Sensing God
June 18, 2007
I. Introduction
One day I was enjoying a casual conversation with one of my co-workers (we'll call her Karen). She is not a Christian, but she attended a parochial school for many years. Early in our conversation another co-worker, who is a Christian (let's call him Dan), joined us. The topic quickly moved to discussion of God and an afterlife. Karen stated that she believes in (a) God, but often finds herself wondering if he/it really exists. I, too, have occasionally asked myself that question, and acknowledged this to Karen and Dan, concluding that I always answer this question with "I just know He exists."
That evening I pointedly asked myself many questions, wondering why I sometimes wonder if God exists, and wondering why I have never believed that He does not exist, and wondering if I am foolish for wondering. In addition I wondered if I had done Karen a disservice by acknowledging that I sometimes wonder if God exists. Karen and Dan and I are software engineers, and one of the fundamental characteristics (or skills) of engineers is that we learn to question our fundamental assumptions. Our jobs depend on this skill, because one of the most common causes of problems is that someone or some group has formed a problem statement based on poor assumptions. The problem is not solvable for the very reason that the premises used to define the problem are incorrect. In order to develop a viable solution the problem statement must have a firm, logical foundation. But when we ask the question, "Does God exist?", we quickly search for a proof of His existence. This proof has been sought by the best and brightest minds of this world for millenia, so I have no reason to believe that I will be the one to devise such a proof, or that such a proof will be found within my lifetime. That firm, logical foundation so pleasing to us is elusive in this case.
After further introspection I asked myself again why I believe that God exists. The immediate response was that I choose to believe in Him. Can I choose not to believe in Him? My belief in God takes very little effort. I grew up believing in God and Jesus, and I have memories of being in church from when I was only three or four years old. Based on this background, and my own observations and experiences, I conclude that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for me to choose to believe that God does not exist. But that is not the end of this story. Engineers are accustomed to measuring height, weight, velocity, wavelength, etc. in order to draw conclusions about the objects of their study. If I am "studying" God, then I must find some quality or value that I can measure and understand in order for me to know more about Him. We often speak of "hearing God's voice", or of "seeing God". But I have never heard a human-like voice of anyone or anything that I perceived to be God. Nor have I ever seen the physical form of what I believe or perceive to be God. I have never knowingly touched, tasted, or smelled God. Yet I do percieve Him.
II. Objective
According to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the chief end of man is "To glorify God and to enjoy Him forever." To enjoy something means to partake of it, to experience it, to sense and perceive it.
My quandary with regard to sensing God is not new. J. I. Packer wrote the book, Knowing God. If you are unmoved after reading the first 10-15 pages of Packer's book, then put it down. Neither that book, nor this essay, nor any other writing will move you. If you are moved, as I am, then there is nothing I can do or say that can convince you to put it down. Another book that greatly aided me in this writing is A. W. Tozer's The Pursuit of God.
As I pondered these issues I recalled a poem that I wrote for my wife, titled "Sensing You." This poem was a pleasure to write, because it made me think of my wife in ways that I had never thought before, and it helped me to better understand how and why I appreciate so many things about her, and it gave me a better understanding of our relationship. If "Sensing You" helps me to understand my wife and my relationship to her, then how might a poem "Sensing God" aid me in my search to better understand God and my relationship to Him? So, I set out to write a poem about the ways in which I sense or perceive God. This quickly proved far more difficult than I imagined, and the efforts, experiences, thought processes and discoveries that I had and made during this endeavour are well worth sharing. I have long believed that I have a hiqh-quality relationship with God, so when I found myself unable to write even a single line of my intended poem I concluded that something was very wrong, either with the depth of my relationship with God, or with my expectations of what it means to sense Him.
I hope by sharing this personal, earthy treatise of my efforts to understand what it means to sense God that you, too, can better understand Him and the ways in which He communicates with us. Let the theologians and philosophers rail against me if they find here some heresy, or if they find that my philosophy bears a strong resemblance to Swiss cheese. I do not care, for what I have written, I have written.
