Sensing God in Scripture
April 14th, 2022 • by Scott James
Have you ever stopped to think about how cool your brain is? When I was in medical school, neuroscience was one of the most fun and challenging subjects I encountered. I was fascinated by the intricate network of neural pathways, and I’m pretty sure I fried a few of my own staying up late trying to memorize them. But the harder I worked to understand it, the more wondrous it became.
Part of what makes the brain so interesting is that it’s designed to receive and process input from so many different sources. As we experience the world around us, our perception is guided by countless messages being transmitted through sensory neural pathways up to the command centers in the brain. Our interactions are interpreted through categories of taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound, but these sensations are just the umbrella categories—there are endless variations within them.
Take sight, for example: when you look at something, your brain automatically asks a ton of questions: What shape is it? What color? How big? How far away? Is it moving? Intuitively, you are continually processing these and innumerable other sensory inputs, each of which has its own designated neural pathway, all working in concert to form a cohesive picture of the world. I’m telling you—your brain is cool.
Building a Picture of Who God Is
At this point, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with the Christian life. That’s a fair question. I think the reason I’m reminiscing back to my neuroscience studies is that I see in them a parallel with how the Lord stirs our hearts to see him, know him, and love him.
Just as God designed our brains to synthesize multiple layers of inputs into a unified picture of reality, he delights to show us glimpses of his nature, his character, and his glory in myriad ways, all working together to shape our hearts by the power of his Spirit. The longer I walk with Christ, the more I appreciate this complex richness in God’s revelation of himself, and the more joy I find in experiencing his presence. God gives us multiple inputs, building toward a cohesive picture of who he is. And the more we strive to understand him, the more wondrous he becomes to us.
“The more we strive to understand God, the more wondrous he becomes to us.”
It Starts with His Word
Of all the ways God reveals himself to us, we would do well to start with the solid and sufficient foundation of his Word. In Scripture, we have the imperishable Word of truth (James 1:18, 1 Pet. 1:23), breathed out by God himself and “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17). We need nothing more than this, and no other means of knowing God will undercut the primacy of God’s revelation of himself and his saving work in Scripture. If you want to know God, meet him in his perfect, inexhaustible Word. The deeper you go, the more you’ll find of him to treasure.
Interacting with Scripture is not a one-dimensional activity, however. It’s not even supposed to be a solo activity. Like any good feast, the richness of God’s Word calls for us to savor it in every way possible, and to do so in good company. We experience different aspects of God’s Word when we read it, meditate on it, memorize it, sing it, pray it, or see its truth reflected in the lives of those around us. In each of these cases, the experience is only heightened when done in a corporate setting.
Biblical community is a crucial gift to believers. As we interact with and live out God’s Word together God uses us as instruments of grace in each other’s lives. And so, we see that even when the Word of God is held central in the life of a believer, our multi-faceted God intends us to receive it and experience it through multiple avenues of input—the spiritual equivalent of a complex network of neural pathways, all pointing to the same unified story of our glorious God.
“We experience different aspects of God’s Word when we read it, meditate on it, memorize it, sing it, pray it, or see its truth reflected in the lives of those around us.”
Seeing God in Creation
So, we are rooted in God’s Word, but are there any other sensory inputs at play? Can we see or experience anything else of God in the world around us? I believe Scripture itself tells us that we can—and not only that we can, but we should—seek to know him through his creation. The Word of God is fully sufficient, but it is also “living and active” (Heb. 4:12), and one of its powerful effects is that it enlivens and renews our hearts and minds to see the spiritual realities all around us. God has laced his creation with echoes of his nature and attributes, reflections that can teach us if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. The same commitment to God’s Word that leads us to a beautiful truth like Sola Scripture—Scripture Alone—also compels us to hold in high regard the passages that instruct us to know God through his creation.
Glimpsing true and beautiful characteristics of God in his creation—echoes of Eden throughout the wilderness—brings us the most wonderful of sensory overloads. A passage like “The heavens declare the glory of the Lord” (Ps. 19:1) becomes a passport to praise as we give God the credit for every marvelous star in the night sky. “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps. 34:8) takes on new gusto as we enjoy the good gifts he lavishes on us. Even the quietude of “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10) becomes to us a solid shelter when storms are raging. A well-developed biblical imagination cannot even see a seed planted in the ground without reflecting on the nature of the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 13:31–32). Spiritual parallels are everywhere, particularly for a mind steeped in Scripture.
Through his Word and in his world, God engages all our senses, telling us true things about who he is and who we are in relation to him. As we plumb the depths of Scripture and take in the endless vistas that declare God’s handiwork, we can experience the joy of growing in both understanding and wonder.
Scott James serves as an elder at The Church at Brook Hills. He and his wife, Jaime, have four children and live in Birmingham, Alabama, where he works as a pediatric physician. He is the author of Advent- and Easter-themed family worship books as well as the illustrated children’s books The Sower, Where Is Wisdom?, and The Littlest Watchman.
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