By Wendy Wood
God’s omniscience means that God has complete knowledge of everything and everyone.
A.W. Pink says, “God knows everything: everything possible, everything actual; all events and all creatures, of the past, present and the future.”
A.W. Tozer expands on God’s omniscience saying,
“God possesses perfect knowledge and therefore has no need to learn. But it is more; it is to say that God has never learned and cannot learn. God perfectly knows Himself, and, being the source and author of all things, it follows that He knows all that can be known. And this He knows instantly and with a fullness of perfection that includes every possible item of knowledge concerning everything that exists or could have existed anywhere in the universe at any time in the past or that may exist in the centuries or ages yet unknown. God knows instantly and effortlessly all matter, all matters, all mind and every min, all spirit and all spirits, all being and every being, all creaturehood and all creatures, every plurality and all pluralities, all law and every law, all relations, all causes, all thoughts, all mysteries, all enigmas, all feeling, all desires, every unuttered secret, all thrones and dominions, all personalities, all things visible and invisible in heaven and in earth, motion, space, time, life, death, good, evil, heaven and hell. Because God knows all things perfectly, He knows no thing better than any other thing, but all things equally well. He never discovers anything. He is never surprised, never amazed. He never wonders about anything nor (except when drawing men out for their own good) does He seek information or ask questions. God is self-existent and self-contained and knows what no creature can ever know - Himself, perfectly!”
When we really think about what God’s omniscience means, it should change the way we live and we want our counselees to be thinking rightly about God and His attributes so it changes the way they live!
God’s omniscience challenges our thinking when we determine with feelings that something happening to us or to those we love is not “right”. We quickly make judgments about what should have happened or not happened based on whether it was what we wanted or expected. This attribute of God is one we tend to doubt often.
God knows every potential event and every potential outcome. In His perfectly Holy Omnipotence He can do anything and is working all things out according to His perfectly Holy will! In His perfectly Holy Omniscience He knows everything completely so He always makes the right and best situation for us to bring about His purpose. When we forget these things, even temporarily, we experience anxiety, frustration, distress, confusion, and anger.
Isaiah 40:13-14 says, “Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord, or what man shows him his counsel? Whom did he consult, and who made him understand? Who taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding?”
God, in His word, often uses the literary device of rhetorical questions. The reader knows that it would be absurd to think about man informing the Creator of the Universe about anything or how crazy an idea it is to think about helping God understand a situation.
Psalm 139:1-6
O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
Psalm 139 makes God's knowledge personal. God knows everything there is to know about you. He knows you better than you know yourself. He knows your thoughts perfectly. He knows your actions perfectly. He knows your words completely. That God knows us completely is a huge comfort to His children. However, it is also a warning that we cannot fool God. We may be able to put on a good face at church or in our life group, but God knows you perfectly. Every thought, word, and action that is done to get the praise of man is seen by God for what it truly is. But, when we feel like no one understands us hurt or pain, we have a God who intimately knows us and His compassion is exactly what we need.
1 Samuel 2:3 says, “ Talk no more so very proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth; for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.”
Our counselees who think they are getting away with “secret sin” need to be reminded that nothing is secret from God. God’s omniscience should be a deterrent to continue engaging in sinful behavior.
Psalm 94:9 reminds us, “He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see?”
Hebrews 4:13 says, “And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
In scripture we see God’s omniscience on display often when people think they are “getting away with sin”. When God tells Abraham that he and Sarah will have a baby within a year, Sarah laughs, and God knows it. When David is trying to cover his sin with Bathsheba and Uriah, God has Nathan call him out, “You are the man” who sinned. Ananias and Sapphira think they can lie about how much money they sold their land for and give a smaller portion to the church, God knows the truth and both are killed instantly. When Stephen is being stoned for His faith, God knows the hearts of the crowd and gives Stephen the assurance of heaven for his genuine faith.
There are many implications for counseling. For the counselor, we need to know that our knowledge is limited - greatly! We do not perfectly know our counselees or their hearts. We can see the fruit of their lives, (and even that is greatly limited by what they tell us) but we do not know their motives perfectly or even if they are truly saved. I have had counselees lie to me; sometimes I figure it out later and there are probably times when I do not. I need to know that I am working with imperfect knowledge. This drives me to pray. I pray for God to help me see what I need to see. I pray that God would give me wisdom and discernment. I am very dependent on God every single time I walk into a counseling session.
As a counselor I want to ask good questions and keep asking questions. Good counsel is given only when we are working from knowledge of the situation.
Proverbs 18:17 says “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him”
It’s easy to hear one side of the story and be aghast at the situation, only to later realize you got one person’s interpretation of the situation and their spouse or the other person saw it totally differently. We need to gather knowledge before we jump in to help.
Proverbs 18:15 says, “An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.”
Let’s be wise counselors!
I already mentioned that the counselee who thinks they are involved in secret sin that doesn’t hurt anyone, is fooling himself. God sees what is done in secret. In the sermon on the mount, in Matthew 6, Jesus repeatedly tells his followers to do their good works in secret because “Your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” All the work of the stay-at-home mom that goes unnoticed by the world is seen and rewarded by God. All the kind responses to the angry spouse are seen by God and rewarded. The church member who prays in secret, the loving child that sits by the bedside of an aging parent, the late night prayers of a parent with a prodigal child, are all seen and heard by an omniscient God! The same is true for sinful thinking, words, and actions. God sees what is done in secret and rewards according to deeds. Hebrews 4:13 that I mentioned earlier.
God’s omniscience should bring our counselees hope and rest. God knows their situation completely. God knows the difficult person the counselee is dealing with. God knows the unfair treatment from their boss. God knows the cancer cells and the failing organs. Because God knows us and our situations perfectly, His compassion is full! Psalm 139 says “this knowledge is too wonderful” another translation says “this knowledge is too deep”. With finite minds we cannot understand the depths of God’s knowledge, but it should lead us to be confident in God’s ability and wisdom to work out our circumstances and relationships for His good purpose.
Counselees can go to God in prayer knowing that nothing surprises Him or catches Him off guard. We can encourage our counselees to genuinely lament and pour out their hearts to God. He hears them. He already knows what is on their heart and knows their situation perfectly. They are talking to God who is omnipotent and omniscient. There is not one better to talk to! Proverbs 15:29 tells us that God hears the prayers of His righteous children.
Counselees who struggle with shame and struggle to trust in God’s forgiveness should be comforted by the fact that God knows all of their sins, past, present, and future, and that He chooses His children based on His own grace and mercy. God is not surprised to learn about horrible sins we’ve done in the past. He has even better knowledge of them than the sinner does!
Let me end this attribute with one more lengthy quote from Tozer:
“How unutterably sweet is the knowledge that our Heavenly Father knows us completely. No talebearer can inform on us, no enemy can make an accusation stick, no forgotten skeleton can come tumbling out of some hidden closet to abash us and expose our past; no unsuspected weakness in our character can come to light to turn God away from us, since He knew us utterly before we knew Him and called us to Himself in the full knowledge of everything that was against us!”