III. Foundation
Much has been made in literature of the attributes of God, and with good reason. It is much easier to sense, perceive, or measure something if you already have some idea of the nature of the thing being measured. I will list some attributes here, referring the interested reader to the thorough treatment in L. Berkhof's Systematic Theology. Berkhof lists these attributes as:
among others. They are worthy of discussion and study, but I am here more interested in them as a background that will assist me in understanding who God is to me, in getting me started in the right direction toward finding something to measure, and as an aid to understanding what He is not. Let me illustrate the importance of knowing what something is not with this variation of a familiar story.
Recall the story of the three blind men and the elephant. One blind man touched the elephant's tail and determined that elephants were very much like rope. Another touched the legs, and determined that elephants were much like tree trunks. The third blind man touched the elephant's trunk, and determined that elephants were very much like snakes. All three blind men were correct to an extent. God is so big that we can easily perceive just a part of Him, while missing the importance of the whole. There is flexibility in knowing God, for the very reason that there is so much more to know about Him than any one person can know in this life. But be careful that you are not like the fourth blind man who had a hen sitting in his lap while he listened to the first three blind men describe the elephant. When the hen got up to go scratch in the barnyard the fourth blind man determined that elephants lay eggs.
If that blind man later encountered a hen, he would take it for an elephant. If he encountered an elephant, he would discover that it had no feathers and did not lay eggs, and was therefore not an elephant. In both cases he would be quite wrong. As we develop our senses to find God, we know that He is good, truthful, wise, etc. If we attribute incorrect characteristics to God, and we encounter somebody or something with those characteristics, we can easily mistake that something for God. If we encounter God, without finding our "expected" characteristics, we might believe that we have not encountered God and turn away to search elsewhere. Being incorrect in this regard clearly has its perils.
My observations and perceptions of God are founded upon certain beliefs and assumptions. I believe that He created the Universe. I believe that He is the Creator-God described in the Bible, and that He chose to reveal Himself to the authors of the books of the Bible. I believe many things beyond these, but everything else that I believe rests upon these three beliefs, and is derived from the many ways in which I perceive, or sense, God. My observations of this world are consistent with these beliefs. As we have some history available to us, it is wise to learn from it so that we don't make a futile attempt to rediscover in a single lifetime the wisdom of thousands of years and a hundred or more generations.
How did the Patriarchs, the prophets, and the Apostles perceive God? What did they know or care about His attributes as a consequence of their perceptions? How can we use this information to our advantage?
Based on an incomplete review of God's interactions with humans throughout the Bible I have identified some common modes of interaction:
A. Audible Conversation
Here I present some examples of stories in which God's communication appears to be normal, audible conversation. Adam and Eve spoke with Him in the Garden of Eden. By most appearances, this relationship was one in which God spoke and was understood audibly (or so clearly in the spirit that there was no need for sound) by Adam and Eve. Genesis 6:9 records that "Noah walked with God." In the verses following, God's words to Noah are recorded, though no mention is made of how this communication took place. However, since Noah walked with God (as did Enoch) it seems reasonable to believe that God spoke with Noah as He did with Adam and Eve. In Genesis 12 God speaks to Abram, and again there is no description of how the communication took place, but Abram responds by taking a high risk action, moving from Haran, where lived most of his relatives, to the land of Canaan. Leaving one's family and support network is not an action to be taken lightly, so Abram was likely very convinced that God's command was in fact communication from God, and there is nothing to indicate that this communication was other than audible communication.
B. Visions and Dreams
Another common mode of God's revelation to His servants is in visions and dreams. In Genesis 15 God again speaks to Abram, this time in a vision (Genesis 15:1). In chapter 20 God speaks to Abimelech in a dream. When Joseph was in prison in Egypt the Pharaoh of Egypt had dreams presumably sent from God, which Joseph was able to interpret. Again, in Revelation 1:10 John reports to have been "in the Spirit on the Lord's Day", a statement that I interpret to be akin to, if not precisely, a vision.
C. Person to Person
God sometimes sends messages to us through intermediaries, or else presents Himself to us in human form. In Genesis chapter 18 we find the Lord appearing again to Abraham (formerly Abram), but this time He appears in the form of three men. In chapter 19 Abraham's nephew, Lot, sees two men and without any cue that is evident from the text, apparently realizes immediately that the men are worthy of great respect. So, in chapters 18 and 19 we have two similar situations in which there is some mysterious characteristic that sets God's messengers (or one or more members of the Holy Trinity) apart from ordinary men. In the New Testament we see in John 20 where Mary Magdalene sees two men clothed in white sitting in Jesus' otherwise empty tomb.
