Consider the following. When I'm scuba diving, ignoring my senses could cost me my life. For example, as I go deeper, I have to pay close attention to the feelings I have in my ears, my head, my joints, my body. It's not possible to simply dive in the water and swim down a couple hundred feet without doing some physical preparation first. Equalizing your ears, adjusting your air, fitting your gear and mask so you can see. If I don't do these things, a deep dive will be uncomfortable for me. It's far more comfortable to hang out on the surface and float around yet the colors and sounds below are virtually invisible to you until you swim down. In the same way, pursuing the deeper things of God requires some attention to the physical. Training your ears to hear His voice, being filled with His Spirit (breath), and opening your eyes to see His manifest presence.

King David had more than 30 years where he came before the actual manifest presence of God that was upon the Ark of the Covenant. In that context he wrote in Psalm 63, "My flesh longs for you." Have you ever been so affected by the presence of God that your body itself ached and cried out for more? What was true for David is true for us as well. Just as my flesh longs for Salt Lick BBQ, good salsa, and a tall sweating glass of sweet tea, my physical body can ache for God. And if we can hunger for God physically, then we can be satisfied by God physically for there is no such thing as hunger without the potential for fulfillment. You don't have an appetite for things that are non-existent. Rather, God has put within our makeup the capacity to recognize Him and His activities with our physical bodies.

Ready to go a step further? Hebrews 5:14 says that a mark of maturity is having the sense trained to discern good and evil. Touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste can be trained to recognize the presence of God. For so long I tried hard to avoid giving any attention to what happened to me physically in a worship service. Working hard to avoid deception can be a deception in itself. In doing so, we often avoid God by denying our very senses that were created to praise and honor Him. Back then I would focus on only the intellectual (90%) and the emotional (10%). Yet God communicates with us in so many ways, through impressions of the heart, mental pictures, and physical sensations. When we ignore our bodies under the guise of denying the flesh we may also be ignoring the voice of God. The denial of the flesh is, for many, an excuse to succumb to the fear of man. That is that people don't dance in church and while they say that they're denying their flesh, in reality they're afraid of what people will think.

Here's an interesting point. I had a sinus headache last week and upon entering the water, my head felt like it would explode. The deeper I went the more uncomfortable I was. Eventually I had to call it a day. When your mind isn't right, the presence of God can physically be uncomfortable and even aggravating. Its amazing how many trips to the bathroom or the water fountain people take during a worship service. It's far more comfortable to hang out on the surface and float around. Don't do it. God has placed in you an appetite that His presence alone can satisfy. Clear your ears, fill your lungs with His Spirit, and open your eyes. Go deep.