Abstraction and Relating to God

I have to engage with religious people to find out exactly what phenomenon people are designating when they talk about their relationship to abstract spiritual concepts. Eg when someone says they “love Jesus” or “let God into my heart”. They have no experience of interaction with these personalities so how do they know it’s not someone else in disguise?

Perhaps they are pointing to subjective emotional responses or even physically-located sensations that they associate with the particular version of the concept of god they happen to have. No doubt some of them are insincere and no doubt some actually hallucinate conversations.

An analogous issue would be in dealing with abstract concepts eg “justice” or “evil”. Personally I sometimes get an undifferentiated physical/emotional sensation that feels like it connects me to something greater and wiser. I choose to place agnostic conceptual interpretations on top of it like “my soul” or “the spirit of the Universe” or “my connection to the beehive consciousness”. It could just be indigestion though.