Knowing God Series Part 2: From Perception to Perspective

In this powerful and revelatory episode of the Open Eyes Podcast, Apostle Dan Jones takes listeners on a transformative journey into the true knowledge of God—moving beyond surface-level perception into deep, intimate understanding.

Anchored in Daniel 11:32, this message reveals that those who truly know their God will be strong and accomplish great exploits. But what does it really mean to “know” God? Is it intellectual awareness, religious routine, or something far deeper?

This episode confronts humanity’s greatest question—Who is God?—and exposes the limitations of man’s attempts to define Him through history, discovery, and even religion. From the fall of man to the present day, the loss of intimacy with God has left many with a fragmented perception of His nature. 

Apostle Dan unpacks the concept of “yada”—the Hebrew expression of knowing God intimately through experience, relationship, and encounter. He explores the divine attribute of God’s aseity—His self-existence and independence—and reveals how God introduced Himself as “I AM,” establishing His eternal nature beyond time and creation.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Thank you for joining us today. This is the Open Eyes Podcast, with your host Dan Jones, the place where we challenge the limits of tradition, awaken kingdom understanding, and bring clarity to what's been hidden in plain sight. This podcast exists for one purpose, to open your spiritual eyes and bring you, mentally and practically, into the fullness of your calling, your purpose, and your divine assignment. Here, we don't just talk church, we talk kingdom. We don't just inform, we transform. And we don't just hear, we see. So wherever you are right now, pause, lean in, lock in, and get ready, because what you're about to hear has the power to shift your perspective, ignite your faith, and change how you see everything. Holy Spirit, we invite you, have your way, teach us, reveal truth, and open our understanding now. In Jesus' name, let's go.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Good day, open eyes ministry family. Thank you for joining us today. We are going to continue our knowing God series. And today's message title is From Perception to Perspective. And our scripture focus is coming from Daniels 11.32. The new King James Version says, Those who do wicked against the covenant, he shall corrupt with flattery. But the people who know their God shall be strong and carry out great exploits. I'm going to read part B again. But the people who know their God shall be strong and carry out great exploits. Amen. I believe that's one of the things that's missing in the kingdom of God today. We are missing the great exploits. And the problem or the trouble or the source of that missing these great exploits is that we got too many people, too many churches, too many believers, a man that don't know God, they know of him, they know church and stuff, but they don't understand him, they don't know him, they don't understand his kingdom, his will, his wonders, and his word. The greatest question in all humant is who is God and where did he come from? Where is he now? Where is he at in my situation, my circumstances, why he's not saying that, why he don't speak. Amen. And that all boils into one podcast. We just don't really understand him. We don't know him. In 1 John 3 01, one of my favorite scripts said, Therefore the world does not know us. Talking about us, the Christians, the believers, because it did not know him. Amen. There's no way in the world they're going to understand you, your ministry, where you're coming from, what you believe, how you live, none of those things will cause you, you know what. That's even in the church today because they have a vague understanding of who God is. The Christians, their ways, their laws, their sacrifice will never be understood because they don't know him. That includes the church. They don't understand you, amen. They won't understand you, amen, which is going to make it harder for us to minister to them and to lead many of those people to Christ. There are massive studies and expeditions to discover what is the location of the Garden of Eden. Where is Noah's ark? Where is Daniel's? I mean, where is David's kingdom sites? Where's the actual location of the first and second temple sites? Where's the Ark and the Covenant for a few? For all of these things point back to God. People are trying to figure him out, trying to understand him, trying to know ways at all these other, trying to discover his ways. So that's a massive search. That's the biggest question in the universe, amen. The biggest answer is when Jesus is to return. Amen. Those are the biggest questions in all of the universe. Not more oil, not more money, not more things, not more stuff, not all of those things. But who is God? When is Christ to return? What is his ways? Who can hear his voice? Who can know him? You know, who has intimacy with him? Who has who has his ear? All these different types of things are the things that we search out to get. Outside of Adam, which is, you know, after the fall, man's perception of God was vague. See, Adam had a close-up person, daily walk with God. And so he had