewish students. During that time, she said to herself, “Maybe I just convinced myself of [Christianity].” She took all the courses she could on world religion: courses that could have convinced her to stop pursuing God.

But he never stopped pursuing her.

I couldn’t get rid of Jesus in my life. I don’t know how else to explain it. He wouldn’t leave me alone. I just knew beyond a doubt that he was real and he had given me a relationship. I will say this: it’s like a peace inside that passes understanding … it didn’t matter—whatever was going on in my life, I felt like God had me.

Recently, Laura met an ultra-Orthodox woman with a similar story—one who, like Laura, had not been forgotten by God. Laura’s friend said that in the 1980’s, Hashem1 clearly told her, “One day you will know me and you will call me by my name.” It took her more than ten years to contact Jews for Jesus, but when she did, she said, “He revealed his name to me, and his name is Yeshua.”

Why God Speaks

For the biblical heroes we read about, the thing that set them apart was an encounter with God. He spoke then, and he speaks today.

The New Testament book of Hebrews was written to Jewish believers in Jesus, and explains it this way: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (1:1–2).

God is there and wants to speak, and he is looking for hearts that want to listen. “Many voices ask for our attention…. But underneath all these often very noisy voices is a still, small voice that says, ‘You are my Beloved, my favor rests on you.’”2

When asked what advice he had for listeners who wanted to know more, Isaac said there’s no better place to start than by sitting with the Bible. Open it up and ask questions (even if you’ve grown up with the book). God has given us these words to help us know him. If you sit down, open its pages and say, “God, I want to know you. What is it that you have for me?”—he answers.

Endnotes

1. Hashem literally means “the name” and is a reverential term used by religious Jewish people to refer to God.

2. Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith (New York: Harper Collins, 1997), 13.