Know It in Your ‘Knower’

“Know It in Your ‘Knower’” 

There’s a quote by Richard Rohr:

“People who’ve had any genuine spiritual experience always know that they don’t know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind.”

I find those words both comforting and confronting. Comforting because they affirm that not knowing is part of the authentic Christian journey. And confronting because I’ve spent a good portion of my life trying to know as much as I can.

I’ve studied theology. I’ve trained as a Salvation Army officer. I explore doctrine. I can trace the shape of the salvation story across the pages of the Bible. In many ways, I’ve built a strong orthodoxy—a “right belief”—about God.

But in the mountain-top highs and the valley-bottom lows of life, I’m learning that orthodoxy, while vital, is not the full picture.

There’s a phrase a colleague officer recently shared with me that I can’t shake:

“You’ve got to know it in your ‘knower’.”

At first, I smiled. It sounds like a good catchphrase, a good pastoral tool. But the more I sit with it, the more it stirs something deeper. This phrase reaches beyond academia. It moves through intellectual searching. It points toward orthopraxis—“right living”. The daily living out of faith. The gritty, grace-filled journey of taking what we believe and allowing it to shape our hearts, our habits, our actions.

It’s one thing to know God is faithful. It’s another thing to trust Him when everything is falling apart.

It’s one thing to believe God is present. It’s another to cling to that belief in the silence of unanswered prayer.

It’s one thing to affirm that God is love. It’s another to receive that love when you feel utterly unworthy of it.

That’s knowing it in your knower.

That’s when theology becomes testimony. That’s when knowledge becomes knowing.

In my own life, I’ve found that this deep knowing often doesn’t come on the mountaintop. It comes in the valley. When I can’t rely on words or systems or people or certainty—only on Presence. And in those moments, I’m drawn into what Rohr describes: awe before mystery, humility before the abyss of it all, wonder at a Love that is incomprehensible to the mind.

Ruth Tracy captures this:

“Only as I truly know thee

Can I make thee truly known;

Only bring the power to others

Which in my own life is shown…”

I can only truly make Christ known to others when I know Him for myself—not just as a set of ideas, but as a living presence. The credibility of my witness is not just in the soundness of my theology, but in the substance of my life.

So take what you know about God—the head knowledge, the study, the doctrine—and let it journey deeper. Let it be tested, stretched, and ultimately transformed into something lived.

Let it sink down from your head to your heart, and even deeper still, into your ‘knower’.

Because that’s where the profound experience of the Christian life really begins. Not in knowing about God, but in knowing God.

And in being known by Him.

Be still, and know… (Psalm 46:10)