D. Signs and Wonders
One of the most commonly thought-of modes of God's revelation is in the use of signs and wonders. After the Great Flood we find reference to a rainbow as evidence of God's covenant that He will not again send such a flood to destroy the Earth. Rainbows are striking, sometimes even stunning in their beauty. We have understood for hundreds of years how they are formed, a simple separation of light into its component colors. But even that simplicity is wondrous. If one is tempted to explain the passage in Genesis 9 as man's poor attempt to ascribe God's miraculous intervention to something that he doesn't understand, then I ask you to view our Creator's hand in making something so beautiful out of something so simple. Light passing through water is bent, and the different wavelengths (colors) are bent different amounts, so that by the time your eye senses the light the colors have been separated enough for the eye to distinguish them. Engineers love elegant solutions to problems, and the best engineers are those who consistently come up with elegant solutions to problems. Be amazed, either by the appearance of the rainbow, or by the reason behind it! In Exodus chapter 3 God introduces Himself to Moses through the Burning Bush. It is here, in verse 14, that God reveals a new aspect of Himself, telling Moses "I Am That I Am."
E. Demonstration of Power
Of course, we are all cognizant of the communicative power of the display of power, such as the plagues sent upon Egypt in Exodus 4 and following, and the parting of the Red Sea. And we always appreciate the power of competition, such as in I Kings 18:20ff, where Elijah and the prophets of Baal referee a "showdown" between Yahweh and Baal. How often have you heard someone say that it would be easy to believe if only God would show us a miracle? Truth be told, miracles in and of themselves are not sufficient to make one believe (see Luke 16:27-29), but they clearly have their place.
But we must be especially careful when observing or interpreting remarkable, powerful events. In I Kings 19 we see how God taught Elijah that He is not just about the fantastic and awesome power found in violent winds, or earthquakes, but that He can be found in quiet places, in the "still, small voice" that is only evident when we stop what we are doing and listen. The Bible is full of accounts of miraculous events, so they will not be further enumerated here.
F. Natural Wonders
Science and religion are not in opposition. They are in fact allies. "How Great Thou Art" could well be the favorite hymn of scientists. Astronomers study the stars to learn about the origin of the universe. They study biology to learn the origins of life. A common reaction to a scientific discovery is the belief or position that knowledge of how something happened or happens means that we don't need to explain that event or happening in terms of God. But I posit, and this is not novel, that the discoveries of the mechanisms of life and the universe are themselves discoveries of the nature and person of God. While some scientists reject God on the basis of their scientific discoveries, I know many others who fall on their knees before God when they learn how He designed living things, cells, and DNA, or when they learn how stars and galaxies are born and die. I know that I see God's hand in the mountains and streams, in the wonders and colors of nature. By studying huge objects in the sky that are billions of miles away, and by studying the complex components of minute cells in our body, we should gain some appreciation of God's completeness, comprehensiveness, and His magnitude.
G. Imagery
Packer identifies four common analogies used in the Bible to illustrate our relationship to God: a son knowing his father, a wife knowing her husband, a subject knowing his king, and a sheep knowing the shepherd. A child knowing its mother is also used in some instances, but this is less common. The common theme in these analogies is that one being needs the protection or care of another being, God, and God, being good, lovingly provides for the one in need. See John 10:11, Luke 15:11-32, Jeremiah 10:7, and Ephesians 5:23 for some examples.
IV. Perception and Response
The awesome and frightening Creator-God, the mere sight of whom can drop a man dead in his tracks, who sent plagues upon the Egyptians to bring the mightiest nation on Earth to its knees, has been encountered by men, and these men have survived to tell about it. What did they learn and how did they respond?
Noah built an ark, in spite of the ridicule from those around him. Abram relocated to a distant land of which he knew very little. Moses challenged the Pharaoh of Egypt.
David wrote the Psalms, the Apostles stopped what they were doing and followed Jesus. The prophets spoke to God's people, often on pain of death.
