You’ve heard it many times.
“It is not enough to know God; you have to experience him.”
“It is not enough to know the Bible; you have to obey it.”
“Knowledge is useless; you have to have a passionate relationship with God.”
Right. But these are false dichotomies. You don’t have to choose between knowing God and experiencing him. You need both. You don’t have to pick between reading your Bible and obeying what you read. You need both. You don’t have to choose between knowledge of God and a passionate relationship with him. You need both. These stuff are not opposites; they enrich one another. Each pair are two halves of the same coin.
Older folks have a pithy saying for this: you can fall on either side of the horse. The trick is managing the tension well. We need not pit knowing and doing. We need both to live our Christian convictions. We need not pit the heart against the head. God made them both and they serve complementary purposes.
