It is one thing to believe in God with our minds. It’s another thing to feel in our hearts that God is real. This difference between theoretical knowledge and personal experience is vital in every realm of life. It is one thing to study botany. It is another thing to personally love and enjoy flowers. It is one thing to read a menu. It is another thing to eat a meal and be nourished by it. It is one thing to believe in the stars with our minds. It is another thing to experience them with our hearts.
When we turn our thoughts to the realm of faith, this consideration becomes critically important. I doubt there is even one person who is reading this article who does not believe in God. But I suspect there are many of us whom God does not seem real and personal. We believe in God intellectually, but we do not experience Him emotionally. And that is tragic, because a large part of our lives are lived on an emotional level.
At school and at work, some of us live with an almost constant fear of failure. That is an emotional experience. A loved one dies, and we are overwhelmed with grief. That is an emotional experience. We fall in love, and our hearts are strangely warmed. This is an emotional experience.
Day after day, in good times and bad, the experiences of life make an impact on our emotions. And if our faith never reaches that level, if God never feels real, if we never experience Him in a personal way, then in a practical sense we have no God. Our faith is not functioning on the level where our lives are being lived.
The 34th Psalm speaks to our need at this point. The psalmist simply said, “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” He was telling his disciples then. And telling us now, that we can take God’s very life into ourselves. We can experience Him on the inside where we really live, where we hurt and hope and laugh and cry.
I know that the Bible presents many different pictures of God, and some of them are mind-boggling in scope. The book of Genesis presents Him as the mighty Creator who, with just the sound of His voice, spoke all things into existence – the One who started with nothing and made everything. The book of Exodus reports that Moses talked with God on a mountain that was capped with clouds and shaken by thunder. The prophet Isaiah had a vision of God, “seated on a high and lofty throne, with the train of His garment filling the temple.”
Each of these pictures comes from the Old Testament. And all of them are valid, in the sense that we need to think big thoughts about God. But if we think of Him only as the Creator, the lawgiver, the Holy One of Israel, how can we ever get to know Him? That God seems so far away and so unapproachable.
Turn to the New Testament, and we will also find some big pictures of God. But ask the writers of the New Testament where God lives, and they will answer in sentences like these: “You must know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is within you.” “He who abides in love abides in God and God abides in Him.” “Here I stand, knocking at the door. If anyone hears me calling and opens the door, I will enter.”
What a momentous day it is, when a person becomes aware of God, not simply “up there” or “out there”, but “in there”. To think of God in this way does not minimize His greatness. It simply brings Him near, where we have a chance to get to know Him. We will never know all there is of God. We do not know all there is about anything. There are more mysteries in a glass of water than science will ever be able to explore or explain. But we can, nonetheless, drink it and be refreshed by it. The practical truth also applies to our experience of God.
It is a great day in our lives, when something we have long believed with our minds becomes real in our experience. Remember the psalmist when he said, “Taste and see.” – You might be greatly surprised.