Here are a few selections from David's Psalms:
And some commentary by the prophets:
One could easily ask if these men knew what they were talking about, but that question is a smokescreen, a question that allows one to avoid the responsibility of facing an issue that might change one's life and upset one's plans. The right question to ask is How can I get what they had?, or How can I come to know the God that they knew? Imagine what it would take to get Noah and Abram and Moses to take the actions that they did. Imagine what David and Micah and Nehemiah were thinking when they penned those words. These are the words of people who knew deep things about their God, the words of people who have a relationship with God. David, as you will note, knew how to praise God as well as how to cry out to Him from the pits of despair. I've always known that David had a gift for writing, and that the Psalms had a beauty and sensitivity about them, but after writing this essay and wrestling with my own thoughts about sensing God I can't help but envy David when he wrote in Psalm 42:1-2: As the deer pant for the water brooks, so my soul pants for Thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; When shall I come and appear before my God? Oh! That I could pen such words about my own relationship with my God!
V. Seeking a Measure
We have seen God's interaction with a number of Biblical characters. We know their reactions, and in some cases what they wrote about their perceptions. Our expectations have been set, and we may even have developed a hunger and thirst for whatever it is that these men experienced. So how do we get from not knowing God, not being able to sense Him, or not knowing or sensing Him as much as we would like, to the point where we know Him as David knew Him?
We now have motivation to seek a way to perceive God, hope that one or more such ways actually exist, reason to believe that there may be "wrong" answers, and suspicion that being wrong may carry some sort of penalty (however trivial that penalty may or may not be). Our next step is to focus our efforts on finding ways to perceive Him. He has promised that those who seek Him will find Him: For I know the plans that I have for you, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. Jer. 29:11-13, NASB.
If I cannot see, hear, smell, taste, or feel God, how can I know He exists? This problem is not likely solvable, because the question itself has some underlying assumptions that I believe to be incorrect. The obvious assumption is that I cannot sense God. But this assumption is in reality two assumptions, that I cannot see, hear, smell, taste, or feel what I consider to be God, and that there are no other senses at my disposal by which I might perceive God. These assumptions are weak at best, and false at worst. The question also misses the essential importance of God's existence. It is not if He exists, but how we can have a relationship with Him in the greatest depths and farthest reaches of our being.
If we were standing next to each other you could look at me and see a body, a body that interacts with your presence as we talk, wave our hands about, and generate expressions of understanding or confusion on our faces. You could touch my hands or my face and know that you had touched me. You could hear my voice as you watched my lips move, and you could be reasonably certain that it was my voice that you heard. Based on my words and expressions you could also perceive that I heard and saw you. Most of the elements of sensing each other have to do with our physical proximity to each other, in which you and I are localized, meaning that our essence is confined to a finite physical space. Sensing God may be something entirely different because God is not confined to a particular physical space. He is not "localized", meaning that our passive, physical senses cannot easily detect Him in any direct fashion. There must be other means by which we can sense God.
The Bible has some interesting things to say about sight. To the Hebrews, to see God meant certain death. God did not show Moses His face at Horeb, but only showed His back. From John 20:29: Jesus saith unto him, Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. What blessing is Jesus speaking of here? Is there something more earthy, more substantial, about belief that begins without seeing?
The second commandment reads, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above or in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God..." (Exodus 20:4f). Borrowing from Packer on this subject, this commandment does not read, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image... of anything besides Me." No, the Israelites were forbidden from making graven images of God Himself! Are we therefore meant not to see God? The belief that humans could not see God and live, and the prohibition of making visible, touchable likenesses of Him may be God's direction to us to take another path, to search for Him with senses other than our physical sense of sight.
Various of God's creatures make better use of one sense than another. For instance, most animals have a keener sense of smell than humans. Many creatures depend greatly on their sense of hearing for survival. Humans, however, strongly emphasize seeing, far above all other senses. Our optic nerve does a tremendous amount of processing of visual data before the information ever gets to our brain. Our retina has rods and cones which process input signals even before the optic nerve receives them. We are so dependent upon sight that everyone has heard the old saying "Seeing is believing." If you saw a cat and heard a bark, you would look around in search of a dog. If the bark came from the direction of the cat, and at the same time as the cat's mouth opened, you would seriously wonder what was wrong with your senses, or what was wrong with the cat. You would not wonder why the "dog" looked like a cat, because your working set of facts starts with the existence of the cat, because that is what you see. Hearing is clearly secondary. If God is suggesting that we should learn to sense Him without our most dependable sense, sight, this will take some effort, but may yield surprising results.
