The God who is came into a world of suffering to participate in it. You cannot know God apart from His suffering on behalf of the hurting; this knowledge calls us to join Him in that suffering. There is knowing Him in the suffering. To say it another way, you can’t really have a heart for God that does not develop a heart for the hurting. 1 John makes it clear that there is no loving God without loving your fellow man. He also says that love for your fellow man shows that God is working in you and through you. This kind of love moves from sympathy to empathy; it moves us from an observer to weep with those who weep and suffer with those who suffer. There is knowledge of God in that.
“That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” Philippians 3:10-11 (NASB)
