APPREHENDING GOD [Part One]: Rightly Perceiving God
Not as though I had already attained, either were
already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may
apprehend that for which also I am apprehended
of Christ Jesus.
(Philippians 3:12 KJV)
Our apprehension of God is very much affected by our perception of Him, and therein lies the problem. We bring a distortion out of our own subjectivity and out of our own twist. We see God through a prism of our own being, through the limitations of the three-dimensional realm.
Some see Him as some errand-boy, stationed to meet their needs at the flip of fingers. The God of the Bible will not stoop to become an image painted on the canvas of a carnal mind.
To perceive God rightly requires something from us: the child-like artlessness and complete trust in Abba. If we have any controversy with God, the problem is not God but ourselves; we are projecting something onto Him that is not Him and becoming guilty of Israel’s sin. The thing we need is to be transformed into His image, not to project our image into Him. He is not a convenience for us.
Are you asking this question? Can we truly comprehend God?
He is Almighty. Creator. King. Unless we know the God of the universe in the place that is too deep for words, then we do not know Him. Until there are a gasp and a splutter, until we find ourselves prostrate and stretched out as dead, do we desire to know Him? How many of us walk through life without a glimpse of His light, the stillness of His Shepherd’s voice, the invaluable knowledge of His person, and are still perfectly content and think we know Him, and that we communicate Him?
We must be wary of making God commonplace, of molding Him into our image and caging Him in our pocket-sized minds. God is other than what we are, and this, we must never forget. To see God through the lenses of our depraved world is to reduce Him to a mere scientific mortal, like one of us, but He is not. He is Supreme. Israel, in the wilderness, did not enter into His promised rest because of unbelief, profanity, familiarity. He was perceived of them as an ordinary ‘thing,’ an ideology.
God is not an idea; He is not a creation of man’s cognitive reasoning. He is a Person, the creator, the source and sustainer of the cosmos. If we ever accord ourselves the privilege of relationship with Him, He baths our sights with eyesalves and bestows on us the ability to apprehend Him, a little; to see Him through our renewed selves. And, what a privilege it is to have even a fractional knowledge of the God of the universe.
God is misrepresented in many circles today and by many individual believers because of their inability to rightly lay hold on Him; little time is spent on Knowing God, and we can only represent Him to the extent to which we know Him. It takes time to grow any sustainable relationship; the one with God is not an exception.
We can rightly perceive Him if our spiritual senses are quickened, and they can only be quickened if we take the time to stay with Him, in His Presence.
