"Knowing," as expressed here, is something much more than either thought or feeling. To really know something is to have the existence of that thing in your life. To know is to have faith. To know is to have reality. To know is to see as God sees, i.e. from His viewpoint. Faith is confidence in God not self. Allow me to give you an example of faith. Many of us have learnt to drive a car and perhaps been driving for many years. We now 'know' how to drive but it was not always so. At the start we were nervous, somewhat apprehensive, because we did not as yet "know" how to drive. But later on, confidence was gained as we learnt, until we reached the point where we did not need to learn anymore, we knew how to do it by heart!
Faith is located in the heart, not in our mind or in our emotional feelings. Strictly speaking, the mind is not designed to 'know' anything, neither of course are the emotions. All such 'knowing' is a product of the heart not the head. Our mind is designed for us by God to reason with, to understand with, to discern with and to think with. Our mind is of the soul but Faith is of the spirit (the heart). Faith is always 'heart-knowing' never 'head-knowledge'. The mind presumes but the Spirit knows! The mind is at best a calculated guess but Faith is always correct. The mind is based on what man knows. The spirit is based on what God knows! Faith is 'of the spirit', not 'of the soul'. When we know for sure in this way, that we are 'dead' in Christ; then shall we 'know' also that we are resurrected and alive in Him! Our faith as Christians, is the responsive spontaneous life of Christ in us. Jesus is the reason for our 'knowing' and our knowing God! .....God never reasons, He knows!!
