A.W. Tozer on Experiencing the Presence of God:

The great passion in the heart of every human being is to experience the awesome majesty of God’s presence. The highest accomplishment of humanity is entering the overwhelming presence of God. Nothing else can satiate this burning thirst.

The average person, unable to understand this passion for intimacy with God, fills his life with things, hoping somehow to satisfy his inward longing. He chases that which is exterior, hoping to satisfy that inner thirst, but to no avail.

St. Augustine captured the essence of this desire in his CONFESSIONS: “Thou hast created us for Thyself and we are restless until we rest fully in Thee.” This explains the spirit of restlessness pervading every generation and every culture- always striving but never coming to the knowledge of the truth of God’s presence.

Augustine’s Confessions:

Man is one of your creatures, Lord, and his instinct is to praise you. He bears about him the mark of death, the sign of his own sin, to remind him that you thwart the proud. But still, since he is a part of your creation, he wishes to praise you. The thought of you stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you, because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you.

[Those] who are called to the most active life must yet have their contemplative hours, and must first find time to be alone with God. Those are not fit to speak of the things of God in public to others, who have not first conversed with those things in secret by themselves.

When Christ would appear as a Teacher come from God, it shall not be said of him, “He is newly come from travelling, he has been abroad, and has seen the world;” but, “He is newly come out of the desert, he has been alone conversing with God and his own heart.”

–Matthew Henry Commentary of the Whole Bible