If asked, 'How can I come to know God?', there are those who will say, 'Read your Bible', or the like with the assumption that the solution involves the intellect. Many strict Reformed types think in this way. Now, it is not possible to come to know God without dealing with some facts, things like sin, faith and grace. But there are ways to be confronted with such ideas that are not about books and deep theological conversations. Another door involves experience. The ideas are still necessary, but it just may be that they will be driven home by something felt.
Consider Job. How did he come to know God better? To be sure there was that deeply theological conversation that he had with God. But I think that it is necessary to remember that it came after all that happened in the preceding chapters of the book. If not, then why did God bother with them? If it's just a matter of Job being told some things, then the whole thing could have started with chapter 38. Job's experiences of the first few chapters and then his interactions with his friends were a necessary prelude to God's confronting him. It was a matter of ideas being presenting in the context of experiences.
So, there is to be an integration of both ideas and experiences for someone to come to know God. Thus when someone talks about how he came to know God because of some experiences or that people are to know God by means of some experience, he is not to be ruled completely out of bounds. He may be entirely wrong, but he may also be a little bit right, just in need of the addition of some accurate ideas to explain the experience.
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