Here are two sections by E. Stanley Jones from a daily devotional book I highly recommend. I have followed them with my own conclusion.
Truly you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior (Isaiah 45:15 NRSV).
Here is the hidden God, like the hidden thought…we cannot know what he is like unless he communicates himself through a word.
If you say, “I can know God in my heart intuitively and immediately, without the mediation of a word,” then the answer is: “But your ‘heart’ then becomes the medium of communication and knowing the heart as you do with its sin and crosscurrents and cross-conceptions you know it is a very unsafe medium for the revelation of God.”
God must reveal himself.
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God (John 1:1).
Here is the hidden God and he expresses himself through the Word…
Jesus is called the Word because the word is the expression of the hidden thought. Unless I put my thought into words you cannot understand it. Here is God; we sense his presence, but he is Spirit, hence hidden. We want to know what he is like—not in omnipotence, nor in omniscience, nor in omnipresence; a revelation of these would do little or no good, but we would know his character, for what he is like in character, we, his children, must be. So the Hidden Thought—God—becomes the Revealed Word—Christ. (365 Days with E. Stanley Jones, Mary Ruth Howes, editor, Dimensions for Living Nashville, 2000, pp. 74,75)
No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known (John 1:18 NIV).
I was impressed as I read these that spending time in God’s Word, accompanied by a prayer that the Holy Spirit would teach us, is an essential part of seeking God. Christians do not meditate with empty minds, but with thoughts shaped by God’s Word. The still-small inner voice of the Holy Spirit most often uses the written revelation, the record of Jesus’ words and presence, to guide us and speak to us.
What an incentive to our discipline to seek God. The situation turns out to be so simple—too simple. Unless we spend time with God in God’s Word and in prayer, we will never really know God. We would prefer a fast-food shortcut, a spoon-fed alternative, an easier way but there are none. But the truly good news is that God desires that we discover him! And he has provided a means for us to begin.
Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near (Isa 55:6 NIV).
