There’s no end to the universe. Thus, it’s completely beyond any human being’s capacity to comprehend its immensity. We can gaze into it, predict the movements of the objects in it and speculate about what’s “out there”, but wrapping our brains around what we’re actually a part of boggles the mind. Therefore, we tend to concern ourselves only with what our senses tells us is a tangible reality.
Yet as tangible as it is, there’s a spiritual reality we’re not even aware of that dwarfs all of creation. A.W. Tozer commented, “The great unseen Reality is God.” While being interrogated, Jesus informed Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world“ and “My kingdom is from another place“ (John 18:36). Our Lord’s kingdom is a spiritual realm.
This doesn’t mean that just because we can’t see Him, we can’t know God. Tozer wrote, “The Bible assumes as a self-evident fact that men can know God with at least the same degree of immediacy as they know any other person or thing that comes within the field of their experience. The same terms used to express the knowledge of God are used to express knowledge of physical things.”
Examples abound in God’s Holy Word: “Taste and see that the LORD is good!“ (Psalm 34:8). “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me“ (John 10:27). “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God“ (Matthew 5:8). “See my pierced hands and feet. See for yourselves, it is I, standing here alive. Touch me and know that my wounds are real“ (Luke 24:39). You get the point.
Not everybody gets to do that, though. It’s a blessing limited to those who have the Holy Spirit living inside of them. The spiritual faculties of an unregenerate man or woman lie dormant unless and until they receive the divine gift of faith in Jesus. Why’s that? Because original sin ruined everything. Only Christ’s atoning death on the cross made salvation available to those who humble themselves before Him. They alone can know God.
What’s the payoff? J.I. Packer explained, “Those who know God have great contentment in God. There’s no peace like the peace of those whose minds are possessed with full assurance that they’ve known God, that God has known them, and that this relationship guarantees God’s favor to them in life, through death and on forever. …The comprehensiveness of our contentment is another measure whereby we may judge whether we really know God.”
So why do so many Christians think God is some kind of force rather than a loving person who desires we should know Him intimately? Tozer wrote, “The answer is our chronic unbelief. Faith enables our spiritual sense to function. Where faith is defective the result will be inward insensibility and numbness toward spiritual things.”
Understand God isn’t somewhere far away. He’s right here. His spiritual kingdom envelopes and embraces His adopted children 24/7. God is well within reach. He patiently waits for us to trust Him, cling to Him and immerse ourselves in His immediate, fatherly presence. The mistake too many make is to foolishly live in a false reality; a counterfeit one of our own design and preference.
Tozer defined spiritual reality as “That which has existence apart from any idea the mind may have of it, and which would exist if there were no mind anywhere to entertain a thought of it. That which is real has being in itself. It doesn’t depend upon the observer for its validity.” In other words, like it or not God’s reality is the only reality there is.
Pity the atheist who believes solely in what they can touch, see, hear, smell or taste on this mortal coil all of us began our existence upon. Don’t get me wrong. Christians aren’t daft. We know this world isn’t an illusion. We know God has provided us with five senses to recognize and appreciate the beauty of earth, His most unique creation of all.
It’s important to recognize knowing God and knowing everything He knows aren’t the same thing. Calvin wrote, “Since the Holy Spirit always instructs us in what is useful, but altogether omits or only touches cursorily on matters which tend little to edification, of all such matters it certainly is our duty to remain in willing ignorance.”
The term willing ignorance offends those who deem themselves “smarter than the average bear.” It’s also why most with that attitude aren’t Christians. Tozer commented, “At the root of the Christian life lies belief in the invisible. The object of the Christian’s faith is unseen reality.”
Philip Yancey, in Reaching for the Invisible God, wrote, “The modern world honors intelligence, good looks, confidence, and sophistication. God, apparently, does not. To accomplish His work God often relies on simple, uneducated people who don’t know any better than to trust Him, and through them wonders happen.”
Tozer opined, “If we truly want to follow God, we must seek to be other-worldly. I say this knowing well that that word has been used with scorn by the sons of this world and applied to the Christian as a badge of reproach. So be it. Every man must choose his world. If we who follow Christ, with all the facts before us and knowing what we’re about, deliberately choose the Kingdom of God as our sphere of interest, I see no reason why anyone should object.”
He then adds the kicker. “If we lose by it, the loss is our own; if we gain, we rob no one by so doing. The ‘other world,’ which is the object of this world’s disdain and the subject of the drunkard’s mocking song, is our carefully chosen goal and the object of our holiest longing.”
Jesus said, “Blessed are those who haven’t seen and yet have believed“ (John 20:29). The Quaker theologian Elton Trueblood put it bluntly: “If a man wishes to avoid paradoxes, the best advice is for him to leave the Christian faith alone.”
Even Christians Get the Blues 