A note on the dependability of our sense of sight is in order here. It is not at all unusual during traffic accident investigations that two or more witnesses differ materially in their descriptions of the accident. The witnesses saw the accident, have no bias in the cause or responsibility of the accident, yet their accounts are contrary to one another. Sight may be our most dependable sense, but it is far from perfect. We really should use our other senses. Have you ever stood on a hill and closed your eyes, feeling the breeze on your face, smelling the nearby flowers, and listening to the birds and insects? You perhaps could not see the wind, flowers, birds, or insects until you set aside your sight for just a moment. Once heard, felt, or smelt you could observe the branches sway in the wind, and see the flowers that you might have missed, and the birds hopping about in the grass or in the tree branches.
Reason is the mind's "sight." If the purists among the readers allow me I will call "reason" a spiritual sense, for the sake of this discussion. Reason is broadly considered to be an intellectual activity, but it has spiritual implications. In academic circles a well-reasoned argument is given the same amount of respect as an eye-witness account of an event. But we find repeatedly in the Bible verses such as I Cor. 3:19-20: "For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. For it is written, 'He is the one who catches the wise in their craftiness.' and again, "The Lord knows the reasonings of the wise, that they are useless." And again in I Cor. 1:19: For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside."
Yet reason is not the only spiritual sense. What are the other spiritual senses? In addition to reason, one might name yearning (or the satisfaction of that yearning), emotion, faith, intuition, common sense, feelings, and trust. David's use of the terms "taste" and "thirst" in the spiritual context have to do with desire and yearning, but may not be entirely explained by those terms. The symptoms of spiritual senses may be recognition, emotion (fear, delight, sadness), confidence, appreciation, awe, satisfaction, understanding, comprehension, and anticipation. And what can these spiritual senses detect or measure? Possibly holiness, compassion, humility, or some of God's attributes mentioned above. Our human languages tend to be poor at describing things of a spiritual nature, so it is often only through analogy that we can understand spiritual sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. This list of spiritual senses and symptoms is only my attempt to suggest possibilities. The reader may argue with my list, but I will not return the favor.
In spite of the case studies of the Biblical characters mentioned above, there is the
appearance of a cold stone wall between where we are and where we think we want to be.
Yet God has kindly offered some clues. Notice
Luke 18:17: Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall
not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall in no wise enter therein.
I will not debate the exact meaning of "kingdom of God", but I will
ask (and answer) the question of what it is that little children have or don't have that allows them
to receive the kingdom of God more suitably than adults. Children are in the process of learning to
reason, which they will learn in due time, thanks to good training, an eagerness to learn, and effective
use of their other senses. The key here, however, is
When Moses was talking with God he asked God to "show me thy Glory." Realize the sheer audacity of this request! God had already told Moses His name, Yahweh, which was remarkable in itself because of the Middle Eastern significance attached to a person's name. This was not enough for Moses, who then wanted to sense God in a way that he had not experienced until then. Children succeed in learning because they want to know, they're receptive and eager to learn, and they don't know enough to be afraid. Moses knew that seeing God could be his death, but he was excited, even thrilled with what he had experienced up to that moment. If you are not eager to know and sense God, then don't pretend to seek Him. Eagerness comes from the heart, not the mind. Seek not to know everything, but to know as much as you can.
