You cannot explain color to someone who has never seen or music to someone who has never heard. God is like that. He is understood not before we experience Him, but after.
One of the things the Bible never does is set out to make a tidy, convincing, rational argument for the existence of God. That can seem strange until you realize why. God is one of those realities in life that you only come to understand as you experience more of Him. He is not a theorem to be proven on paper. He is a Person to be known.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1
Some Things Can Only Be Experienced
Think about sound. If someone were completely deaf, there is no way I could ever explain a great symphony to them. I could write out the notes. I could paint you a picture. I could even place your hand on the instrument so you felt it vibrate. But unless you experienced it with your own ears, you would never fully get it.
Or think about color. How do you explain red or blue or green to someone who has never seen? You cannot. Does red sound like fire? Does blue feel like water? The words fall apart. This is what some call an irreducible transaction — a reality that cannot be broken down and explained any further. It can only be experienced.
God is exactly like that. He cannot be fully understood in order for us to then experience Him. He can only be understood after we have experienced Him. Does God even exist? There is no way to fully settle that in your mind until you have encountered Him. Does God care about you? I could do my best to explain it, but the explanation would never do it justice. Only once you have experienced His care for you will you begin to truly understand. And even then, only in part — because Scripture says God's peace actually passes understanding. The only way to know a peace that surpasses the mind is to leave your understanding behind long enough to experience that peace.
Faith Is the Organ of Experience
Here is a picture that unlocks it. You use your eyes to experience color. You use your ears to experience sound. You use your skin to experience touch, your tongue to experience taste, your nose to experience smell. And the faculty you use to experience God is called faith. Faith is the organ by which we perceive Him.
And just as some people have keener eyesight or sharper hearing than others, each of us has faith in varying degrees. But here is the good news: God is willing and able to meet you at whatever level of faith you have. You do not need someone else's faith. You only need to come to Him with the measure you have — and Scripture says God has given to every person a measure of faith. However small it may feel, it came from Him, and it is enough to begin.
Come as You Are, Even With Your Doubts
Maybe your struggle is way back at the beginning. Maybe you are not even sure God exists. I cannot argue you into certainty. It would be futile to try to understand first. But you can come to Him and simply pray, "Dear God, I am assuming You exist. If You do, let me know. Cause me to experience that You are real." That is faith — small, honest, but real.
What does not work is refusing to come at all, standing at a distance and saying, "First prove to me that You exist, and then I'll come." That is like shutting your eyes and demanding that someone explain red to you. It cannot be done. The experience is the doorway to the understanding, not the other way around.
Or perhaps you do believe God exists, but you carry real questions about His love or His care for you. Then come to Him and pray, "Father, show me how much You really love and care for me." If you insist that I convince you God loves you before you will come to Him and experience it, you are shutting your eyes and asking me to describe a song you refuse to hear.
When You Have Prayed and Nothing Seems to Move
Now, someone will say, "But I have already come to Him. I have been praying for weeks, months, years — and I have not seen Him move in that area." The answer is not that He has failed to show Himself. The most likely situation is that your perception of Him is still growing. Your capacity to experience Him is being enlarged.
John Wimber was once asked, "If you believe God heals, why hasn't He healed you, since you have been praying?" His answer was profound. He said, "My friend, you do not know how much worse things would have been for me if God had not been answering my prayers." We rarely see the whole picture. God is often at work in ways our understanding has not yet caught up to.
The Point of It All Is Him
Here is something we must not miss. While God is glad to reveal Himself through the things He does, His primary goal is not merely for you to have things. It is for you to have Him. In the final analysis, nothing else satisfies the deep longing of the human soul — not comfort, not achievement, not approval — nothing but God Himself.
We do not really pray to God simply to get things. We pray for things in order to get God. We pray, we serve, we worship, we seek Him — for one reason above all: to have more of Him. Because He made us not for things, but for Himself. And He will not force Himself on us. He wants us to desire Him above everything else.
As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
Psalm 42:1
So ask yourself honestly: what is the thing you are hungering and thirsting for right now? That deep desire — is it for acceptance, for comfort, for appreciation, for happiness, for a sense of meaning and worth? Whatever it is, nothing and no one but God Himself can finally fill it and satisfy it. And here is the wonder: the moment we open our faith, open our hearts, and begin to move with God, the experience passes understanding. Walking in faith with Him — seeking to experience Him first in your life, your family, your studies, your work — will take you to a place your mind could never have reasoned its way to.
Change Begins With Us
Let me bring this home. What could your faith believe God to experience in your life? It might be as simple as coming to understand His love more deeply, or experiencing Him as your Father, or your helper. Jesus will work with whatever you give Him — but you have to give Him something. So bring Him even a small, specific expectation and watch what He does with it.
And notice this: change usually comes when we ourselves are first changed. It is always easier to want God to change someone else — change my children, change my spouse, change my parents. But real change in a family, in a home, in a relationship, tends to begin when God changes you. Nobody else may budge, but if God can change you, the whole situation begins to shift.
As we grow older, we can become cynical about the dreams God gave us. That is human. Abraham grew cynical. So did Jacob. So did Moses. But for each of them, God did something that opened their eyes again to the heavenly vision. Abraham met God as the sacrifices were cut. Jacob wrestled with God at Peniel and walked away marked. Moses met God at a burning bush. Every one of them simply stepped aside, exercised whatever little faith they had — and God met them there.
God will meet you, too. Not after you have figured Him out, but as you come to Him with the faith you have. Stop trying to understand first. Come and experience Him, and the understanding will follow.