Ultimate Knowing

The ultimate knowing in growing with the Father is not really an accumulation of knowledge (knowing facts) at all. Rather, the ultimate knowing is the knowledge of Christ: “My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” (Colossians 2:2-3) When we know Christ, we have all wisdom and knowledge. By knowing Christ, we know ourselves because Christ is our only life.
Knowing Christ is a living, spontaneous knowledge. (In Him we move, live, and have our being.)
This is not an understanding that you possess so much as it is a knowing that possess you. The purpose for receiving this understanding is not to be the smartest Christian that ever lived or the wisest elder in the church. The Father’s purpose for growing us in this understanding is so that we can be the people that God created us to be. A key part of this knowledge is accepting that our old self was crucified (rendered powerless) with Christ. As we are grown in this acceptance we (the old self) are gotten out of the way so Christ can come out of us as us. This is the unique expression of Christ that God intended each of us to be.By allowing the Father to grow us up to be the people He intended us to be, we are cooperating in the fulfilment of His plan for the creation. You see, the growing of a family for God has contained within it our growth. Our Father’s desire for a family includes not only birth of children with His life in them. This desire also includes the growth of those children to be the fulfilment of our creation-----being grown up to the fullness of Christ.
This fullness is spontaneous and living. Our full growth includes both intellectual knowing and intuitive knowing: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:10-11) We can see from this passage that Paul did not have a complete intellectual knowing of the workings of God. But he knew that everything he needed to know was expressed in knowing Christ.

Rich