We are asked to believe without seeing, to set aside our reasoning and trust God. But what of our other senses? I don't see where God asks us to set aside hearing, smell, taste, or touch, or any of the spiritual senses mentioned above. Sight is the most far-reaching sense that we have. We can see the stars, but can never hear or touch them. We can see a mountain top, but cannot hear a person on the mountain who is shouting at the top of their lungs. To hear something requires that it be less than a great distance away. We can smell things that are relatively near to us. We can touch things that are perilously close to us. And we can only taste those things which have entered our bodies. David wrote of tasting the Lord, and of thirsting for God. Tasting represents a risk, in that the thing tasted or eaten may adversely affect the body so that we become sick or die. It is also a necessary requirement for living, in that we must eat in order to survive. Interestingly, tasting also affects the thing being tasted. At the Last Supper Jesus spoke to His disciples, saying Take, eat, this is my body... Jesus had been with His disciples for years, under difficult and close conditions, so they already knew Him very well. But His words during the Last Supper, I'm sure, caused considerable discomfort to them. They had been close, but now Jesus spoke of eating His body, and this was likely a closeness that seemed hardly short of frightening. But what might the effects be of eating bread and drinking wine that are supposed to represent the body and blood of Jesus? When you eat something it becomes part of you, and it doesn't take much imagination to believe that Jesus wanted His disciples to understand that He was part of them in ways that they hadn't realized before.
Just as we are asked to momentarily set aside seeing so that we can develop other senses to augment our seeing and our total sensual perception, we sometimes need to exercise our other spiritual senses to complement the important sense of reason. Reason exercised in isolation allows us to keep the subject about which we are reasoning at a distance. One can talk, argue, discuss, and write about a thing for days or years, without ever drawing near to the subject of our talking or reasoning. But emotion, and feelings, and intuition, and yearning, akin to the taste and thirst of which David wrote, are recognizably internal to us. We hide our emotions and yearnings and feelings from those around us to protect ourselves, to avoid becoming vulnerable.
The God whom we seek is not somewhere "out there", but He is beside us, with us. He has directed us to stop looking for Him far away, because He is not there. Look for Him beside us, where He is threateningly near to us! He desires a full-spectrum relationship with us. In Genesis 2:7 we read And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.. Think mouth-to-mouth resuscitation here. This God is up close and personal. I am not off the mark when I say that God wants to dance inside of us!
Putting aside sight and reason, even for a moment, entails risk, a risk that places one's very life in peril. We become vulnerable, like little children, and in so doing exercise some measure of faith. If we set aside these things before God, then it is faith in God that we exercise. Faith is letting go of your most dependable senses, and your life as well. In return, you will see God's hand in all that is around you, you will understand some of the ways in which God works in our lives and in the world, and you will have life unlike anything you imagined. The blessing of belief that begins without seeing is the experience of God made possible through faith.
Faith is a function of desire, willingness, and trust. Desire is a yearning or longing within us that results in strong motivation. Willingness means being amenable to doing something that someone asks of us, before these things are asked. Trust is the act of channeling our willingness and desire in a direction in which the result is not guaranteed. And we don't need much. Matthew 17:20: And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. It starts small. We need only enough to begin to move forward. The mountains to be moved are our own doubt and stubbornness, unbelief, and fear, our perception that is limited to sight and reason, and most importantly our own rigid and misguided ordering of our life. This moving of mountains is not only a relocation but a transformation, in which doubt and stubbornness are replaced by confidence and obedience, unbelief and fear are replaced by belief and boldness, our former sight with a new sight that recognizes God's hand in so much around us, and our former detached reason with a new reason that is free to investigate God without detachment, and our life, which becomes richer than it was before we began our journey. My definition of faith is not necessarily complete, but it works for me, and I believe it can work for you. When God asked Abraham to sacrifice his precious son, Isaac, Abraham desired to obey his God, and was willing, though anguished, to carry out God's command, yet he trusted God to make things right. David desired to be in God's presence, and expressed no hesitation to accept whatever God might say or command as he stood before Him, trusting that whatever God might say or command would be good. Moses desired freedom for his people, and, though hesitantly, eventually demonstrated a willingness to carry out God's commands even though that meant confronting the most powerful ruler in the known world. He trusted God to "do right", even if that meant that he would die following God's commands. For myself, I desire a close relationship with God, I am willing, though somewhat fearful, to do what God desires of me even though I don't know what His demands may be in the future, and I trust that He will make things right if I follow Him. It is hard to understand faith as a sense, but we don't and won't sense God unless we have some small amount of it. Our physical senses cause a (usually) conscious response to the stimulus that was sensed. Faith as a spiritual sense will result in a conscious response to the stimulus of God's active presence in our lives. We will see, hear, smell, touch, and taste Him. We will recognize His hand in our surroundings, as illustrated by this poem: Just To Remind You.