a he had a more in-depth perception of who God was. But after that, our perception became vague. We lost it with sin. Sin separated us from God. Sin separated us from getting to come to know him and truly know him for who it is. We were just on the cuffs of this learning, and then we begin to absorb, amen. And so and you will see it in the Bible, and we're going to talk about something there. Albuquerque was a scene that means fall as a result of it, our our understanding of him or our perception of him, or our perspective even, amen, became very vague, amen. Because sin began to push us and separate us even more from him. In the absence of the loss of intimacy with God, the daily walks in the God's main quest has been a futile attempt to know God on his own. Futile. Futile. Unless God walks with us, we can't walk with him. Unless God reveals itself to us, we can't understand him. Amen. We can get some type of perceptions, amen. But the perspective always tends to be wrong, amen, because of that lost perception, amen. And we need the perception. We need a good perception, amen, to have a good perspective of God. We have the Holy Ghost to help us. But one of the things we as believers have to do, we have to dig in for this perception. The people in the Old Testament, it's a testament of their partial understanding of God, his ways and manners. Many of the accounts of the Bible says is they grow to perceive him. See, the people of the old or in the Old Testament, they learn him out of some encounter or manifestation, which is fragmental. They had a fragmental perception. Therefore, they had a fragmented perspective of who God was. Some of the people are faith had an ideal of God without understanding the totality of his being. That's the reason why, you know, blessed is his art. You know, the names we have, Jehovah Jabre, you know, Jeho Rapha, Jehovah Nisi, all those different things, but those are different perspectives without being perspectives in totality. Let me give you a sample. The postman is a fragment of who he really is. It's not who he is in totality. He's just a postman. This man could be a father, a husband, a wife. This person can have a master's degree, a doctor's degree. This person could be a Christian, a non-Christian. It can be, I mean, just the postman aspect, it's just him fragmenter. And that's what we tend to have in the body Christ, a fragmenter, because we always pull up to a certain place. Okay, we we we we discover Jehovah Nisi, and then we stop. We just learn about the postman. We don't learn about the man. We learn about what God has done for us some miracles, some sign, some wonder. He brought us out, he paid our light bill, and then we stop. You have to go on, amen, beyond perception to get perspective. And that's what's wrong, amen, in the body of Christ today, amen. We tend to stop at a perception of God. So one of the things I'm going to talk about in this, and I'll talk about this more in another upcoming subject, amen, but God is absolute. He's absolute God. That is who he is. He is absolute. He's not like these other false gods, amen, made out of silver, fashioned by man. All this other different type of stuff. You can, I mean, this uh story, you can go and you can buy one, get one, somebody can make one for you. No, not with our God. Our God is absolute God all by himself. And that is his total perspective. That is total perspective. And that's the perspective that we have to have, amen, with um with our intimacy, our relationship with God. Amen. And one of the things I want to talk about, just real brief briefness, is the acidity of God, which means the quality or state of being self-derived or self-originated, specifically the absolute self-sufficiency, independence, and autonomy of God. That is who he is. That's what we have. That's the perspective that we have to come to. We have to come to that. He is spiritual. For were he composed of physical parts, some other power, we have to come, we have to combine them into the total and see his acidity will be contradicted. For if he began in time, he would need a prior cause that would contradict his acidity. There's nothing to contradict his acidity, nothing to contradict his being. God is not of time. The Bible says there are two immutable things by him. One, he cannot lie, he cannot change. He cannot lie, he cannot change. Change kind of depicts in a sense of time or something changing over a period of time. God, time was created. God has always been. He's the ancient of days, long before days were. So we see, see, the God that we serve is absolute. And that's what that has to be our perspective moving forward. Or there will be a lot of other scriptures, a lot of other signs, a lot of other miracles, a lot of other wonders, a lot of other stories, his principles. A lot in our faith is not gonna work if we don't believe God is absolute. He's above every power, every situation, every circumstance, everything that comes, the present, amen. The past, amen. The future, amen. Those things, amen. He holds those things in the palm of his hand. We understand the Bible is a not in totality a complete record of him. Because those things speak of time periods. He is the ancient of days. He is the ancient of days. He is long before that. The