The other day a young man told me about being healed from color blindness. For years he had this condition but did not know it. People would talk about the splendor of fall with all its radiant colors and he could not make sense of it. Sure it was all ‘nice’ and everything, but it seemed as though the hype was a little exaggerated in his mind. That is, of course, until his eyesight was healed. Suddenly the fullness of what was always there came into view. That is when he realized that while he had been looking at the same trees and fields as others, he was seeing a limited version of it. What if we were all experiencing only a fraction of what was there? What if, while we are convinced we are ‘tasting and seeing’ God, we are all functioning from a diminished capacity? Considering the infinite expanse of an unfathomable God there is no question this is true! The only real question now is ‘How much are we missing?’
Taste and See
We are told in the scripture to ‘taste and see that the Lord is good’ (Psalm 34:8). This suggests some kind of experience as a natural part of our faith. Worship in particular should be a place and time where we experience God. There is clearly divine strategy behind worship, but consider something for a second. Have you ever looked at someone worshipping God and thought they were getting more out of this than you were? As they abandoned themselves and cried out, demonstrating sheer exhilaration, did you wonder what you were missing? If so you are not alone.
The truth is we are disposed to justifying ourselves. That is, the underlying impulse is to believe that there is nothing wrong with ‘me or my experience with God’. This is especially true if you have been at this a long time. When it looks like you are missing something you might first make some attempt to grab it. If your attempts are not met with success in a timely manner you probably will begin to look for other answers.
Those answers are in all likelihood an attempt to dismiss what others have as being unnecessary or invalid. We might for example rationalize that others are simply more disposed to ‘that kind of thing’. Or we avoid the issue by creating an explanation that improves our position. For example, ‘my faith is rooted in a genuine reality rather than subjective emotion’; ergo, I have no need of ‘experienced based frivolity’. Entire systems of thought are created to evade any possibility that someone else might have more of God than we do. Or worse yet, that we have on some level refused to develop an appetite for God.
Hunger for God is something that can increase and decrease. Jesus warned us of a quenching of the seed of God’s Word by the cares and concerns of this world. John told us not to love the world (1 John 2:15). The truth is our desire for more of God can be disappointed, offended or overcome. In short, it can be stolen from us!
In the same way that a man can lose his taste for food we can lose our taste for God. Consider a smoker. Anyone who has been a smoker for a long period time can attest to a loss of a sense of taste. Their taste buds die or lose the ability to enjoy the tang and zest of good food. There is nothing wrong with what they are eating. The food contains all of the same stimulus and spectrum of flavor, but their mouths are no longer alive to the experience.
When your ability to taste is lost you are functioning from a diminished capacity. Everything necessary for the full measure of experience is there within the food but the defect is found elsewhere! While others rave about the meal, citing some distinct edges and subtle beauty in the spices, to you, it is all oatmeal minus the sugar. Everything is bland and flat, so much so that you find it hard to even sit down for a meal. When this is how you feel about God do not despair. Sometimes these seasons are part of a pruning process to test our hearts. The struggle of this season will always come when we choose to believe that something else ie. the food is at fault. It is a time to faithfully declare ‘God is good and His mercies endure forever’.
A Limited Appetite
Sometimes the issue is not a complete loss of hunger but a limited appetite. I, personally, have a notoriously low capacity for large meals. When we go to a buffet I never feel like I get my money’s worth. As I watch others heaping easily twice as much on their plate in one sitting as I can consume in an entire meal, I wish I could eat more. At a buffet there are so many choices to entertain the palate. Usually I try to take a tiny amount of just some of the good stuff hoping to come back for seconds. It rarely works, as my appetite is quickly satiated. When I was younger I would eat more anyway for the sheer enjoyment but would then be in pain for hours after.
This illustration speaks again of a kind of diminished capacity. While one might be able to enjoy the food equally as another, in terms of savoring the flavors, the experience goes on much longer for one than the other. If we were to quantify the experience and give value to the amounts of enjoyment, clearly one person can ‘enjoy’ more than the other. At the end we might be equally satisfied but one has taken in much more.
If we add the two dimensions together then a person could potentially enjoy a meal multiplied times above another. There is a depth of taste that enhances the intensity of the food experience, as well as the literal amount one can eat. We could say it amounts to both depth and breadth. Two people taste the same pizza but one cannot take in the flavors or eat as much. Now apply this to taking in the beauty and goodness of God.
Opening the Senses
The Apostle Paul considered this a central issue and so much so that he frequently prayed that God would open their ability to perceive.
“That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his might power.” (Ephesians 1:17-19)
Contrary to our typical thinking, wisdom and understanding are not fixed abilities. We can actually increase our ability to absorb more of God. In fact, the very nature of our growth and development requires this increase. Faith and passion for God enable us to receive more of him, which is to say, become filled with the knowledge of who He is. Later in Ephesians Paul expands on this prayer saying:
“For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father … that he would grant you, …, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man… that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:14-19)
It is not an accident that Paul mentions the breath, length, depth and height of the love of God. He is purposely demonstrating the many dimensions of the love because they are missed. Who knows how much we are missing? Perhaps the most any typical believer gets is a two-dimensional revelation. What a tragedy!
What if we could grow in our ability to increase our senses? As it is the best of us are still looking through a glass darkly (1 Cor. 13:12). We are all beginning from a deeply flawed perspective. We can rejoice in each increase but we should never be satisfied. Like the man who was color blind, we cannot know what we are missing until we are healed. What if we could heighten the flavor of God’s presence; hear precisely the whispers of His voice; touch the manifestation of His Glory; smell the fragrance of the Lord and see that the Lord really is good? There are additional veils from which we can be released. This in fact is what is in the heart of God. He means to increasingly satisfy us by refining our capacity to taste, touch, smell, hear and see. His desire is to make us like the host of heaven, who not only appreciate the full spectrum of His beauty, but they never tire of beholding Him.