Feeling God’s Presence: How to Experience and Share the Essence of Faith

Sam asks: “Hello. How can I explain to a friend who has not yet found his way back to faith, what faith really is, and the feeling of Divine Providence that is always with us?”

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Hello and blessings, Sam, and thank you for your thoughtful question.

If someone does not yet know that he has a Father, how can he expect to feel His love? He must first acquire the knowledge of His existence, and then his eyes will be opened to notice His constant, open supervision. As the Torah teaches: “You shall know this day and take it to your heart that the Lord is God” (Deuteronomy 4:39). We must know the truth so that we can truly feel it in our hearts. Therefore, your friend should first become familiar with the many proofs available, such as those published on the Hidabroot website, in order to acquire a sound, upright faith.

Maimonides explains how one comes to love God through an understanding of reality and our place in it: “The Glorious and Awesome God is to be loved and feared, as it says, ‘You shall love the Lord your God,’ and ‘You shall fear the Lord your God.’ How does one come to love and fear Him? When a person contemplates His great and wondrous deeds and creations, and perceives from them His infinite wisdom — immediately he will love, praise, and glorify Him, and yearn with great desire to know His great Name, as David said: ‘My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.’ And when he reflects on these same matters, he will immediately recoil in awe and fear, realizing that he is a small, lowly, dark creature standing with limited understanding before the Perfect Knowledge, as David said: ‘When I see Your heavens, the work of Your fingers… what is man that You are mindful of him?’ Based on these matters, I will explain great principles of the Creator’s works, so that they may serve as a doorway for the one who understands to love God, as our Sages said regarding love — that through it you will come to know the One who spoke and brought the world into being.” (Mishneh Torah, Yesodei HaTorah 2:1–2)

To describe to someone the feeling of faith if he has never experienced it, is indeed very difficult. Millions of people feel God’s presence in their lives; He accompanies them and listens to every prayer. However, this is because they have merited faith and they sense Him in all their life’s events because they possess a kind of “sixth sense” that detects His providence, down to the smallest details.

The effects of faith allow people to withstand the greatest hardships, the heaviest trials, and still trust in God’s goodness — sometimes even against all logic and physical evidence. With genuine faith, a person can survive even the horrors of the Holocaust.

When describing it, perhaps you can say it is the awareness that “there is nothing besides Him” and that the entire universe is filled with God’s presence to the last atom. Unfortunately, even this falls short, because the feeling is infinitely greater than the physical universe. Can we explain colors to someone born blind, or music to someone born deaf? The feeling of faith and trust is more certain than sight or sound. It is the soul’s connection to something beyond the body and beyond the world, to the Infinite God who fills all reality, from the tiniest particle to the largest galaxy. As the Talmudic Sages said: “Why is God called ‘Place’? Because He is the place of the world, but the world is not His place” (Bereishit Rabbah 68:9).

Faith is not merely speaking these ideas; it is truly feeling God’s oneness in your entire being. It is the inner recognition of a reality beyond nature, more real than matter itself, of a unified, boundless Presence embracing all.

Imagine feeling like a tiny speck standing before a vast, endless abyss, but knowing that the abyss itself is nothing before God’s light, which fills everything. That light sees you even in the deepest darkness. You realize that nothing can separate you from Him. Before Him, the greatest galaxy and the smallest speck are the same. Because He sustains all, His light reaches you, knowing you and sustaining your very existence. You feel Him within you and around you, at all times, in all places.

You are overwhelmed by His greatness and kindness: He is the King of the Universe, yet He pays attention to you, the smallest of creatures. Your heart wants to cry out in praise and thanks for the gift of life, for the privilege of knowing Him, and for the miracle that He listens to you.

Faith is the soul’s awareness of the Infinite. Those who have tasted it see His hand in every event, every word spoken to them, every challenge, and even in life’s smallest inconveniences, exactly as the Talmudic Sages taught that even the smallest annoyance is still within God’s providence.

It is the foundation of life itself, the essence of existence, and a feeling so precious that it is worth living for. As King David wrote:
“As a deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God — when shall I come and appear before God?” (Psalms 42:2–3).