What Paul found when he came into Athens was people searching for truth and he gives them due credit for that. The problem was that they were searching in the wrong way. They were trying to grasp it all themselves; to reach God by their intellect and efforts. There were some Greek Philosophers who were honest enough to admit that any real autonomous knowledge is impossible. They realised that it was impossible for the human mind to reach and grasp ultimate reality, particularly that of God. But Paul’s message was that God has come to us! The Truth has come to us. He does not claim to have grasped God; instead he testifies to having been grasped by God. It is the same message with which John (being also aware of these schools of philosophy) opens his Gospel (see John 1:1-17). We can know the truth, but it is not by searching. God calls people to seek, not to search. Searching is an act of autonomous intellectual curiosity whereas seeking is an act of faith and love. To know God is to be overpowered by him. It is not cleverness that matters, therefore, but a willingness to surrender to God. Paul says in his speech here that God is “not far from any one of us”. “We are his offspring”; his children. It is “in him that we live and move and have our being”; he is that close. God is all around you right now; you are submerged in his presence. If you are willing to know God, all you have to do is open your heart and let him flow in.
Ask God to make himself known to you more and more.
Read Acts 17:16-34 again
