Being Proactive In Pursuing Direct Encounters With God

by Teresa Seputis

Part 1 - Prayer And Devotions

We spent the last six lessons talking about how we can encounter God in various aspects of our day-to-day lives. We looked at everything from the mundane everyday activity to finding Him in difficulty, hardship and failure. We discovered that God can (and will) encounter us in each of those situations, and in just about any other situation that we could possibly experience. That is because God loves all of His children, and He wants all of us to have personal encounters with Him.

But have you noticed that some people seem to have more of them than others do? Have you ever wondered what their secret is? (I hope your answer was "yes," because I'd like to share it with you so that you can do it too.)

Let's start by taking a lesson from my dogs. I have two dogs, both purebred german shepherds and, like children, they each have their own strong personality. One of them is a bit more independent than the other, and will find his favorite spot and hang out there. For example, on a hot summer day, he parks himself in front of the air conditioning vent where he gets his own personal cool breeze. But my other dog is much more dependent on me. If I am in the kitchen, he parks himself on the kitchen floor. If I am in the living room, then so is he. When I sleep at night, he sleeps in the hallway just outside of my bedroom door--I am sure he'd try to sleep in the bedroom with me if he was allowed in that room. If I am watching television, he plants himself between me and the TV set, and looks at me with those big brown eyes of his, as if saying, "Pet me, pet me!"

I love both of my dogs the same, but which one do you think ends up getting petted more often? (I will give you a hint--it is the one who follows me around and makes a point of being wherever I am.)

Let me tell you about another one of his strategies. He has a way of getting in my way when I am trying to do something, like nudging my hand with his nose when I am trying to move the mouse on my computer. Or watching where I am walking and then running ahead of me and planting himself in my path, dropping to his back and exposing his stomach in one of those "pet me" postures. In short, he breaks into my day and demands my affection, even when I am busy with something else and I'm not thinking about him. As a result, he usually gets it.

The dog who pursues me more gets more of my attention and more of my affection than the one who doesn't. Even though I love both of them equally, one is more active in pursuing personal relationship with me.

Are you starting to see the spiritual parallel here?

The more actively we pursue God, the more we will have encounters with Him--providing we pursue Him in ways that He finds acceptable.

So what I want to talk about next is how to pursue God in ways that we might have more encounters with Him. Let me start by covering three obvious areas:

Prayer And Devotions

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that some spiritual disciplines are there to draw us closer to God. Prayer and devotions so obviously fall into this category.

Prayer is communication with God. It can be spoken out loud, or it can be "silent" (e.g., in our thoughts). A lot of people mistake prayer as a "one way" conversation, and that type of mistake will drain the life right out of it. When I was a new believer, someone told me that "prayer is us talking to God and reading our Bible is God talking back to us." I followed that model for years and years and I had no concept of "intimacy with God," nor did I have any spiritual encounters with Him. It was all grunt-work faith, and living the Christian walk in my own strength, and it took a huge amount of effort to live the way I through God wanted me to live.

The thing that makes prayer special is that we can have a two-way conversation with God. We don't just talk at Him and hope that He is listening. We do talk to Him, but we also listen to what He says back to us--And God has a lot that He would like to say to us.

Sometimes God is the one to initiate our conversation and sometimes I am. Sometimes He chooses the topic to talk about, and other times, I choose one. In fact, I love to ask God questions like, "What is on Your mind today, Lord?" Or I might see a news cast or read an article about some current event, and then I ask Him, "Lord, what is your opinion on this?"

Prayer is not just presenting a list of petitions and requests to the Lord. In fact, I very rarely pray that way. Most of my prayer time with God is relational or conversational in nature. Prayer is a powerful stepping stone towards building a personal friendship with God. It is a way to spend time with God and to get to know Him better. The more you talk to Him and the more you listen to what He says to you, the better feel you get of what He is really like, of what He thinks, and of what pleases and displeases Him. (Of course, the bible tells us many of these things as well, but there is something more relational about hearing it directly from His lips in addition to reading it in His word.)