Bible says before the foundation of the world, the Lamb was slain. Before there was even worlds. The lamb, the decision, the counsel had already, it was already changed. I want to give you the most, one of the most explicit names he has given us that speaks to who he is. It comes in the Exodus the third chapter, verse 13 through 15, and said, Then Moses said to God, Indeed, what I come to the children of Israel, and they said to me, and I say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you. Because see, that's how they knew him before. They knew him by the God of their fathers. And they said to me, What is this name? Who, what shall I say to them? And God said to Moses, Tell it I am who I am. In other words, when they do when it really translates, say, I am who I am being, meaning that he has always, always, I am who I am, being. I have always been God. Amen. And see, this is now God is introduces himself as a different way. Amen, because they come to learn as a God of their fathers, Jehovah Jireh, you know, God our provider, you know, El Shaddai, God Almighty. They learned him all kind of different ways. But now here he comes as he becomes the establishing up close relationship with people and begin to deliver them. Amen. Now he reveals, amen, one of his names, amen, which is I am who I am, being this expressity of who he is. The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever. And this is my memorial to all generations. Amen. This is supposed to be this name is a memorial to all generations. Knowing God's intended purpose. The Hebrew word Yada, Yada, pronounced Yada, means to know intimately, deeply, with compassion. It also means to perceive, understand, and experience. Amen. This was God's intent. God was not just delivering these people from bondage, but God was ushering the fallen generation back into a relationship. Amen. This is the perspective of God. See, this is his perce, not the perception, amen. It's one thing, but the perspective is another that it was his intent, amen, for us to perceive, to understand, and to experience. Amen. For us to come back into a personal relationship with him, bring us back to that Garden of Eden relationship. And how do we do that? First thing, amen, in order for us to have a Yada with God, amen, we uh, you know, we have to be a people of prayer that we talk with here and we hear from him. We not just talk with him, well, but we also take time in our prayers to hear him. Also, we are one that like in the daily walk, amen, we need to spend time daily in his presence, amen. We need a daily presence, time with him, where we're just in his presence, just soaking in his presence, just sitting in his presence, hearing, learning, amen. This hearing his talk, just to be there, just to be where you are. The third and the final thing is we need to um have an environment of worship that shifts our atmosphere from ours to his atmosphere. We need an atmosphere change where we just sit in his presence. And all of those three things, the prayer, the day to time of his presence, and a worship that shifts atmospheres to his presence, amen. Brings us to the Yada intimate relationship with him. One of the biggest things to stop us as soon as, you know, men has fallen, and you know, the next thing they know, you know, they're trying to do their God thing not many years after then, trying to uh fabricate God, trying to replicate God, trying to, you know, trying to imagine, amen. We had some other perspective of him. But not soon after God gives the revelation of who he is, up on the mount, he gives Moses, amen, very, very important ten commandments. In the first one, amen, point to one of our biggest sins, and God says in Exodus 20 and three is you should have no other gods before me, which is idolatry, amen. Idol worship, man's futile attempt to replicate his narrower perception, yes, his perception of who God is. That's the first thing he outlawed is idol worship. Because we have a tendency, amen, because there's a beacon system in us, in our spirit, for us to hone back in on God with the wrong perspective of him. The next thing we're trying to do, we're trying to uh build, fashion, make our own gods, because our perception to our perspective of this, to the acidity God is wrong. We don't know who he is. We got people preaching and teaching right now don't know who he is. They got all kinds of that. That's the reason why we got so much self-worship going on. They don't know who he is. If they knew who he was, they wouldn't be doing some of those things. Psalms 135, 15 through 18 says, since the idols of the nation are merely things of silver and gold shaped by human hands. They have mouths but cannot speak, eyes but cannot see. They have ears but cannot hear, and mouths but cannot breathe. And those who make those eyelids are just like them, as are all who trust in them. Amen. It's a sin, it is a straight up sin. We'll never be able to replicate this God. That's one thing I learned. My God never sleeps, he never slumbers, he can never fail, he's never tired. He's all wisdom, all power, all authority. And he holds the whole oceans in the palms of his hand. I want to serve no God that got as many faults and inabilities that I do. If you got that many problems like I do, you're