It’s day two of our monthly 3-day fast, and as I was praying today I realized how much my own spirit is not awake to the spiritual realm. I’m not just saying that to throw out some lofty IHOP-ese language, either. Let me explain.

The Bible gives us clear indication on how believers are to know God. All of the same characteristics for apprehending or laying hold of something in the natural are used for the spiritual. For example (my emphasis added):

“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good;
Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!”
(Psa 34:8 NKJV)

“that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding (heart: NIV) being enlightened”
(Eph 1:17-18 NKJV)

“All Your garments are scented with myrrh and aloes and cassia,
Out of the ivory palaces, by which they have made You glad.”
(Psa 45:8 NKJV)

“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.”
(John 10:27 NKJV)

“Blessed are the pure in heart,
For they shall see God.”
(Matthew 5:8 NKJV)

Of course the entire Scripture speaks of this subject.

In the same way we have natural faculties to read a book, smell a flower, taste a steak, and pet a cat, we have been given spiritual faculties to know and experience the depths of God. But the curse of sin has caused these faculties within us to lose their sensitivity. It takes a renewing work of the Holy Spirit to awaken them. No amount of good worship CDs, teaching CDs, theology books, or correct doctrine can awaken them. We have to ask Him for help.

I often used to say that the spiritual realm is actually more real than the chair I am sitting in. But I realized I was saying that out of imagination rather than out of experience. Imagination is not faith. Faith is a deep knowing, a bedrock foundation of confidence and certainty that cannot be conjured up by any man’s imagination. A.W. Tozer says “faith creates nothing; it simply reckons upon that which is already there.”

We need our spiritual faculties awakened. We as believers have been given the Holy Spirit so that we might experience that which “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” (1 Cor. 2:9) But Paul tells us in the very next verse: “But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.”

We were made to know the very substance of the spiritual and the eternal! We were made to experience God with the spiritual faculties He has given us. In the same way that I can enjoy a beautiful sunset, I was made to enjoy the beauty of God (Ps. 27:4). While the fullness of what we were meant to experience can’t happen until we actually receive a resurrected body, Paul reminds us that the Holy Spirit has given us a down payment of those things even now. I want to know what Paul experienced that would cause him to count every natural thing as rubbish compared to knowing Christ. We’ve been sleeping so long… Awaken my spirit, Lord! I want to see and know!