In a sense, prayer is an encounter with God, because any time you have a conversation with Him, you are encountering Him on some level. But it doesn't feel much like an encounter, because He so frequently speaks to us in that "still small voice" that sounds so much like our own thoughts. My prayer life just seems like "normal" activity to me, but it connects me with God, gets me more in tune with His heart, and helps to open the doors for the more "dramatic" (or more overtly supernatural) encounters with God. I will talk more about those "direct" encounters with God in a subsequent lesson. But you usually need to establish the basics of two-way conversation with God before you should expect to have those supernatural encounters with Him.

Devotions are where we "feed ourselves" with things designed to draw us closer to God and to teach us more about what He is like. This includes reading the bible, and it also includes reading inspirational and teaching materials. Most devotions are read, but it doesn't have to happen that way. You might end up listening to a tape or you might hear an inspirational sermon on the radio or on television.

The shortfall of devotions is that many believers have been taught to leave God out of the process. They read or study something about God, hoping to gain more knowledge about Him, but they don't usually expect Him to step into that devotion time and meet them there.

I like to encourage people to be proactive in their devotions. Take reading the bible, for example. This is the most fundamental type of devotion, and one that we should try to do every day (if at all possible). There are two different ways to read the bible. One is to simply read it, and from time to time things will jump out at you as the Holy Spirit quickens something to you. Another way is to invite Him to come read it with you and ask Him to discuss it with you as you read it. You might try asking Him questions as you read a passage. The goal of devotions is not just to gain information about God, but to engage Him in the process. He is a very interactive God and He would love to take you up on that type of invitation.

I have been "proactive" in my approach to devotions for so long now that I think it would be impossible to have devotions without being in constant prayer (e.g., dialogging with God) as I do my devotions. I strongly encourage you to start doing your devotions that way as well. A lot of my friends find it helpful to journal as they do their devotions--e.g., to write down what God speaks directly to them as they read His word or as they study about Him and His principles.

Also, I find that it really helps to memorize Scripture, because it is one of the things that God uses to speak directly to us. In fact, one of the Holy Spirit's job descriptions is to recall things (like bible verses) to our memory (John 14:26). It is much easier for Him to recall verses to our memory if we have actually put them into our memory in the first place--so memorizing Scripture gives Him more of a vocabulary to speak to us.

We know that God speaks to us via His written word, the bible. I cannot tell you how many times the Lord has given me direction or insight by recalling a bible verse to me at a critical time that seemed to speak directly into my situation.

Let me give you an example of one of the first times that He did this, many years ago. I was much younger (both in the Lord and physically) and I liked to drive really fast. I was in a hurry to go somewhere and I was speeding--big time. All of the sudden, the verse about 'obeying the Laws of the land as if you are obeying God' ran through my mind. (That was my own paraphrase of 1 Peter 2:13.) I realized that God did not like it when I was speeding, because it was one form of disobeying the law. So I lightened my foot on the accelerator and slowed down until I was driving at the posted speed limit. A few minutes later, I drove past a speed trap where the police were using radar guns and pulling over speeders. If I had driven through that at my original speed, I would have gotten a huge ticket. I stopped to thank God for warning me about the speed trap, and I realized for the first time that God could speak directly to me by recalling bible verses to my memory.

Remember, the goal of devotions is not simply to gain knowledge about God and about what He says in His word, but it is also to encounter Him as you do so. Expect to have a two-way conversation with God as you read His word. Ask Him questions about what you read, and listen to what He says to you about it.

I strongly encourage you to engage in conversation with God as you study His word, and you can do the same thing as you read teachings by Christian writers, etc. Ask God how He feels about things; or ask Him to point out to you the things that He feels are the most important for you to "know" as you read this. Expect that when you do your devotions, you will not be doing them alone. Believe that God is both willing and able to come into the process of your devotions, and expect Him to meet you there.


