It can be encouraging to read the diaries of believers who went before. Take this comment from Ebenezer Erskine. Notice especially the way he longs for and experiences more than simply speculative knowledge about God. He writes,

“This day has been for the most part cloudy and dark, though blessed be his name, mixed with sweet blinks and discoveries of God. At present, in secret duty, I was dull and dead at the beginning; but before the close, my soul was enlarged like the chariots of Amminadab, and followed hard after the Lord. I was made to say, and to comfort myself in saying it, that I loved to retain God in my knowledge. My soul sweetly enlarged herself to receive the fullness of God, and I said, Lord, I love to be for ever swallowed up in this ocean of sweetness, grace, and greatness, that is with thee. I open my mouth wide; do thou fill it. Go on, Lord, with the discovery that thou hast begun. I live, and I resolve to die, in the hope that I shall yet have more and more of the Lord, because he has said that ‘his goings forth are prepared as the morning,’ ‘which shineth more and more unto the perfect day.’ I desire to dwell in God, and to have God dwelling in me. O praise, praise, praise, for ever and ever.”