Chapter 1: What Does It Mean to Taste God?

There are times when we have interpreted loving our enemies as something we must force ourselves to do.

We think: I have to try to love this person. But that is not the operation being described here. The issue is not trying harder to manufacture love. The issue is allowing God to be God in us.

When we do not resist Him, God is able to express His own character through us. He can use our hands to demonstrate affection. He can use our mouths to speak words seasoned with grace. He can cause us to interact with someone who has deliberately attempted to hurt us without allowing malice to enter our hearts. The resistance occurs when we refuse to allow God to do through us what His nature would naturally do.

We override the Holy Spirit. Instead of allowing His love to govern our response, we permit our own thoughts, injuries, judgments, and emotions to dictate how we will treat the person.

Therefore, the heart must be guarded. Evil thoughts concerning the individual must not be entertained. Thoughts contrary to the character of God must be cast down. When that is done, something extraordinary happens: We begin to taste the character of God.

This is the experience many have cheated themselves out of.

I am convinced that this is one of the last major hurdles the Body of Christ must overcome. The Holy Spirit is grieved in the saint who does not allow themselves to experience the power of righteousness in our daily walk. This grief comes from the knowledge that many will perish because they never truly submitted to the Spirit of the God living in them. As a people that have been chosen to lead the Body of Christ into the power of the Spirit, we must give an account of all the teachings and revelations the Lord has poured out in this ministry.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO TASTE GOD?

Psalm 34:8

O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him. To “taste” something is to experience it. It is one thing to know that God loves an enemy. It is another thing entirely to experience God’s love for that enemy within your heart.

Tasting Is Experiencing

Suppose someone is intentionally attempting to hurt you. You know what they are doing. You understand their intentions. Yet when you encounter them, you discover that there is no malice in your heart. There is no desire for revenge. There is no internal hostility. There is no emotional need to make them suffer for what they have done. Instead, all you feel is love, mercy and pity for them. Your heart is moved to truly intercede for them. That is remarkable because you may have previously believed that Christianity only required you to behave correctly toward an enemy.

You might have thought:

I know I should not hurt them.

I know I should treat them properly.

I know I should forgive them.

But this goes much further.

You discover that you can actually feel the love of God toward someone who has attempted to injure you. At that moment, you are no longer merely observing God’s character in Scripture. You are experiencing it. That is what it means to taste God.

When His Emotion Becomes Your Experience

There is an important distinction here.

When we walk in the Spirit, we are able to experience God’s disposition toward another person. His love becomes the ruling affection within us. That is why the believer can encounter an enemy and discover:

• no malice
• no bitterness
• no resentment
• no desire for retaliation
• no inward hostility

The past can then lose its power over the present relationship. There is simply love. The individual may truly have wronged you. Nothing about walking in love requires pretending that the wrong never occurred. But what they did yesterday no longer has the authority to determine what lives in your heart today. That is liberty. And once we experience that liberty, we have tasted something that Satan cannot successfully counterfeit.