In considering what it means to know for my dissertation, philosopher Esther Meek has provided me with such valuable insight. Over the last two decades she has developed something that she calls Covenant Epistemology wherein she seeks to recover the relational aspects of what it means to know. She speaks of knowing as a relationship, and because she is a Christian this relationship between the knower and the known is rooted in our relationship with God. While I will not get too deep into this system, I do want to share one aspect of it that has truly opened up to me what knowledge really is and how we should pursue it.

Meek refers to knowing as an event that takes place in three phases: knowing toward, knowing through, and knowing from. When we are learning something initially we are knowing toward that thing. At this point that thing is nothing more than a concept, something for us to consider. Now, we may study this concept to gain comprehension of it. We may memorize it. We may even come to affirm it as something that we suggest is true. But Meek wants us to see that we do not truly know it until we move through the other two stages.

We move from knowing toward something to knowing through it only as we decide to test it out—to exercise faith that the concept is really true. This is not only a willingness to affirm its truth with our lives, but to exercise that affirmation by acting on it as if it’s true. This is THE key to truly growing in full knowledge. Only as we lay out through a truth claim can we come to truly know if it is real and right. If we never actually lay out through it, we may affirm it with our lips, but it will never actually change the way we live.

The result of laying out through a concept and experiencing its truth is that we come to rest in its reality. This is another way of saying that we begin to live from it. We conform ourselves to what we have experienced and has been affirmed to us as what is true and real and good. This is a picture of worldview. This knowing event has shaped that worldview, perhaps even by altering it, as we have grown in our understanding of reality.

I realize this is philosophical, but I hope that you will consider this. I have struggled greatly in reading Meek because I am not very philosophical myself. But I believe that this truth about knowing is absolutely key to spiritual formation. Here’s the spiritual application of this. So often we stop at being content to know toward biblical truth—even toward theological truth (or truth about who God is). The Bible calls us to go further than that. Paul prays that our knowledge would go deeper than that. God has placed the Spirit within us to lead us not just to affirmation toward what is true, but to lay out through it in faith so that we might come to know through experience that it is certain, good, and what is really real. Only then can our knowledge of God begin to shape our lives as we begin to live life from the truth of who he is. He does not desire for us to know him in concept alone; he desires for us to yield ourselves to who he really is. He desires for us to know all things in light of who he really is.

Brothers and sisters, I want for us to know God–not conceptually, but relationally…fully! This is the why behind the way we shape our programs like Sunday School and Life Groups. This is the why behind the way we shape our weekly Worship Guide.  I don’t want us to know toward God’s love (for example) in concept; I want us to come to more fully and deeply know his love as we not only lay out through the certainty of that love by faith, but come to live from the knowledge of his love.

This is just the beginning of what I hope will be a rich conversation that we will begin to have together about what it means to pursue knowing God. I look forward to having that conversation with you and pursuing knowing him together!