Being Proactive To Encounter God

Part 2 - Worship

We saw in our last lesson that the more actively we pursue God, the more we will have encounters with Him--providing we pursue Him in ways that He finds acceptable. We began looking at some of the ways that God likes to be pursued:

We talked about prayer and devotions in our last lesson, and we discovered that both of these are intended to be two-way interactions with God, where we both talk to Him and hear what He has to say to us.

Now, let's move on to another way that God likes to be pursued: worship.

Worship

We know that worship is very important to God because it is the one thing that He will not share with anyone else. It is okay with Him if we honor others, it is ok with Him if we obey others and it is even ok with Him if we pledge loyalty to others. But it is decidedly not ok with Him if we worship anyone but the one true and living God. Look at what He says about it in Exodus 34:14: "You shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God."

Why is worship so important to God that He won't share it with anyone else? One part of the reason is because our worship ushers in His very presence, so it is something that is very intimate to Him. Psalm 22:3 says in the King James Version that God: "...inhabitest the praises of Israel." E.g., our worship is His habitation, the place where He dwells. The New Century Version puts it this way: "You sit as the Holy One. The praises of Israel are your throne." The throne is where the King sits, and this verse is tying God's presence to praise and worship.

I believe that worship is not a one-way thing that we direct towards God, where He passively receives it. I believe that God responds to our worship by increasing His manifest presence in our midst, by showing more of Himself to us, and by allowing us to experience Him in a deeper way.

Worship is not just saying praise things to God and telling Him how wonderful He is (though He is indeed wonderful). Worship is more about our entire lifestyle and how we give Him lordship in it. The entire law was given to explain how God wanted the children of Israel to worship Him. It included the things that we think of as worship--singing, music, rejoicing, seeking God. But it was much more inclusive than than--it included guidelines for how to conduct ourselves in every aspect of their lives, including in their business transactions and in how they are to treat each other.

A person could not come to the temple to do their sacrifices or prayers or other forms of worship if they were unclean. If they violated the rules of conduct that God wanted them to live by, then they were not allowed to come and worship Him. This was in essence saying, "When I come to worship God, I also acknowledge Him as my Lord and master, and I decree my commitment to walk in His ways because He is so wonderful and so powerful and so amazing and because He deserves my worship."

The same is true for us in the New Testament. That is why Jesus said, in Matthew 5:23-24: "Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you; leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift." He was basically saying, you can't worship God if your lifestyle doesn't back up the worship you offer. That is false worship that God won't receive from you. It is not enough just to say worship words to God, you have to back it up by living the way He wants you to live so that He is indeed your Lord.

What Jesus said makes more sense if we remind ourselves of what Jesus considered the greatest two commandments: "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these" (Mark 12:30-31).

The Apostle John sheds some light on this in 1 John 4:20: "If someone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?" In short, God expects us to be in right relationship with each other if we want to be in right relationship with Him. He expects us to obey the command to love one another that Jesus gave us in John 13:34. And that is why He can tell us that if our brother has ought against us, we need to leave our gift on the alter and go get right with our brother before we start worshiping God and bringing our offerings to Him.

Worship is not just the words we say (or sing) to God, telling Him how wonderful He is; worship is living out His lordship in our day-to-day lives as we say these words to Him. That is why Psalm 24:3 says, "Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place?" (E.g., it asks, "Who may come into God's presence to worship Him?") Then it gives us the answer in verse 4: "He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false." (E.g., the answer is: those who live the way God asks us to live because He is our Lord and Master.)

But when we have that Lordship relationship with God, and we come to worship Him, we are able to move into a direct encounter with Him.

One of the things that can happen when we have an encounter with God is that the Holy Spirit may convict us, to help us repent of sin or disobedience and get our hearts right with God. It can feel somewhat uncomfortable for us to come seeking God and find His conviction instead, but it is His mercy when He does that. Many of us have prayed a prayer like this: "Lord please take the things out of my life that keep me from being in intimate relationship with You." And that conviction is God's answer to this type of prayer. It is not intended to push us away, but to purify us so that we can go deeper in Him.

