We live in a world of access. With just a few keystrokes, you can virtually tour the Pyramids of Giza, search through the wisdom of Socrates, and find out who was responsible for the murder on the Orient Express. You can also know what the current weather forecast is in Ireland or discover the various theories concerning black holes. We have access to all this information and more.

And what’s the result? Many things, but at least this – our level of knowledge (or at least potential knowledge) far surpasses any generation before us. Put simply, we know more things about more things. But do we understand those things?

That’s not so simple. Because knowledge and understanding are two very different things. Knowledge deals in the realm of what is, but understanding goes beyond that. It answers the question of not only what is, but why the things are the way that they are. Here is where we fall short. Or at least shorter than on knowledge.

It’s instructive, then, to see how Paul prayed for the Christians at Colossae:

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives… (Col. 1:9). 

Here, too, we see a slight difference between knowledge and understanding. Paul wasn’t content for the Colossians to just have the knowledge of God’s will; he didn’t want them to only know what that will is. He wanted something deeper for them. Not just knowledge, but understanding. He wanted them to know God through the power of the Holy Spirit, and therefore not just know what God wanted for them, but deeply understand what God wanted for them.

But here, too, we shouldn’t stop short. Because today, we have access to all kinds of spiritual information. In the same way we can find the ending to any book or the topography of any landscape on earth, we can also find all kinds of spiritual facts and figures. And those are good things. Knowing fact, for example, help us to rightly interpret what God’s will is for as it is revealed in Scripture. It’s through knowing the context of the writer, the recipients, and the culture that we can then know what God’s Word actually means – because it can’t mean now what it didn’t’ mean then.

Those are knowledge kinds of things. And knowledge kinds of things lead to understanding kinds of things. But there is still another step to go which we see if we finish Paul’s thought:

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light (Col. 1:9-12).

Knowledge is good. Even better when that knowledge leads to understanding. But still incomplete unless that understanding leads to action. That’s the end game – it’s not just knowing what is, and it’s not even knowing why things are the way they are. It is that we then put those things into practice. Or, as Paul said, “so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way.”

So don’t short-circuit spiritual understanding. Don’t make the mistake of learning for knowledge’s sake. Put the knowledge to work.