Knowing God: What Difference Does it Make?

July 21, 2025 / by Pastor Scott Boerckel

Knowing God is the greatest privilege ever given to human beings. However, knowing God is much more complex than we might imagine.

We can say, for example, that we know a book or a car or accounting. That involves the mastery of a subject. It is altogether more complicated to say that we know a person. When a man says, “I know my wife,” he is not expressing the mastery of a subject but rather the depth of life experience, growth of sharing, and the mutual vulnerability that comes over years of life together. And yet, if the man is honest, he will admit that there is still room for growth to know his wife still more.
How much more complicated it is when we move from the world of knowing the inanimate to knowing a person to knowing the person of God! If knowing God is our ambition, we must start humbly, recognizing that there might be complexities in the pursuit of knowing God that we did not even contemplate.

One of those complexities is in the connection between theology and spirituality. Theology is the study of God. To do theology is to examine the scriptures to determine what God is like, His attributes and His ways. It is a thoroughly delightful pursuit. However, as J. I. Packer notes in his book, “Knowing God,” “one can know a great deal about God without much knowledge of Him.” In fact, if we only pursue knowing about God, we will end up cold-hearted, critical, and hardly know God at all.

The word, “spirituality,” is overused these days, and more often misused than used correctly. Here, we want to use the word to describe the growth in experience and intimacy with God that comes from a real relationship with Him. As wonderful as that is, we must be reminded of J. I. Packer’s warning on this matter as well, namely that one can pursue an intensely personal walk with God without much knowledge of God. There can be a focus on experience at the expense of scripture. There can be a focus on the “how to’s” at the expense of theological integrity.

It is just here at the connection of theology and spirituality that this edition of the OakLeaf is dedicated. How can the believer properly connect the knowledge about God with an experience with God? The articles here, written by East White Oak people, will each take one attribute of God and point to how we can tie our understanding of God with our experience with Him.

“And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

Scott loves being a pastor and teaching God’s Word. Before he was a pastor, he worked as a ceramic engineer (and bonus points for anyone who actually knows what that is). He sometimes uses the training that he received at the University of Illinois (Go Illini!), Grace Theological Seminary, and Jerusalem University College. Scott’s wife, Carol, is an awesome watercolor artist who really knows how to think Christianly about the arts. Scott likes cycling with friends, enjoying his ever growing family, and learning from the community of God’s people at East White Oak.