The prophet Isaiah experienced this when he was called to be a prophet (Isaiah 6). He had a vision of God on His throne and experienced the glory of the Lord. This was a worship experience and he saw the angels worshiping God. "And one [angel] cried to another and said: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!" (Isaiah 6:3). When Isaiah saw God's holiness, he was overcome with conviction and cried out "Woe is me, for I am undone! because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts" (Is 6:5).

God seemed to agree with Isaiah's assessment of his sinful condition, but instead of condemning him or pushing him away, God purified him. Verses 6 to 7 tell us: "Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said: 'Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.'"

Once God had dealt with the conviction, He brought Isaiah into a life-changing encounter with Him.

It is not uncommon for the Lord to convict us when we first start to come deeply into His presence in worship. This is because God is holy and we all have a sinful nature. When we see His holiness in comparison to our own sin, conviction is a very natural response. The good news is that if we respond to God's conviction with genuine repentance, then God will move us past the conviction and into a wonderful experience of His presence in worship.

But conviction is not the only way that God meets us when we first begin to encounter Him in worship. There are times when we are so beaten up by the enemy and by false condemnation that we would not be able to respond properly to conviction. The Lord is usually very gentle and loving when we are in this state, and He will usually choose to manifest His wonderful love and acceptance to us instead of His holiness. He does this to get us to the place where we are secure enough in His love that we can begin working with Him on the things in our lives that separate us from Him.

I am reminded of friend of mine who now walks pretty close to the Lord. But she had a season of rebellion and backsliding. It all began when she started dating an unbeliever because none of the guys at church were asking her out. She ended up getting pregnant and becoming an unwed mother. She also walked totally away from the Lord for a season, and tried a lot of worldly things, including recreational drugs and alcohol. When she first started coming back to church (after her child was born) she had what I call a low threshold for temptation and frequently found herself sleeping with one "new date" after another, taking drugs, getting drunk, etc. If anyone was a good candidate for "conviction," she was it. There were so many different areas of her life that the Lord could have chosen to convict her about--her unmarried sexual activity, her recreational use of illegal drugs, her lying and deception. But God had a different strategy with her.

It actually took quite a bit to get her to come to church at all. I remember her first Sunday back with us, because I was sitting near her. It was a day when the Lord's came into our sanctuary very strongly in response to our worship. She started to cry, and she cried the entire worship session. I assumed that God had convicted her and that was why she was crying. But when I talked to her after service, she said that she'd never felt the Lord's love on her so strongly. He wasn't doing a conviction thing at all. She was a very wounded individual, and He was simply showering His unconditional love and acceptance on her, and it was very healing to her. This went on for months, and she starting bring her own box of Kleenex with her to service. Every single worship service, God would come and love her--despite the fact that she was still actively sinning. She would sob through the whole worship service, and she got a little more healed each week.

Then one time during the worship, God spoke to her in the midst of showering His love on her. He said something like, "You know, I really don't like it when you sleep around like that. I won't stop loving you if you do it, but it would make Me so much happier if you would choose to walk in My holiness in this area." She was so melted by His healing love that she purposed in her heart to change. It took her a few months to learn to stop putting herself in tempting situations and get victory in that area. But it was the love of God that drove her to repentance. The first six months or so, all God did when He met her in worship was to manifest His love to her, and for her the conviction did not start coming until she was secure in His great love for her.

For myself, He did things in the opposite order. First came the conviction and the getting rid of things (actions, attitudes, thoughts) that separated me from Him. After that, He took me into a season of just loving on me until it really became real to me that He loves--not just when I am good, but all of the time.

The key to worship is that it starts out as us telling Him how wonderful He His, and then He shows up to inhabit or worship. It moves from us directing our affection to God to a two-way interaction with Him.

There are times when God will pull me out of singing along with the congregation to speak to Me. There are times when He will manifest one aspect of His character to me very strongly--His love, His holiness, His faithfulness, His patience, His goodness, etc. There are times when God catches me up into personal encounter with Him, where I am no longer aware of the congregation worshiping Him around me, I am just aware of Him and His nearness. There have even been times when God has caught me up out of a worship service into the heavenlies in an open vision with Him.

