Encounter with God

Much has been said and more Christians have testified on this subject.

A thousand years ago, the world’s population was estimated to be around 250 million. A hundred years ago, it was put at around a billion and is now at a whooping 6 billion people and still growing at an exponential rate. Religion goes with the growth with an estimated 30,000 sects/denomination in Christianity alone. There is only one God, the God who created and rules the universe. He is the same One God who revealed himself in the scriptures, the same God who talked to Abraham, Moses and Jacob. He remains the same God today who never changes.

Reading the news and looking around, we can see and hear people claiming their own personal encounters. While others believe that they really did, some are doubtful on the inside as exactly the opposite of what comes out from their lips. We confess an encounter with God because we don’t want to be left out from our peers. We confess an encounter with God, because of the fear of being alone; we want to be motivated by this confession. We confess of the same encounter to feel good. No one wants to be far from the Lord’s side anyway.

But is it really that common and easy? Are the numbers that claims such supernatural experience, true?

Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon him while He is near.  Let the wicked forsake His way, and the unrighteous man His thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.

Isa 55:6-7

Paul was blinded for a moment when he encountered Jesus. Job conversed with God out of the whirlwind. Moses beheld God’s glory in a burning bush. These are real encounters. Yet the physical wonder that was associated with these encounters are in no way that can describe the marvel of spiritual encounter they’ve experienced in God. These heroes of faith have thirst within them to meet God. They are athirst for God, and they will not be satisfied till they have drunk deep at the Fountain of Living Water.

Christians of today are so tied up with the world, compromising the spiritual one. They try to live on both worlds, crossing back and forth whenever he wants – dividing his personhood as he sees it fit. We’ve been freed at the cross, yet we enslaved ourselves with the same rituals and traditions that are of no value to God. Some were able to get off from tradition, but is getting ensnared again by too much of fundamentalism. There’s no dual citizenship in Christianity. The old self has been buried and so you have to live out the new one.

A true encounter with God is shown by growing thirst to live out christlikeness. The more he grows spiritually, the farther he feels from being holy. His life must be an extension of his prayer. It should embody his heart’s desire. He continuously empties himself of selfish desire, that God’s grace will fill him out. He has this yearning of a life that ascends to God like sweet incense, where all the things he does is an act of worship.

`I beseech Thee so for to cleanse the intent of mine heart with the unspeakable gift of Thy grace, that I may perfectly love Thee and worthily praise Thee.‘