not a God. You just like me. One of the beautiful things that God did, amen, was bringing this people. Because see, the people of antiquity, they all knew God fragment. I remember the story even about Elijah after he ran after his encounter with Jezebel, and he went to seek God. And as he was running from Jezebel, he seeked them in the in the wind, you know, he in the fire, all these other different things he was trying to, because that was his perception of God. Because his perception was wrong, his perspective was wrong. So as strong as he was, and the people were back in the time, amen. We thank God for the wisdom to understand that we have now, because we have a better chance now, amen, of having the right perception and perspective of God. But sometimes they just they only had a fragmented, amen, uh perspective of God. And they relied on those. But amen, I thank you. We have an even better one in the which is Jesus, Yeshua, the fullest or the manifestation of God or the Godhead. Hebrews 1 and 4, listen to what it said. God who in some retires had died with manner spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, has indeed the last days spoken to us by his son, who he has appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds, who being in the brightness of his glory, come on somebody, dispressed image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged all sins, sat down on the right hand of the master on high, being made somewhat better than the angels, as he had by the inheritance attained a more extra name than they. God has given us, amen, his son. He has given us a better perspective better perception and a better perspective of who he is. Now at this name, never needs a bow. At this name, we can at this name, amen, we can baptize. At this name, amen, we can call on. This name we can pray. Amen. This name and amen. God gave us from all those other different names. He gave us one conclusion, amen. The one, amen, a name that speaks to the totality and not fragmentally of who God is. And he's the fullness of the manifestation of God. The manifestation, his coming was to reveal, to answer the question of God. That's why Jesus came. He came to reveal who God was. I tell people all the time, one of the things I believe in made the uh Sadducees, the Pharisees, all these people, man, for Jesus kept calling God Father. They couldn't take it with their religious self because they're prospected. Was wrong about God. They didn't understand who God was. So Jesus came into the world and began to invite us to call God, who back in their days, they wouldn't even spell his name. They would barely say his name. Now, Jesus, here he comes, he tells us, amen, to begin to call him Father. I love this word. I love how God revealed it. Matthew 1 and 23 said, Behold, the verse shall be with child and bear a son, and they should call his name Emmanuel, which is translated God with us. God, amen, sent his son. Jesus came, amen, to reveal, amen, God to us, amen, to bring us back into this revelation to elevate our perspective, amen. To elevate our perspective of who God is. Matthew 11 and 27 says this right here. All things have been delivered to me by my Father. And no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son. And to the one the Son wills to reveal him. Amen. Jesus is the fool that He reveals the Father. He reveals God. He's the one that changed our perception. Not only did it, he changed our perspective. And I thank God for because this is what he did. He did this so we won't be lost. He did this, amen, so that we won't be how we don't have to, we and we're not worshiping all these false gods, wooden gods, gods of gold, gods of silver, not even our own self and men and all this other kind of stuff. God changed our amen or perspective, amen, so that we can know who is. And I thank God for that because he is the God that we reveal. See, back in Exodus, you find him as the God also as the God of disclosure. He begin now begin to start disclosing himself, revealing who he was to his creation, amen. So we don't have to walk in error. We don't have to, see, we need to fully understand him and to know him, amen, so that we can have all that he says, all that his word says, all of the signs, the wonders, the miracles, all of the promises, amen, belongs to us. Amen. So we thank God, amen, for this word. We thank God, amen, from amen, from perception to perspective, amen. And God is not done. He's still changing it, he's still revealing in the mighty name of Jesus. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Thank you for joining the Open Eyes Ministry Podcast. My prayer is that the eyes of your understanding are now open and that you are able to see in higher dimensions and realms in God. I invite you to join us weekly for another eye-opening, transformative revelation that will cultivate a deeper, more intimate relationship with Christ. Our host, Dan Jones, has authored eight powerful books and three ebooks available at Amazon.com slash author slash dan dash e dash jones dash ie, all designed to build, equip, and strengthen believers in their kingdom walk. Thank you for your support of this ministry. May God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ always find you where he sends you.