Quality worship is one of the easiest ways to enter into an encounter with God, because He does love to inhabit the praises of His people. So next time you go to a worship service, go looking expectantly to have an encounter with Him.


Being Proactive To Encounter God

Part 3 - Waiting On The Lord

We saw in our last lesson that the more actively we pursue God, the more we will have encounters with Him--providing we pursue Him in ways that He finds acceptable. We began looking at some of the ways that God likes to be pursued:

We talked about the first two in previous lessons. Now we will discuss the last in this lesson.

Soaking

The term "soaking" refers to a type of prayerful waiting on the Lord in hopes that He will meet you as you seek Him. Soaking usually involves worship music (either live or recorded) playing in the background, but some people use bible reading instead of worship music. Soaking is a form of "waiting on the Lord" and cannot be rushed. A typical soaking session will usually last one or two hours. There is not a program or agenda during this time--it is all about seeking God with the expectation that you will encounter Him.

Soaking can be done alone in the privacy of your own home, or it can be done in a group setting. First you to get physically comfortable, then to focus your attention on the Lord. It is not uncommon for soakers to lay down on the floor or to get very comfortable in a chair. In some places, soakers bring their own blankets and pillows with them.

If soaking is done in a corporate setting, the organizers sometimes have some designated "ministry team" members who move from person to person, praying quietly over them and asking God to come and meet the person who they are praying for. But many people find soaking just as effective whether or not there are prayer team members ministering to the soakers. That is because the goal of soaking is not to have encounters with other people, but to have them with God.

Some soaking groups simply start by opening up the room and starting worship music. People come in, find a spot, and then begin waiting on the Lord. Other places start with some type of short corporate worship or with a devotional, then invite people to find a spot to soak.

Soaking may be very quiet, or it may get really loud and rowdy. It seems to depend on the people present and on what the Lord is doing at the moment. Sometimes God does inner things (such as breaking the power of condemnation off of a person) and they begin to sob loudly. Other times He meets them in a way where they begin to shout or to speak loudly in tongues. Sometimes people get up and dance in response to what the Lord is doing. Other times God is doing a love thing or a peace thing and the person rests quietly in His presence. As much as possible, the other soakers ignore what is going on in the people around them and seek to focus their attention on God, looking for their own encounter with God.

(Many people have wonderful encounters with God in soaking sessions, but not everyone is able to encounter God this way. Some people find their minds wander and they get distracted and forget that they are actively waiting on the Lord. Others get bored. Others are so physically tired that they end up falling asleep.)

Soaking seems to have arisen out of renewal style ministry prayer, such as the Renewal Meetings that sprang up out of Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship in Canada. They would have meetings and at the end of the meeting, people would go stand on prayer lines and ministry team members would move around the room and pray for people. They would ask God to come and reveal Himself to the person, to bring more awareness of His presence and of His love. At other times they would ask the Lord to come with more of His power or more of His anointing. These prayers often got abbreviated to "More Lord!"

The amazing thing was that God seemed to respond to these prayers in incredible ways. Some people would feel His love, others His joy (sometimes accompanied by laughter), some would get inner healing or physical healing, and others would get empowered. Many of the people would end up "slain in the spirit" (or falling to the ground with the help of a catcher to assure that they were not hurt when they 'went down'). The ministry team members would frequently keep praying for the person for a minute or two after they went down, and help them move into an even deeper encounter with God. Many of the people would stay down for fifteen minutes to half an hour (and some much longer) after the one praying had left them and moved on. And the Lord would often continue to meet them as they laid there in His presence.

This was first referred to as "carpet time" because the ministry area was carpeted. Later on the term soaking was used to refer to people lingering on the ground after being prayed for, and having a prolonged encounter with God.

