TASTE AND SEE

Ps.34:8 – Taste and see that the LORD is good;
How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!

This is a classic description of true faith coming from the lips of David. David knew that more than the head and a proper belief system was involved in faith, faith has everything to do with the heart. This is what Jesus was getting at when He told Nicodemus he must be born again. Nicodemus had spent his life studying the scripture and was quite well versed in the scriptures. His problem wasn’t his head knowledge but it was an issue of the heart that Nicodemus was dealing with. I look at it like this, our natural senses are just a picture of our spiritual senses. We must taste and see that the Lord is good. Here is a classic quote from Jonathan Edwards about this amazing truth.

“Thus there is a difference between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness. A man may have the former, that knows not how honey tastes; but a man can’t have the latter, unless he has an idea of the taste of honey in his mind. So there is a difference between believing that a person is beautiful, and having a sense of his beauty. The former may be obtained by hearsay, but the latter only by seeing the countenance. There is a wide difference between mere speculative, rational judging anything to be excellent, and having a sense of its sweetness, and beauty. The former rests only in the head, speculation only is concerned in it; but the heart is concerned in the latter. When the heart is sensible of the beauty and amiableness of a thing, it necessarily feels pleasure in the apprehension.”

What Edwards is describing in this quote is a description of of a personal spiritual awakening. We are dead to the things of God until we are quickened by the Holy Spirit. He awakens us to the spiritual world. In other words the things of God take on a sense of reality to us. We go beyond believing something exists to an experience of these things for ourselves. God’s word and His presence become very real to us.