IN ONE SENSE I have been writing this book since the first day I felt a hunger to know God. It seems rather basic, this hunger, but many of the recipes I have followed to fill it have not satisfied. Christians hold out the bright promise of "a personal relationship with God," as if to imply that knowing God works the way a relationship with a human person does. Yet one day a curtain descends, the curtain separating the invisible from the visible. How can I have a personal relationship with a being when I'm never quite sure he's there? Or is there a way I can be sure?

I have written the book in a progression from doubt toward faith, which recapitulates my own pilgrimage. For those leery of spirituality, or perhaps scarred by bad church experiences, I suggest reading as far as you can, then stopping. I plan a second book to address more practical issues of the relationship, such as communicating with God. In each case I am mindful of C. S. Lewis's comment that we need to be reminded more than instructed. I am, after all, taking up the oldest questions in the Christian experience, questions that no doubt troubled Christians in the first century as much as they trouble us in the twenty-first. Because of certain sensitivities, I should also mention that occasionally I rely on the masculine pronoun for God. Obviously I know that God is invisible and has no body parts (the underlying reason for this book), and it's unfortunate that English has inadequate gender-neutral personal pronouns. I dislike all solutions that make God more of an abstraction and less personal. Because of the limitations of language, I fall back on the biblical solution of masculine pronouns.

My editor John Sloan accompanied me along an even more tortuous editorial path than usual. Somehow John manages to point out flaws that will require weeks of work to correct, but does so in a way that feels encouraging and hopeful. A good editor, I have learned, is part therapist or social worker. Bob Hudson and many others at Zondervan ushered the manuscript through later electronic stages. And my assistant, Melissa Nicholson, rendered much valuable service.

I sent an early draft of this book to a variety of readers to get feedback, and the marked-up manuscripts I received by return mail convinced me that a relationship with God is as subjective and varied as the persons on the other end. I wish to thank Mark Bodnarczuk, Doug Frank, David Graham, Kathy Helmers, Rob Muthiah, Catherine Pankey, Tim Stafford, Dale Suderman, and Jim Weaver for their valuable responses. They helped me not only with the content but also the structure and overall concept of the book. In early drafts I felt caught inside a maze; their shouted directions helped me find my way out.

One of these readers wrote back, "So be of good courage, my friend, and let this book be what every religious book is, an imperfect finger pointing with an indeterminable inaccuracy toward Someone we cannot by our pointing make present, but Someone from whom and toward whom we nonetheless feel permission to point, feebly, laughably, tenderly." To that, I say a hearty Amen.