I remember something that I was told when I was new to all of this. They said, "The Lord comes in waves. When the intensity dies down, you might be tempted to get up and move on with your day. But instead, try staying down a little longer and silently asking the Lord to come and meet you again. Many times He comes even stronger the second or third time than He came in the initial ministry."

I applied that advice to my own life very early on, and I used to have some really amazing encounters with God where His nearness was very tangible and very wonderful. They had some of these renewal-style meetings in a city nearby to where I lived, and I would go there often to receive prayer and do carpet time. I found that many times the initial encounter with God was very mild, but if I would stay down and keep seeking Him for more, that He would usually answer my prayers. He would come a second time (more powerfully than the first), then after a while, it would get faint again. But if I waited patiently and asked Him to come again, He would often come and meet me a third or forth or even fifth time.

Sometimes I would just feel His nearness, sometimes He would speak to me or empower me, and sometimes He would even catch me up into visions and give me direct supernatural encounters with Him. A lot of other people had similar experiences.

Somewhere along the line, folks discovered that you could have the same type of encounter with God without standing on a prayer line and waiting for someone to come and pray for you. You could just lay down and ask God to come and meet you, and He would.

I don't know exactly how it happened, but somewhere along the line most services moved away from having folks wait for the ministry teams to come and pray for them--and they would just have folks lay down and seek God.

I personally do better "soaking" in a corporate setting than in the privacy of my own home, and I do better with live worship than with recorded music. But I know people who are just the opposite. They do better at tuning into God in the privacy of their own home where there are less distractions.

Soaking can be a wonderful way to wait on the Lord, seek Him and encounter Him. If you haven't tried this before, I suggest you give it a try. If you have to be subtle (even in your own home) then try turning on worship music, laying down on your own bed and asking God to come and meet you. If you are not used to waiting on the Lord, you might want to start with 1/2 hour and work up to longer sessions. Be patient when you start soaking--you may not experience Him in a tangible way immediately. You may have to wait a while. Or you may have to repeat it on multiple session before you have a direct encounter with God.

Receiving Ministry

I already talked a bit about one type of ministry prayer that helps draw you into the Lord's presence. I call it "renewal style prayer," where a prayer team member lays hands on you and asks the Lord to manifest His presence to you, to meet you, or to give you an encounter with Him. I love that prayer style and usually have encounters with God when someone prays for me in this manner.

But it is not the only type of ministry prayer that can draw you into an encounter with God. That is because when someone is being led of the Spirit to minister to you via some form of prayer, they are doing what the Father is doing--and the Father is turning Heaven's attention on you. It doesn't matter if it is prayer for physical healing, or if it is theophostic ministry or some other form of healing of memories. The same holds true for deliverance ministry. Likewise, God can meet you strongly if a brother is agreeing together with you in prayer for a breakthrough in an area of need (finances, job, housing, etc).

The key is to look expectantly to God to meet you as you receive ministry prayer from one of His own. You may find yourself having a stronger encounter with Him than you expected.

I remember the first time that God met me in this manner. It was back in 1995, and I was having some serious health problems. I got very sick during a church service, and a group of about five or six people from the prayer team took me into a private room to pray for me. They sat me in a chair (I was too weak to stand) and they stood in a circle around me. They prayed for about ten minutes or so.

At first I was too sick to pay close attention to what was going on, and my attention was sort of zoning in and out of what was happening around me. I remember that one of them invited the Lord's healing presence to come into the room with us. Then suddenly I was keenly aware of God's presence and I saw a vision of God sitting on His throne, surrounded by a bunch of angels. It was as if they were above me (on the ceiling or something) and a hole opened up in the roof over my head. I could see God looking down at me through that hole and I could see all of the angels looking down at me. It was as if Heaven's attention was focused on me.

