The Same Path: Knowing Yourself, Knowing God

The more I sit with people in spiritual direction, the more clearly I see it…

Knowing yourself is not separate from knowing God.
It’s not a detour.
It’s not a distraction.
It’s the same path.

“Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God.”
— John Calvin

At first glance, this may sound surprising. Isn't our spiritual life supposed to be about focusing on God, not ourselves? But here's the deeper truth I’ve come to understand, over and over again, in the sacred conversations of spiritual direction:

When you start to notice your patterns—your striving, your fears, your deep longings—God doesn’t recoil.
He’s not surprised.
He’s not disappointed.
He’s already there.
He has always been there, gently inviting you to come home to Him through honesty, not performance.

So many of us were raised to believe that we need to get it together before we can approach God. That we need to be more disciplined, more holy, more joyful, less messy—less human. But that’s not how grace works.

Grace doesn’t wait on the other side of self-improvement. It meets us in the middle of our story.

In spiritual direction, we slow down long enough to ask the questions we often avoid:

• Why am I reacting this way?

• What am I truly afraid of?

• Where do I feel disconnected—from God, from others, from myself?

• What am I really longing for?

And it’s in those moments of gentle awareness, where nothing is forced or fixed, that we often encounter the presence of God in the most tender, surprising ways.

This is the work.
This is the invitation of spiritual formation.
Not to climb our way into God’s favor, but to awaken to the truth:
We are already loved.
We are already seen.
We are already invited in.

You don’t have to fix yourself.
You don’t have to strive to be enough.
You only have to come honestly.

This is the work.
This is the freedom.