We talked about God's glory in the past two lessons and how wonderful (yet at the same time terrifying) it can be to come into greater measures of His manifest glory.
We also saw that at times, God is willing to lift the veil a bit and show us bits of His glory. There can be times when we have supernatural encounters with Him. There can be times when He speaks to us so clearly and distinctly that it seems like He is using an audible voice. There can even be times when He sends angels to deliver messages to us. Or, there can be times when we are taken into open visions and caught up to the "Third Heaven" as the Apostle Paul was in 2 Corinthians 12:2.
But these things won't be His normal way of interacting with us. Most of the time, He will use interactions that seem much more subtle or much more mundane.
If you look in the bible you will find people who seemed to have all sorts of supernatural encounters with God. It would be easy to get the mistaken impression that this was the status-quo for them, the normal way that God interacted with them all of the time. You might think that angelic visits and divine encounters were an every day occurrence in their lives. But if you look at the bible more closely, you will see that this was not the case.
Let's take Abraham for example, a man who the bible calls a "friend of God" (in 2 Chronicles 20:7 and in Isaiah 41:8). On first reading of the book of Genesis, it seems like Abraham had all sorts of visions and encounters with God, including angelic visitations and even a divine visitation (where God Himself came and talked to Abraham). That sounds like someone who lives in the supernatural "fast lane," so to speak. For years, I had the impression that Abraham had these supernatural encounters with God on a near-daily basis. But that is not the case at all.
His first encounter with God at age 75 in Genesis 12, where God told him to leave his homeland and follow God. He did. He packed up his entire family and household goods and traveled for some time to arrive in the land of Canaan. When he arrived Canaan (probably months later), Abraham had his second encounter with God, where God promised to bless Him, as per Genesis 12:7.
Abraham built an altar to commemorate his encounter with God. But he did not stay in Canaan. He migrated to Egypt and stayed there for a significant amount of time, during which he acquired great wealth. Then he left Egypt and went back to Canaan. He dwelt there for a while, along with his nephew Lot, and both of them had a lot of herds of livestock. But "the land was not able to support them, that they might dwell together, for their possessions were so great that they could not dwell together. And there was strife between the herdsmen of Abram's livestock and the herdsmen of Lot's livestock" (Genesis 13:5-7). So Abraham divided the land between himself and Lot, and Lot relocated all of is many possessions geographically to Sodom.
After that, Genesis 13:14 records Abraham's next (third) encounter with God. It says that happened "after Lot had separated from him." This means a lot of time passed between Abraham's second and third encounters with God--probably many years. First he had to travel to Egypt, they stayed the for a while, they traveled back with all those herds (which move slowly). Then they were in Canaan for some time in order to discover that the land could not support both their herds. Then it probably took another couple of months for Lot to pack up his household and permanently relocate to Sodom.
Are you getting the picture? A lot of time (years) has passed from when God had last met Abraham until He met him again. One divine encounter carried Abraham through a lot of events in his life, and he did not have his next divine encounter with God until after Lot separated from him and moved to Sodom.
Again, some significant amount of time passes while Lot was in Sodom, and a war broke out. A raiding party carried Lot and his family away as captives (probably to be sold as slaves), and Abraham when and rescued them. This type of thing doesn't happen overnight, time has been passing.
Abraham has his fourth encounter with God after he rescued Lot. This is recored in Genesis 15, and it was a two-part encounter. The first part was where God spoke to Abraham and promised him an heir. Then God instructed Abraham to build an altar and make a sacrifice but not to set it on fire. Abraham did so, probably early the next morning. He spent the day watching over the offering and chasing the vultures away from the carcasses on the altar.
Then at night, God causes a deep sleep to fall on Abraham. He gave him a divine dream (night vision) where God spoke to him. Let's call that dream encounter number 5, though technically it is an extension of Abraham's fourth supernatural encounter with God. By the way, this is the first time that Abraham had two encounters with God that were close together time-wise.
After that, the bible records more "mundane" developments in Abraham's life, and these indicate the passage of a significant amount of time. Abraham told his wife Sarah about the promise of a son. She tried to conceive but remained barren. Then she got this "bright idea" to force her slave to bear the child for her, and Hagar became pregnant with Ishmael. There was strife between Sarah and Hagar, and then the child was born. Hagar had an angelic visitation during this time, but the Bible does not record Abraham having any sort of supernatural encounter with God.
In fact, Abraham didn't have his next encounter with God (number six) until he was 99 years old. Genesis 17:1-3 says, "When Abram was ninety- nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, 'I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless. And I will make My covenant between Me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly.' Then Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him..."
