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There’s a difference between information about God and a relationship with God — and it changes everything.
We live in a world that worships intelligence. We celebrate the person who can win the debate, analyze the data fastest, snap back with the quickest wit. And somewhere along the way, we started believing that if we could just think our way to God, we could actually come to know God.
But here’s the thing nobody wants to say out loud: what you think ain’t what you know.
In Mark 12, the Sadducees show up to test Jesus with what they thought was an airtight intellectual argument. These weren’t uneducated people. They were the elites — theologically credentialed, politically connected, institutionally powerful. They ran the temple. They managed the money. They had a seat at every table that mattered.
And yet, Jesus looked at the most credentialed religious minds in Jerusalem and said something that should shake all of us: “Are you not in error because you do not know the scriptures or the power of God?”
“Are you not in error because you do not know the scriptures or the power of God?” — Mark 12:24 (NIV)
He didn’t say they were stupid. He didn’t say they hadn’t studied. He said they didn’t know what they didn’t know — but they were moving like they did.
In the Greek, the word Jesus uses for “know” doesn’t mean intellectual comprehension. It means intimate, experiential, relational knowledge — the kind that can only happen through actual relationship. You can study a person’s biography and still be a stranger to them. You can memorize their words and never hear their voice. You can have a file on God and not have fellowship with God.
That’s the gap this blog talks about. Not the gap between smart people and dumb people. The gap between religion and relationship. Between institution and intimacy. Between what you think you know and what God has actually revealed to your heart.
The invitation is simple but serious: Stop performing knowledge you don’t have. Stop dressing up your unbelief in theological language. And open yourself to the kind of knowing that can only come when you actually spend time with the One who knows all things.
Because there’s nothing wrong with being smart. But your intellect alone will never get you to God. It’s not a thinking problem. It’s a relationship problem.
And that’s a problem God is very ready to fix.
Reflect on This
Are you more familiar with information about God than you are with the actual presence of God? What would it look like this week to move from studying God to encountering God?
Ready to dive deeper?