Back then I wasn't used to being in God's presence and the experience scared me. I felt too dirty and significant to be worthy of Heaven's attention, and I kind of wished they'd turn it somewhere else. God sensed my discomfort and closed the vision--from my perspective the hole in the ceiling closed back up and I couldn't see God's throne anymore. As soon as it "closed up" and the fear went away, I realized that I'd made a mistake in wanting that to end. I began to silently ask for God to open that hole again and turn His attention back to me, but that did not happen. However, by the end of that ten minute prayer session, I walked out of that prayer room feeling completely healthy and I was able to go back an participate in the rest of the church service.

I had encountered God as I was ministered to. I hadn't been expecting this, so the encounter scared me and startled me. God was gracious and because I was afraid, He kept it very short. If I'd been in a place to expect/desire/pursue His presence, I suspect He would have taken me into a deeper encounter with Him.

The point of the prayer I received was for physical healing, not for any type of encounter with God. But similar to worship, ministry prayer can usher in the presence of God. So next time you are receiving ministry, I recommend that you look expectantly to God and perhaps He will give you a direct encounter with Himself.


Pursuing Direct Encounters With The Lord

We have spent the last eleven lessons looking at various ways that we can have encounters with God. Some of them have been were God meets us in various aspects of our day-to-day life, or where He comes to us in subtle ways. I call that "every-day life" encounters with God. We also saw that sometimes God will meet us in a way that is overtly divine or supernatural, and those are what I call "direct" encounters with God.

We have discovered that it is more common to have the "everyday life" type of encounters with God than the "direct" ones. Every believer will have many of the former--though they may not be spiritually tured in enough to recognize all of them. God is a relational God and a loving Father, and He loves to have encounters and intimacy with His children. He loves to reach into our lives to meet us and help us. He will meet us in His subtle everyday life ways many times throughout the week.

Of course, the more responsive we are to to God when He reaches out to meet us, the more often He will reach out to us. That means that if we are hungry for God, we can actually increase the number of encounters we have with Him--both the everyday life ones and the direct supernatural ones.

Look at the lives of some of the people who walked close to God. Take David, for example. He was a worshiper and he was always crying out to God. Or take Moses, who when out of his way (off his routine path) to check out the burning bush where God first called him. There was a supernatural hunger in Moses that caused him to change his routine and go where God was doing things. Some of these "detours" were non-trivial, like climbing up a high mountain to meet with God. Or look at Abraham, who obeyed God and left his home to follow God, even though he had no idea where God would take Him.

In short, God loves all of His children, but those who pursue Him seem to get more encounters with Him.

We already talked about three ways to pursue God in earlier lessons: 1) devotions and prayer, 2) worship and 3) waiting on the Lord (or soaking). So what I'd like to do in this lesson to briefly share a few other ways that we can pursue direct encounters with our Lord. These include:

We will cover the first three in this lesson and cover the forth in our next lesson.

Drawing Inspiration From Other's Experiences

Each time I read or hear a testimony of someone else's direct encounter with God, it helps prepare me to have one as well. It does this is a couple of different ways. First, it opens my mind to other ways that God can (and will) meet His children, and it changes my expectations to think that God might do the same thing for me. Closely related to that, it increases My faith that God might meet me in a similar way--after all, if He did it for that person, then He must be willing to meet His children that way. Finally, it increases my hunger. You might say that I get "jealous" for God to meet me too. It is not the "bad" type of jealousy that thinks I should get it instead of the other person. It is the "good"A kind of jealousy that says, "God you did it for this other person and it was great--so now please do it for me too!"

It is sort of like my dogs--I have two dogs and they are both beloved members of my family. If I give one of them a treat, the other one expects to receive that same treat too--add they will get in my face and pursue me until I give it to them.

Let me give you a brief example from my own life. Jim is a prophetic leader who I sometimes look to for mentoring or advice. One time he started having all these daily angelic visits for a period of a few months. It never occurred to me that this was possible until it started happening to him. He would tell me stories of these angel visits, and it would get me hungry to experience them as well.

In fact, I got so hungry for them that I flew over 3000 miles to come stay with Jim and his wife in their home for a week in hopes of having a similar encounter. I did not get that encounter at that time, but a couple of months after I got home, the Lord began sending angels to meet me in my own home. The angels would come bringing me messages from God, and this drew me even closer to Him.

