The Courage to Know: Why True Knowledge Demands Your Whole Life
If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.
From my window in Akasia, I watch the winter thorn trees stand silent sentinel over the dusty streets. They have seen generations pass—the hurried, the hopeful, the weary. Just last week, I found myself caught in a different kind of silence, the sterile, anxious quiet of a government office in Pretoria Central. I was there for the new digital driving licence renewal, part of the nationwide shift to biometric verification that starts next month. The queue was a tapestry of our nation: a young professional nervously refreshing a banking app, an elderly gogo clutching a folder of dog-eared documents, a tired mother soothing a child.
As I waited, I overheard a frustrated conversation. A man was arguing with the clerk, his voice tight with desperation. “But I know the rules,” he insisted. “I’ve been driving for twenty years. I know this city’s roads better than my own home.” The clerk, with the patience of a saint, replied softly, “Sir, knowing the road is not the same as having a valid licence. The law requires the licence.”
In that moment, the Spirit whispered a thunderous truth. This is the precise, perilous poverty of our age, especially here in our beloved, struggling South Africa. We are drowning in information but starving for authorised knowledge. We have Google’s answers but lack God’s authority. We know about, but we do not know in the way that transforms, validates, and grants the right to travel forward.
The Great Illusion: Information vs. Authorised Knowledge
Our world, and our churches, are plagued by a devastating confusion. We have equated the accumulation of data with the attainment of wisdom. We sermon-hop on YouTube, collect Bible verse images on social media, and attend conferences that inform our minds but leave our character untouched. This is what the American church identifies as “prioritizing knowledge over transformation”. It is a global malady, and it creates Christians who can argue theology but cannot display kindness, who can quote Scripture but cannot forgive a debt.
The Scripture declares unequivocally: “For the Lord grants wisdom! From his mouth come knowledge and understanding”. True knowledge—the kind that matters for eternity and anchors us in earthly storms—does not originate in a lecture hall or a news feed. It proceeds from the mouth of God. It is authorised, stamped with the divine seal, and dispensed by the Creator of the very reality it describes.
Let me define our terms clearly, for confusion is the devil’s playground.
· Information is impersonal data. It is the facts about the property market in Menlyn or the statistics on Christian growth in Africa.
· Knowledge, in the biblical sense (da‘at in Hebrew, gnosis in Greek), is personal, relational, and actionable. It is not knowing about God; it is knowing God. It is the difference between reading a biography of Nelson Mandela and sitting with him, hearing his heartbeat, sharing his meal.
This is why the prophet Hosea lamented, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge”. They had the rituals, the traditions, the information. But they lacked the intimate, authorised knowledge of the Holy One, and so they stumbled into ruin.
The Unshakeable Foundation: The Fear of the Lord
Here, then, is the non-negotiable starting point, the bedrock upon which all true understanding is built: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge”. In our modern, egalitarian world, we bristle at this. We want a God who is our friend, our therapist, our cosmic cheerleader—not our Sovereign Lord who demands reverence.
But picture a world without this fear. It is the world we live in! It is the world of staggering corruption, where leaders plunder with impunity. It is the world of broken families, where fathers abandon their sacred posts. It is the world of a braai where God is invoked as a lucky charm before we dive into gossip and gluttony. This is not the “friendship with God” that James speaks of; it is idolatry dressed in Christian jargon.
The fear of the Lord is the intelligent, awe-filled recognition of who God is: the infinitely powerful, perfectly holy, and justly wrathful Creator before whom every knee will bow. It is the profound understanding that I am a fallible human, born with a propensity to err and sin, standing before the One who is without flaw. This fear is not terror that drives us away, but awe that draws us to seek His mercy. It is the humility that opens the door to His grace. As Proverbs 15:33 states, “The fear of the LORD is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor”.
A Logical Defence: Why Your Mind Can Trust His Word
Some will object. In our universities and coffee shops, the charge is levelled: “Faith is a blind leap. It is for the emotional and the simple. Give me science and reason!”
To this, I say, let us reason together. The argument can be formulated thus:
1. Premise 1: The universe exhibits overwhelming evidence of complex, specified information and intentional design (from DNA to the fine-tuning of physical constants).
2. Premise 2: In our uniform and repeated experience, complex, specified information always arises from a mind—an intelligent agent. (You are reading words from my mind right now).
3. Conclusion: Therefore, the most rational inference to the best explanation for the universe and life itself is an Intelligent Designer.
Science does not contradict God; it demands Him. The so-called conflict is a myth propagated by those who have, as Paul warned, been “taken captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition…and not according to Christ”. True science, like true reason, bows before the majesty of a created order it can describe but cannot explain without its Creator.
Furthermore, the historical reality of Jesus Christ’s life, death, and empty tomb stands as the cornerstone of history. This is not a private spirituality. It is a public truth claim about an event in time and space. As the global trends show, even while atheism declines in the West, faith is exploding in the Global South, with Africa leading the charge. This is not the fruit of ignorance, but often of profound spiritual and intellectual conviction in the face of persecution.
The Costly Call: From Consumer to Disciple
This brings us to the most confronting truth for us, the comfortable, connected Christians of urban South Africa. The knowledge of God is not given for our entertainment or intellectual enrichment. It is given for our enlistment.
We have adopted a consumer mindset toward faith. We “church-shop” for the best production, the most compelling preacher, the community that demands the least from us. We treat the Bible as a self-help manual rather than the Supreme Commander’s orders. This is a profound and dangerous error.
The wisdom from above, the true knowledge of God, has a specific character: “It is first of all pure. It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and good deeds. It shows no favoritism and is always sincere”. This is not a description of a thought; it is the biography of a life—the life of Jesus Christ, in whom “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”.
Therefore, to know Him is to be progressively remade into His image. It is to move from knowing about justice to championing it in our corrupt systems. It is to move from knowing about love to sacrificially adopting the orphan or welcoming the foreigner. It is to move from knowing about community to committing deeply to a local body of believers, like those gathering for robust training at Apologetics SA right here in Pretoria, where you are known, challenged, and held accountable.
The Invitation: Build Your House on the Rock
My friend, back in that government office, the man with the expired licence faced a choice. He could cling to his subjective, experiential knowledge (“I know the roads!”) and face penalties. Or he could submit to the authorised, objective requirement and be granted the legal right to continue his journey.
This is your choice today. You can build your life on the shifting sand of popular opinion, cultural trends, and your own feelings. Or you can build on the rock of authorised, divine knowledge.
The call is clear. Stop consuming and start cultivating.
· Cultivate the Fear: Begin each day in awe of Him. Let His holiness recalibrate your heart.
· Cultivate the Pursuit: Seek wisdom as you would hidden treasure. Commit to a plan—read your Bible not for snippets, but for understanding.
· Cultivate the Community: Flee isolation. Plant yourself in a local church. Be vulnerable. Serve.
· Cultivate the Courage: Let this knowledge propel you into our broken world. Be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Speak truth to power, comfort to the hurting, and hope to the lost.
The dawn is coming. Across Africa, the church is rising—not in perfection, but in power and passion. He is filling our granaries with true knowledge. Let us not hoard it. Let us fling open the doors and share the living bread, until the drought of confusion breaks, and the fields of our nation are ripe for harvest.
Let us pray: Father of all wisdom, we confess our love for information over transformation. Forgive us. Baptise our minds in the fear of You. Give us the courage to seek true knowledge from Your Word and the strength to live it out in the streets of Akasia, Pretoria, and to the ends of the earth. We ask in the name of Jesus Christ, who is Himself our wisdom. Amen.
https://podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/the-treasury-of-knowledge/id1506692775?i=1000741623920
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