What’s Better Than Knowing?

How much do you know? As human beings, we’ve only got a couple options:

Option #1: We can know a lot about a little.

Option #2: We can know a little about a lot.

There’s probably some healthy middle ground in there, but the truth is, the human brain can only hold so much knowledge. you can either dive deep and be an expert or you can cast a wide net for your interests. But the space on your hard drive is limited. We don’t know it all, and we never will.

Ever been around people who are smarter than you? (You can’t see it, but my hand is up!) Most of us know what that feels like, and it’s not a great feeling. If we’ve attached our worth to how much we know, it can even be painful. We can become defensive and insecure, and that’s not going to get anywhere.

If that’s how we feel around smart people…the idea of an all-knowing God might bother us a little. All-knowing. Take that in for a second. The fancy, theological word for this is, “omniscient” and it means that his knowledge is complete. God is not learning. He isn’t on a road to self-improvement. God’s knowledge is perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

There are so many moments in our lives when we might feel defensive against a God who knows it all. We might not even look at it this way. But here’s the thing about being omniscient…it also means he’s never wrong. This gets very inconvenient for us humans when we present our plans to him and he says no.

He says no because he knows. And that can be hard to swallow.

The second we think we’ve got God figured out, we’re in for a surprise. While we seek to know him better, he will always be far beyond our understanding. That’s not some easy-out, it’s just fact. Through the prophet Isaiah, God said,

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways my ways,” says the Lord.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are my ways higher than your ways,
And my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Isaiah 55:8-9

But here’s the beautiful part about an all-knowing God (are you ready for this?): He knows everything. And I’m not just talking about the solar system and how bumble bees get from one place to another. He knows everything about you. Whether you ever realized it or not, you are known, my friend.

There is a God whose knowledge is so perfect that he knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows it all. He has seen it all. He has been there for it all. There is nothing you could tell him that would shock him. He knows exactly how much we don’t know, and he loves us.

And that is cause for love and for worship. God’s all-knowingness is one of the perfect things that causes us to fall down before him in worship. He knows it all and yet his love for us is limitless.

There is something better than knowing–being known by the God who knows it all.

Friends, let’s not spend another moment at a distance from the Lord. He knows it all, and he wants to share that knowledge with us. Let us go before him in worship, in humility, and in reverence.