Chapter 4: Apprehending God

Most people today don't know God personally. They believe in Him like a distant concept—deduced, inherited, or passed down through tradition. Even Christians often accept God's existence without ever experiencing His Presence. They speak of God as if He's far away, an ideal or a principle—not a living Person.

But the Bible speaks differently. It assumes we can know God as clearly as we know anyone else. It invites us to taste, hear, and see Him. The words used—taste, smell, see, hear—aren't poetic flourishes. They reflect a deeper truth: we have spiritual senses just as real as our physical ones. And just like our bodies learn by use, our spirits must be trained to recognize the reality of God.

What's blocking us? Unbelief. Not the intellectual kind—but the kind that numbs the heart. We've been trained to trust only what we can see, touch, and measure. The world of the senses overwhelms us. It is loud, demanding, and always in front of us. The unseen realm, where God dwells, is quieter. It takes faith to perceive it—and we've lost the habit of looking.

Faith doesn't create reality. It recognizes it. The spiritual world doesn't need us to imagine it into being. It's already here. God is already here. Our role is not to conjure Him but to recognize Him.

We must reclaim the habit of "reckoning"—not pretending or imagining, but counting on what's true. We believe the earth will support us when we stand. We should believe the same of God when we pray. The visible and the invisible are not opposites. What's spiritual is not less real—it's more real. The true antithesis is not between the seen and the unseen, but between the eternal and the temporary.

We've let the visible world steal our attention. The result is shallow faith, hollow religion, and a lack of wonder. But God is still here. His Presence fills all things. We need to train ourselves to look past the visible and into the deeper world all around us. Tozer calls it a "spiritual kingdom" enclosing us and waiting to be discovered.

Some people dismiss this way of thinking. They say the spiritual is too vague, too personal, too unreal. But ironically, those same people live their physical lives relying on realities they can't see: air, gravity, electricity, emotion. The world mocks "otherworldliness," but lives by its own forms of unseen trust every day.

The "other world" is not in the future. It's right here. The writer of Hebrews says we have already come to Mount Zion, the heavenly city, to God, to angels, to Jesus. That's not poetry—it's reality. The Kingdom of God is here, now, pressing in on us. The only reason we don't see it is because we've gone blind to it.

We don't need more theory. We need perception. The ability to taste God's goodness, hear His whisper, see His glory, feel His nearness. These are not reserved for mystics or monks. They are offered to anyone who will seek with a whole heart. Jesus said the pure in heart will see God. That promise is still open.

As we begin to obey, something awakens. The soul grows eyes. The heart gains ears. The invisible becomes visible. The things of the spirit begin to take shape. And what we once called "faith" becomes experience—felt, known, trusted.

This is not imagination. This is life. This is reality. This is God.

O God, awaken my spirit to truly know You. Open my inner eyes to see, my heart to feel, my soul to believe. Make the unseen more real to me than anything I've ever known. I long to taste You, to experience You—not just in theory, but in truth. Let heaven be more real than earth. Amen.