The thing we have been seeking to measure, to satisfy the engineer inside of us, is the depth of our relationship with a holy and personal God. That relationship follows from faith, a child-like combination of desire, willingness, and trust. Even a little faith is enough to allow us to begin to perceive our God who is so personal and near to us. It is faith that allows us to recognize and appreciate His attributes.
VI. Personal Application
We must all make certain assumptions in order to live our lives. We can not open our eyes or even get out of bed in the morning without making some assumptions. (If you really feel a scholarly urge here, read up on Descartes' oven). These assumptions are (usually) reinforced by the events that follow the actions that we perform based on such assumptions. Our assumptions soon become, without any conscious effort, "facts" of our lives. We soon no longer question these assumptions, due to the constant reinforcement that we gain from sensing the events and characteristics that follow from them. You open your eyes, and if there is light in the room you will see the walls and windows and furniture, which you can then touch and feel. When you open the door to go outside you see the Sun which gives warmth, and you feel and breathe fresh air. At every point your senses reinforce each other, and once accustomed to the manners in which senses reinforce each other, you find that it takes no effort to believe what a single sense is telling you.
Sensing God begins with a desire to understand our Creator, a willingness to order our life differently than we do now (without knowing in advance what this might entail), and trust that this God will not "bite" when we have become vulnerable by setting aside (momentarily) our defenses of sight and reason. Psalm 119:105 may help us to understand that our sight and reason, prior to knowing God, are less important than we take them for: Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. "Light" must be present in order for us to use our sense of sight. Why did the Psalmist need God's Word? Because it is dark all around us! He could not see where he was going. We need to find God before we even have light to see! The same with "reason". We must find God before reason can even function.
So what might I be able to detect when I see, hear, smell, touch, or taste God? I will recognize Him. Recognition is the realization that what we perceive has been perceived before. This can be as simple as realizing that the clerk at the checkout counter is the same clerk who checked out our goods the last time we were in the same store. Or it could be that the handwriting on a piece of paper allows us to recognize the writer, or the sound of music allows us to recognize the composer or the artist. I also recognize Him in other people when I see kindness and purity of heart. I hear Him in the sounds of nature. I feel God in a fresh sea breeze as well as in the warmth when my wife buries her face in my back before I go to sleep at night. I recognize God in the macro as I observe stars and galaxies. I recognize Him in the micro when I see how DNA and RNA work inside our cells. I will understand pain and agony, because I will understand the human condition here on earth, recognizing the cause of our suffering, and knowing that it will not end so long as mankind seeks his own selfish ambitions. I will understand my frailty, when the ecstasy of sensing God is slowly forgotten amidst the pressures of life, and I find that I am an Elastic Christian. I will stand in awe of the depth of God's knowledge of me, realizing that He knew me even before I knew or sensed Him, and that He will always know me better than I know myself.
VII. Conclusion
Is it so surprising that a God who brings life out of death, who tells us that the last shall be first and the first shall be last, and that he who would save his life must lose it, would also ask us to look beyond sight and reason in order to find Him so that we can finally gain even better total perception?
As sensing God with our spiritual senses requires more action (conscious effort) than sensing our surroundings with our physical senses, it should not be surprising if laziness on our part results in decreased sensitivity or awareness of His existence and activity in our lives. If we allow our spiritual senses to atrophy, questions of God's existence will naturally arise. We must be alert to the ways in which we sense Him, and accept and understand these senses as part of our real life. It is for this reason that I frequently ask God in prayer to grant me little surprises throughout the day to remind me of His presence. These "little surprises" allow me to sense God when I might not sense Him otherwise.
Elephants do not lay eggs. God is not what we feel or want Him to be; He is who He is, and we won't find out who He is unless we seek Him by faith. Read the Bible. Read J. I. Packer's Knowing God, A. W. Tozer's The Pursuit of God, Henry Scougal's The Life of God in the Soul of Man, and Brother Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God. Find others who share your hunger and thirst for knowing God. And delight in His knowledge of who you are. He loves you even though He knows you. That is love, and that is essential to any deep relationship. Rejoice in God's presence in your life, dance with Him. With some diligence on your part that relationship will grow. May you soon take pleasure in giving glory to God, and may you enjoy Him forever.