Encountering God is the desire of every believer, and even unbeliever, although they may not realize it.
A wrestle with Him, gold lettering on a wall, a separation of waters to walk through; these examples from the Word make rubbing shoulders with God seem far off, distant, something designed only for a special forces type of people. Rarely do we believe that hearing, experiencing, and encountering God in those are for us.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
My story in short started pungent like most. I was a disbeliever, mocker, and chastiser. I thought I knew best; I was selfish and proud. Yet, I was abused and insecure, hiding deep wounds and fighting my way through life. It brought me to dark places of hatred towards the things of God mixed in with the candy of the world like promiscuity, drugs, alcohol. You name it, it was attached to me and the identity it was creating about me was driven into the deep parts of my heart.
I was raised in a home where talk of God was not just distant but absent altogether. An all-American girl with a Marine father who loved justice and honor but had no room for weakness, humility, or even truth outside what Dad deemed right. My Dad was tough and a deep thinker. Later as a teen, he would study the Bible to disprove it when my uncle gave his life to the Lord spontaneously. He never believed a word it said, those conversations were the only faint presence of truth in my life til a winter day when I was 16 years old.
He left for work and never came home the same.
My dad was a foreman of a construction crew, restoring (ironically) the exterior of a vintage church. One day he failed to secure himself to the scaffold and fell three stories to a sidewalk below. This resulted in the breaking of his body, mind, and life into a thousand pieces. The same day, just hours after, I was in a serious car accident with my younger sister, leaving the whole family dismayed with no hope to cry out to.
We were paralyzed.
Miraculously, we all lived, and months later when my Dad finally woke from the coma and started to speak, it was obvious that his memory was jumbled and forever he would struggle with the normal functioning of his brain.
He fell asleep an atheist; he woke as a follower of Jesus
When Dad started speaking, He would talk about prayer and Jesus. Many of his early memories had faded away but not the truth of scripture that he had studied. It stuck. He somehow remembered it. It was bizarre.
Even when he studied to disprove the Word, the Word still was active and alive! He was a different man in multiple ways. His body struggled, his mind had pockets of time missing, and he had to learn to eat, hold a pencil, punctuate words, and do the simplest mundane tasks that people often do; yet somehow he knew God. He never had any recollection of not knowing God. He believed he always had.
God pursued him and revealed Himself to this man while he slept in a coma.
Who was this God?
My Dad’s faith was remarkable, but it wasn’t enough to sell me out on Jesus until I experienced Him for myself ten years later in an unusual way.
Encountering God is personal.
Since my burning bush experience, I have looked for Him and am continuously on the hunt to see where He is and what He is up to.
I heard if you looked for Him, you would find Him, but I now knew without any doubt that even when you are not looking for Him you can bump into, stumble onto, and fall right into the hand of the Living God who willingly makes Himself known.
I wasn’t seeking God when I landed face down in my backyard giving my life to Jesus, but He was seeking me.
In addition, my Father wasn’t looking for God when he plummeted to the cement below that December morning, but God was pursuing Him.
This is a revelation of what kind of God we serve.
We have a God in our midst, in our presence, that passionately pursues.
There is no limit to how far He will go to capture your heart and unveil Himself to us. He is strategic. He is power! He is in pursuit and does not linger or labor in vain. He is timely, never late, and never early. He is precise.
When you are awake and when you are even asleep, God is postured in a way for you to encounter Him in new and exciting ways, not just once, but repeatedly for the rest of your life.
What does that look like for you?
Have you experienced God like that?
Do you desire to go deeper with Him?
Once I had my life-changing soul-bending experience with God, I was never the same. But, now what?
I wanted more.
Encountering God can look millions of different ways, it’s never the same story. All people see Him, hear Him, feel Him, and experience Him differently because He is personal to know.
He knows us so well. And because we are all the same body of Christ, He uses our differences to grow the Kingdom. I often say God can speak to us however He wants, so of course the world will be full of bazillions of testimonies of His good work through His people. He’s brilliant in the ways He gets our attention.
How to see Him
If you love Him, hearing and seeing Him won’t be difficult. I often do heart checks and ask myself if I am currently loving Him well. Am I spending time with Him, this God of my heart, or do I just want Him to do cool work in and through me without exchanging anything for it? And the exchange, the one He desires, is simply just your heart. This is why I examine mine often. It’s the only thing we have to offer Him.
If my heart is well and grounded, I look for where He is working around me. Instead of asking Him to do something with me, I pay attention to what He is already up to and move towards that.
If my heart is selfish and sour, and it often can be, I ask myself why. More often than not, it is because my perception is off.
I have chosen to look at myself, what I want, and what’s in front of me, more than looking at the Lord. I have forgotten who I am compared to Him and who I am concerning Him.
When I remind myself that everything else is a loss compared to my relationship with the Lord, everything falls back into place in my heart and mind.
You never have to look hard.
You will see Him all around you if you keep your eyes peeled and listen to what people say or do around you. You will begin to recognize His work quickly. You will see Him working with a stranger, a friend’s grief, in a toddler’s words, or even in the mundane. If you seek Him, you will find Him.
He will always be working to accomplish His purposes and once you see it, you will be given the great and exciting opportunity to work alongside Him. This is where a life-changing daily deeper connection with God takes place. The more you work beside Him, the more you will encounter Him in ways that are new to you.
It doesn’t even matter if you have been a follower for decades, there is always a deeper place your faith can go. As your roots continue to wind themselves to deep waters and good soil, you will become so fruitful. You will be given great opportunities to be obedient to God. Every time you see Him working and come into that space, He will also give you work to do. As you move into that place of servanthood for Him, your experiences with God will become frequent. You will know Him more.
By desiring God and obeying what He tells you, you will do more for the Kingdom of God in minutes and days than you would in years of laboring alone. That is when your life steps away from commonplace and becomes powerful. The revelation of God in your life will then become contagious, and the spillover effect can easily fill journal entries, give you amazing testimonies, and encourage other believers. Ultimately, it allows you to be more securely connected to your awesome Creator, and because of that, it has the ability to change the world.
The God we serve uses life-altering events and big stories to get our attention but He also more often, uses the ordinary. He uses it all.
As I reflect on my life, my dad wasn’t able to give me what I needed growing up. But God knew my father. He brought him to Himself even while he was still a sinner. He did the same for me. How much more He does for His people who love Him.
May you be blessed with keen eyes for the Lord’s work and an eagerness to enter those spaces with Him, expecting to find Him more and more.
To know Him,
Amy Schlichter
Website: www.upper-room-coaching.com Connect: facebook.com/amymschlichter
