My teacher Gary often talks about entering into the glory of God, either alone in prayer, or together with others in worship. When this happens, we stop talking and thinking about God so that we can experience him in ways that defy knowledge. 

The spirit enters into his presence, but our flesh (and corrupted minds) cannot.

Ecclesiastes 3:1, 6

To everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: …A time to seek and a time to lose; a time to keep and a time to throw away.

There is a time to exercise the mind, and a time to let it rest. When we put down our stinking thinking and enter our Father’s presence without knowing the what, how, or why, there is another knowing that goes beyond our intelligence. It focuses instead on the question, “Who is like unto my God?” 

Adam ate fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and it killed his spiritual life right then and there. Eventually his flesh died also. When the flood came, no trace was left of the Garden of Eden or the first tree of life in the midst of it. I have long thought this to be a great loss, but it had to go to make way for a better, the first granting life for the flesh, but the second granting life for our stillborn spirits.

The second tree of life is the cross, and the way we partake is by the death of the life Adam gave us, to make room for a new and better one in Jesus Christ.

Learning the character of God in his various roles does more for us spiritually than other kinds of Bible study. It improves our limited ability to trust what he caused to be written, to trust him when he did not answer all our questions, and to endure things he allows in the world and in our lives that leave us dumbfounded. 

Nearly everyone has the unfulfilled wish that God would visibly appear and speak plainly to us—tell us what’s going on and what to do. He did this in the Gospels of the New Testament, but it did not result in the kingdom age appearing then, nor would it now unless he came in power.

When they walked with the Son of Man—asking questions and hearing his answers—the disciples remained confused and perplexed about many things. Jesus told them his words were spirit, and they needed help from the Father to understand them—but to get that help they had to believe. 

John 6:60When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” 61But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? 62Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? 63It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 64But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) 65And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

66After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.

How does a person believe without understanding? Trust comes by relationship and not by knowledge.

Sometimes it is better to believe and not to know. Spiritual knowing comes in a different way from scholarly knowing. Is it any wonder then, that so many Bible scholars turn away from God? If we demand understanding on our own terms, we end up like the disciples who turned back and no longer walked with him.