No one is ignorant of the reality of God by lack of evidence. No evidence is needed for us to reasonably believe in God because the knowledge of God is innate with us; it is inscribed into our very being. You have to actively suppress this knowledge to believe that there is no God. To know God you must simply be willing to know him. And if the immediacy of God’s presence recedes from our consciousness it is because our strength of will has abated. Here in Ephesians 4:17-19 Paul declares that the reason people don’t know the truth is because they don’t want to know it, that is, because they actively suppress the truth (see also Romans 1:18ff ). It is not only non-believers who do this; we believers do the same to some extent . In Ephesians 4 Paul warns believers not to harden their hearts and thereby darken their understanding as the gentiles (unbelievers) do. In personal relationships there is a kind of communication breakdown that can come from what we might call ‘motivated misunderstanding.’ In these cases, the misunderstanding occurs not because one person cannot understand the other, but because they choose not to. It is a common evasion strategy. Well, we do the same thing to evade God. We feign misunderstanding as a way of evading a truth we do not want to face. The propensity to do this is often more deep-seated and automated than we are conscious of. The thing you most need to hear from God is often the thing you least want to hear. Are you willing to face the truth?
Ask God to help you soften your heart to him so that you may become more conscious of the truth.
Read Ephesians 4:17-19 and Romans 1:18-23
