Madeleine L’Engle wrote:
“We’ve lost much of the richness of that word know.”1
We know something, Dallas Willard often said, when we represent it, as it is, on an appropriate basis of thought and experience.2
In other words, we don’t just know about it — we know it. I don’t just know about my son; I know him. I know he loves to read alone before his day begins; I know he’s competitive in everything he does; and I know his greatest strength is kindness. I know him. I know my son because of my direct experience with him.
So if our minds are going to be renewed, if we’re to have knowledge, we must not just be informed about truth; we must have a relationship with it.
Think of all the books we’ve read. For all their wonder and benefit, they cannot provide direct experience or an interactive relationship. For books to help us, we must enflesh them. We must incarnate the information they contain.
“If we read William Law’s A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life,” writes Richard Foster, “let’s be sure that the focus of our study is not a book but the experience of a devout and holy life.”3
We can study prayer, but we’ll never know it until we give ourselves to it over long stretches of our lives. “When the day of judgement comes,” wrote Thomas à Kempis, “we shall be examined about what we have done, not about what we have read.”4
Room to Reflect
What’s do you think the difference is between knowing about God and truly knowing God through lived experience?
Is there an area of your spiritual life where you’ve been content to read or learn without actually practicing or experiencing it?
When you consider Thomas à Kempis’s words - “we shall be examined about what we have done, not about what we have read” - what might God be inviting you to do in response to what you know?
L’Engle, Madeleine. The Rock That Is Higher. (United States: Crown Publishing Group, 2002), 208.
Willard, Dallas. Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge. (United Kingdom: HarperCollins, 2009), 60.
Foster, Richard. Getting the Big Picture: How We Can Know the Bible, Not Just Bible Trivia: Published in Christianity Today, April 18, 1986.
The Imitation of Christ: Translated by Ronald Knox and Michael Oakley. (N.p.: Ignatius Press, 2013), 8.
Contemplation and action… both are necessary!