HEAD KNOWLEDGE VERSESE HEART KNOWLEDGE

HEAD KNOWLEDGE VERSES HEART KNOWLEDGE

                Today I want to share something with you that may revolutionize your relationship with God and with His Word. Throughout our entire lives we are taught to relate to truth of any kind as head knowledge. Our schooling is based upon head knowledge. We deal with the intellect. We memorize, we gather the facts, we take tests based upon those facts and if we remember enough of those facts we get an “A”.

                But how many of those facts do we remember or actually apply to our lives later on? We probably forget about 95% of it right and other than being literate we don’t use most of our schooling in practical life either. What we do remember from school is largely a matter of the heart. We feel smart because we got “A’s” We feel dumb because we got “D’s”. We feel gregarious because we had lots of friends. We feel lonely because we had no friends. We feel popular because we were the prom queen, or the quarterback. We feel unpopular because we were always the last one chosen. These are the things that affect the rest of our lives and it is those things that in truth we need to conquer, either of unreasoning pride, or in unreasoning inferiority, for even those things need not be real.

                Unfortunately, having been schooled in head knowledge, we then come to our Christian experience in the same way. Learn the facts. Get our doctrines all in a row and for our final test we get baptized and our diploma becomes your membership into the church. But when all is said and done, most people can’t remember most of what they learned in terms of head knowledge. So they either avoid witnessing because they don’t know how to convince others of the facts they learned, or they themselves still hunger for something they can’t quite put a finger on.

                2 Tim. 2:15 tells us to study to show ourselves approved unto God and so we naturally dive into the Bible the same way we went through school. We school ourselves on the facts over and over again, but in many cases we have no idea how to apply these facts to real life and neither do we feel particularly close to God. We feel like orphans in a sense. Actually the correct translation of that word “Study” in 2 Tim. 2:15 is better translated as “Be diligent to show yourself approved unto God.” It is more like Hebrews 11:6 where it says, “Those who come to God must believe that He is and that He is the rewarder of those that diligently seek Him.” In other words we are studying the Bible to know God and not just so that we can win a game of “Bible Trivia.” (As if there were such a thing as a single trivial word in the Bible.)

                In the Rabbinical schools of Jesus’ day, the scribes and the Pharisees were engaged in head knowledge and with such carnal reasoning; they totally missed the heart of the truth and rejected their very Messiah. He no longer fit what their head knowledge had formed as truth. And Jesus said to them: “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, but they testify of Me.”

                In my years of evangelism I came to the conclusion that we had it all wrong. We taught people head knowledge and got them into the baptismal tank and then 3 years later when they had forgotten the facts that had originally convinced them, 80 or 90% of them left the church. Head knowledge of the facts will not hold a person. It is heart knowledge… an encounter with Jesus Christ that they will remember and once they have come to know Jesus, then they will want to know everything about Him. And if they are truly born again, they will follow in His footsteps yearning to be more like Him every day.

                Psalms 1:2, 3 gives us a hint as to how to relate to the Bible. It says: “But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. And he will be like a tree firmly planted by the streams of water which yields its fruit in its season and in whatever he does, he prospers.”

                Here, when David refers to the law, he is referring not just to the Ten Commandments but to the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. And he doesn’t study it to learn head knowledge, rather he meditates on it and as a result of his meditation he becomes like a tree planted by the water and he bears much fruit.

                If then we are tired of cramming head knowledge of the Bible into our intellect and still feeling no closer to God, then we may want to try meditating on the Word.  We need to start drawing from the river of life that flows through the Bible. It is that river that brings life and healing wherever it goes. It is Jesus Christ Himself, the Word of God made flesh to die for us and then to ascend to heaven to send that same river to flow through us.

                Listen carefully to Jesus’ words in John 7:37-39: “If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.’ But this He spoke of the Spirit…” So now if we add to that Jesus’ statement in John 6:63 when He said that the words that He spoke are spirit and are life, we can gain an intellectual bit of truth that is in every way good. But the question remains: Are we drawing from that river. Have His words become spirit and life to us or are they just more facts to add to our intellectual knowledge?

                What if you were to meditate upon Jesus’ statements. What if you were to ask the Holy Spirit to teach you what they really mean and how to live by them?  For instance we could ask such questions as:

                “Lord, please show me where the river within me comes from, what it feels like within me. What is this flow designed to produce? What will be the effects of what is produced: How important is it to live out of this river? What happens if I neglect the river and live out of self’s initiative: And Lord, is there anything else You want to show me in this biblical meditation?” (From the book “Four Keys to Hearing God’s Voice”)

                We live in desperate times and desperate times call for desperate measures.  In our hearts we know that mere intellectual knowledge will not give us the fortitude we need to stand in the day of trouble. Most of the facts we can’t even remember. We feel somehow empty, like we have the shell of truth, but not the river of life.

                We need to come to the Lord and say to Him: “Lord, I need that river of life to flow through me. Fill me with your Holy Spirit and teach me how to draw from that river. Teach me how to drink from Jesus so that from my innermost being rivers of living water. Lord I am thirsty. I have tried and tried and yet my soul feels dry and alone. I need this river of life to flow from my inner most being. I need to learn how to draw from it so that your fruit will be produced in abundance in my life. Help me to find that river of life in your Word… not just intellectual facts like in school, but in transforming streams that bring life into and flowing out of my very being. Make me a well from which others can draw life Lord.

                Jesus said, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” Jn. 6:63

                When the jailer came to the apostles and asked saying: “What must I do to be saved?” They didn’t give him a list of doctrines and instructions saying, “Keep the Sabbath, eat kosher food, do this and don’t do that.” They said to him, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved…”

                It was Jesus who said,” And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” What we so desperately need then is to fall in love with Jesus… to read the scriptures asking His Holy Spirit to show us the river of life that flows through His Word and to teach us how to draw from that river and to live by it.

                Paul said in Romans 10:10, 11: “For with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.” (From Isa. 28:16)

                Salvation really is all about heart knowledge rather than head knowledge. God is looking for love… not information. Information is something that you get on a first date… love comes by walking together in intimate fellowship. And once you have that intimacy with the Lord, then the information will come to you as rivers of flowing water rather than laws to be kept.

                Learn to meditate upon the Word in such a way that it becomes to you revelation rather than information and a river of living water that transforms and binds your heart to the heart of Yeshua.