Take a look at the time line here. Abraham's first supernatural encounter with God happened when he was 75 years old. We know that from Genesis 12:4. He had his sixth encounter with God when he was 99 years old. That means 24 years had gone by between his first and sixth encounter with God. We know that they were not evenly spaced time wise, but that is an average of one supernatural encounter with God every six years! In other words, it was NOT an everyday occurrence for Abraham to have supernatural encounters with God.
Note that Abraham is one of the few people who God calls a "friend" in the bible. He lived a supernatural life, more so than many of the other bible heroes. I am guessing he prayed and honored God on a daily basis. But he only averaged a supernatural experience with God once every six years. That means supernatural encounters with God were not an everyday occurrence in his life.
If you keep reading the account in Genesis, you will see that Abraham had more divine encounters with God--but again, they were far and few in between. If you look at the lives of many of the other heroes of faith, you will find the same thing in their lives. Yes, they had supernatural encounters with God, but those encounters were few and a lot of time usually elapsed between them.
There are some bible heroes, like David (another one of the three men who God calls His "friend"), where the bible doesn't record them as having even one supernatural encounter with God. David did see a judgment angel one time (with its sword drawn) at a threshing floor after he took an "illegal" census. This is recorded in 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21. But David did not interact with that angel because he was afraid of it. David built his friendship with God through the basics: prayer and worship and attending "church" services (e.g., religious practices/ceremonies at the tabernacle.) When God wanted to speak directly to him, He did so through a prophet. It wasn't always he same prophet, but God frequently used a prophet named Gad to speak to David.
Somehow we have gotten the idea that if we are an on-fire believer, we should be having supernatural encounters with God on a near-daily basis. We assume that others have them, and we find ourselves getting frustrated because we do not. Some of us have started to expect to have angelic visitations, open visions and divine encounters on a regular basis. But we don't experience them anything close to that frequently. In fact, most of us would consider ourselves lucky if we have a supernatural encounter with God every six years like Abraham did.
There are many godly people who are totally sold out to God and committed to obey Him, who go through their whole life and never have a single open vision or angelic visitation or divine encounter. They can serve God effectively, be in a deep and intimate love relationship with Him, and never once have a direct supernatural experience with Him.
Supernatural encounters with God are wonderful, and I love them. But they are not what most of us should expect to experience most of the time.
I think the reason for that might go back to what we studied in our first lesson. God usually masks His glory so that He can interact with us without terrifying us. He is interested in pursuing a love relationship with us, and many times He chooses to meet us in the mundane (e.g, everyday life). He does it that way so that He won't scare us. He wants to build personal relationship with us, and He wants to be our loving Heavenly Daddy who spends quality time with His kids.
I would like to propose that a lot of time when God meets us, it is not in the open visions and angelic visitations and divine encounters. Instead, He likes to meet us where we are at--in our everyday lives. And I'd like to spend the next several lessons looking at some of the ways He does that.
One of the ways that God speaks to us is through our everyday life. We go along experiencing our day, and all of the sudden, the Lord highlights a spiritual truth to us that is drawn from our experiences. This really should not be much of a surprise to us, because Jesus loved to use everyday things to illustrate the kingdom of God when He taught in the New Testament,
Let me give you an example. When Jesus wanted to tell the Pharisees and Sadducees to read the spiritual signs about His Lordship, He compared this to reading the sky to predict the weather, which was a common practice in those days. We see that in Matthew 16:2-3: "When it is evening you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is red;' and in the morning, 'It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.' Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times."
Here is another example. One time Jesus tried to explain that when God does something, He usually starts "small," but it grows in power and intensity until it accomplishes His purposes. He used an everyday life analogy to convey this idea in Mark 4:30-32. In short, Jesus compared kingdom growth to a tiny seed being planted and then growing up into a huge bush.
Jesus loved to teach people by using allegories about things we commonly experience in everyday life. When He spoke to the crowds and He would say things like "What man among you..." In sort, He was saying, "Here is an experience you should be able relate to" and then use that experience to explain something about God.
Let me give you one more example for Matthew 7:9-10. Jesus wanted to teach people that God is a loving Father who takes good care of His own. He shared this by comparing our relationship to God the Father to a child's relationship to their earthly father. He said, "What man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent?" In short, He was saying something like "You dads know you take good care of your kids and you would never do something mean to them to harm them. And your Heavenly Father is just like that with you."
Jesus used things from everyday life to teach us about spiritual things. So it should not be a surprise that God would use incidents from our everyday life to speak directly to us.
