this i know.

Sometimes, I feel like we try too hard to apply worldly definitions to things that are spiritual. We should be careful about trying to intellectualize and quantify spiritually rooted things.

Recently, there was some discussion about what knowing is. And how you can't know anything, including things that relate to religious experience.

I think that's bogus.

Partly because for me, knowing spiritually is distinct from knowing as we may be accustomed to using and quantifying it.

So. Despite people saying you can never know that God exists, you can just hope for it, or that you cannot really know that something is true, but you hope it is, I have this to say:

I know God lives. I know Jesus Christ is his son. I know Jesus Christ atoned for my sins. I know that God answers prayers. I know that God and Christ love me.

Because knowing spiritually does not have to be related to the tangible, quantifiable, and quantitative evidences we are accustomed to in other disciplines.

I know those things because God communicated to me; he sent me impressions, feelings, and witnesses through the Holy Ghost and the sacred feelings that accompany those experiences. Something entirely spiritual. Something that the only evidence or support I can give to my belief is, "I just know."

So yeah. I think you can know those things. But that's just my opinion I guess.

will you at least tell us where?

Reading in Ether 1 the other day I was really struck by this verse:

[Jared to his brother] 38. "Go and inquire of the Lord whether he will drive us out of the land, and if he will drive us out of the land, cry unto him whither we shall go. And who knoweth but the Lord will carry us forth into a land which is choice above all the earth? And if it so be, let us be faithful unto the Lord, that we may receive it for our inheritance."

Here's my Daniel-ized version. "Go ask God whether he's going to have us leave our home, and if he is going to have us leave . . . ask him if he'll at least tell us where to go. Who knows? Maybe it will be even better than what we have now? If that's the case, let's follow whatever instruction he gives us."

Often times we have plans and God has different plans. But if God asks us to do something, he will provide: 1. a way for us to accomplish it (think Nephi), 2. some inkling of where/what he wants us to do, and 3. it usually ends up being way better than what we had had in mind to begin with.

Hopefully you feel this same way and can remember that the Jaredites were super blessed and got the fly-est land in all the earth all for their own. So when something seems scary and new . . . but you know it's what the Lord has in mind, you should go forward with it. He'll illuminate the path.