Does Spinoza's Theory merely Highlight a Textbook God?

First, please excuse my absence today I was interviewing at a grad school in Alabama. Secondly, what the heck is Spinoza talking about?? In his writing on Ethics, Spinoza mentions that reason is purely intellectual or cognitive and that it basically excludes the sensual. Now, we also know that Spinoza makes it a point to stress the importance of understanding the nature of God and pointing out the fact that there exists no rational life without this understanding. My question is, how could it be so important to perfect the intellect or reason in order to achieve happiness which is having intuitive knowledge of God, if all we can have is intuitive knowledge of God. If reason is purely intellectual then that means it is more of an empirical, factual knowledge to understand God. Normally, when individuals talk about God, it is through a more metaphysical, faith-based lense. So, it is as if Spinoza is the swimmer that we talked about in class when we discussed Aristotle. He has all of the theoretical knowledge of God without any experience of him. After all, wouldn't experience be considered as a sensual thing? So, my question is, how is it that Spinoza can say that we gain human power through undertanding and being content with our knowledge of God, when it is the case that all we would be acquiring in factual knowledge? What's the point of this??