Let me give you an example of one of those everyday life thing that God recently used on me. My husband went out of town on a trip and the house was a mess when he left, especially the kitchen. For some reason, it just seemed impossible to keep my kitchen clean. I started cleaning it while he was away, and I realized that it was a futile effort. I had so many things on the counters because there was no room in the cupboard for them. There were boxes of three different types of cereal on one counter. Another counter had two large bags of dog treats (my dogs like variety) and a large plastic container of the dehydrated dog food that I use. Another counter had a whole bunch of bottles of different types of vitamin and supplements that my husband likes. Another counter had some over-the-counter medicines for assorted ailments--Sudafed for colds, Tums for the occasional upset stomaches, a bottle of Tylenol just in case someone got a headache, etc. There was so much clutter that it was hard to see any free counter space.
No wonder it was hard to keep the kitchen clean. When I'd go to clean it, I'd move all that clutter from one counter to another. I would spend a couple of hours doing that, but I wasn't really accomplishing much other than sponging off the counters move moving the clutter around.
I set aside a few hours on Saturday to clean the kitchen. When I first started, I though that would be more than enough time, because it usually only takes a couple of hours. But as I worked, I realized that my efforts were totally futile, and the kitchen would be just as cluttered when I finished as it was when I started. The only way I could make some real progress was if I found places to put the clutter away. So, my simple housecleaning turned into this huge and extremely time- consuming project. I went through all of my cupboards and cleared out the stuff I didn't need, so I could make room for the stuff that my family actually used. I found and threw away a whole bunch of cans who were years past their "expiration date" that had been taking up space in my pantry. I threw away products that my family wouldn't eat. I even threw out some stuff that we might maybe use some day in the future, because I need to make room for the stuff we used everyday.
During that process, I also found all sorts of things I didn't know I had, because they were buried in the back of the cabinets. For instance, I thought I was out of 100 watt light bulbs and had just made an emergency run to the store earlier that day to pick up a box of them. But when I cleaned out the cabinets, I discovered that I actually had five boxes of 100 watt light bulbs buried in the back under a bunch of other things that I never used.
My simple two hour project turned into a twelve hour project, but I actually got the kitchen cleaned, and all of the counter-clutter got a legitimate spot in my cabinets. After that, I discovered that it became only a trivial project to sponge off the kitchen counters instead of taking hours, because I did not have to spend a bunch of time moving stuff around in order to clean.
While I was in the midst of this project, the Lord began to speak to me about His process of inner healing and spiritual house-cleaning. Most of the time, He didn't speak in words, He just caused me to realize spiritual parallels as I did my work. For instance, when I found all those "missing" light bulbs, I began to realize that a lot of people had all sorts of spiritual gifts in their life, but had no idea those gifts were there because they were hidden under all the clutter of sins, attitudes and deep hurts.
God also showed me that we can clutter up our lives with all sorts to things that keep us from enjoying our walk with God. I realized that when the clutter is gone, it makes everything so much easier and neater. For instance, if a person spends all sorts of time and energy worrying about how God is going to supply their needs, that makes it harder for them to take their attention off of the problem (the needs) and put it on the solution (God and His faithfulness). In short, worrying about things that we can't fix (apart from God) makes it harder for us to trust Him, just like it was harder for me to clean my counters when they were full of all kinds of clutter.
I could go on and on, because God showed me a whole bunch of spiritual applications as I cleaned and reorganized my kitchen. But the point isn't specifically what He said to me; the point is that He stepped into my life and communicated with me as I went about my day's activity. God wants to do that with each of us. He wants to step into our day-to-day lives and speak to us in that very subtle voice that is easy to miss if we are not paying attention. He wants to find ways to fellowship with us day in and day out, and He wants to be a part of our lives.
I am one of those "fortunate" people who tends to have a lot of the supernatural experiences with God. I have been caught up to the third Heaven a couple of times, I have had my fair share of open visions and God has sent angels to speak to me. I love to have those types of supernatural experiences with God. But when God wants to commune with me and build our relationship, He doesn't usually use the supernatural encounters. One of the ways He likes to do build relationship with me is by speaking to me in that "still small voice" that He uses with so many of us. Another thing He likes to do is to meet me in my everyday life and speak to me to through it. In fact, I would say that God meets me much more frequently in the little things than He does in the "big" supernatural things.
So what is my point here? Actually, it pretty simple. Don't get so caught up in seeking to have big experiences with God that you miss it when He meets you in your everyday activities. If fact, He is going to meet in those little ways a lot more often than He will meet you in the "big" supernatural ways.
God is a God of relationship, and He wants to step into the mundane parts of your life and meet you there. He wants to enjoy fellowship and personal relationship with you, and He wants to speak to you through your everyday life and activities.
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