If through humility and prayer you have been initiated into the spiritual knowledge of God, this means that you are known by God and enriched by Him with an authentic knowledge of His supranatural mysteries. If you are tainted with conceit, you have not been so initiated, but are governed by the spirit of this material world. Thus, even if you imagine that you know something, in fact you know nothing about things divine in the way you ought to (cf. 1 Corinthians 8:2).
If, however, you love God and regard nothing as more precious than love for God and for your fellow being, you will also know the depths of God and the mysteries of His kingdom in the way that someone inspired by the Holy Spirit must know them. And you are known by God (cf. 1 Corinthians 8:3), for you are a true worker in the paradise of His Church, out of love doing God’s will–that is to say, converting others, making the unworthy worthy through the understanding given you by the Holy Spirit, and keeping your actions inviolate through humility and compunction.
~Nikitas Stithatos
Prayerful Life 