If I hadn't been inspired by Jim's story, I probably wouldn't have started to pursue a similar experience in my own life.

Explicitly Seeking Him

This is so obvious that it almost seems redundant to mention it, but one of the best ways to have a direct encounter with God is to ask Him for one. Matthew 7:7 says, "Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you."

You want a direct encounter with God? Then try asking Him for one. Don't just ask once--but be like a little kid who really wants something from their parents...keep on asking and keep on "pestering" Him for it until you get it. The tense of the "ask" verb in the original Greek was a continuous tense. It would be more accurately translated as "Ask God-- start now and keep on asking until you get it, and you will receive it."

Then there is Psalm 37:4, which says, "Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desire of your heart." In short, when you are hungry for God and for an encounter with Him, then He will give it to you.

Look at the life of King David. He was always crying out to God. He would pray things like "Show me Your ways, O Lord; teach me Your paths!" (Psalm 25:4> or "Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me" (Psalm 51:11). David described his hunger for God in Psalm 63:1, "O God, You are my God; early will I seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water."

In short, David cried out to God--he frequently asked God for more encounters with Him. And God's response to that was to meet David and to be come best friends with him.

Likewise, the more we explicitly seek God, the more likely we are to find Him! If we ask God to meet us and give us direct supernatural encounters with Himself, He is more likely to give them to us than if we don't ask.

Radical Obedience

Jesus said in John 14:15, "If you love Me, then obey Me." Thus, obeying Him from a heart of love is one of the ways that we demonstrate our love to God. (This is not the same as a begrudging reluctant obedience or feeling "forced" into obeying Him. Remember, the Lord looks at the motivation/attitude of our heart as much as He looks at our actions.)

But when we obey Him because we love Him, this really pleases God, and it is not uncommon for God to reward our obedience by giving us personal encounters with Himself. I could write a whole lesson (probably more than just one) on this topic, but I am going to keep my discussion brief here.

Jesus said in John 15:14: "You are My friends if you do whatever I command you." In short, if you want to be God's friend, then you need to make Him Lord/boss of your life, and you need to be committed to doing what ever He tells you to do. If you look at all of the men in the bible who God calls friends, you will see that each of them had to radically obey God more than once.

Abraham had to leave his home and follow God. He also was prepared to obey God and sacrifice the thing that was most precious to him (his son Isaac) at God's command. Of course, God was only testing his obedience and not planning to have Abraham kill his son and heir, but Abraham did not know that when he climbed the mountain to build the altar and prepare the sacrifice. And Abraham's heart to obey God (even at great personal expense) earned him a friendship status with God. Look at what God says about him in Isaiah 41:8, "Abraham [is] My friend."

David was another person with a heart to obey God. God removed King Saul and selected David instead, and God explains his reason for rejecting Saul in 1 Samuel 15:11, "I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king, for he has turned back from following Me, and has not performed My commandments." And this is what God said about David in 1 Samuel 13:14: "The Lord has sought for Himself a man after His own heart, and the Lord has commanded him to be commander over His people." In short David had a heart to obey God and God considered him a friend.

Obedience was also a key characteristic in Moses' walk with God. Moses had to go before a pharaoh who terrified him to perform signs, then he had to lead a rebellious Israel, one step at a time, by first getting a direction from God and then obeying it. For example, God brought him to the edge of the Red Sea and then told him to stretch his rod over the water. If Moses did not obey God and stretch out the rod, the Red Sea would not have parted. But Moses obeyed every single thing that God instructed him to do, and as a result, he saw God's power and anointing go forth in amazing ways.

Radical obedience out of a heart of love for God is what brought these people into a friendship with God. Now, there is something really special about being God's friend--it gets you a greater revelation of God. Jesus said so in John 15:15: "No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you."

There is so much more I could say on this subject, but the lesson is already getting long. So suffice it to say that many of my most amazing and most powerful encounters with God have occurred when I was actively obeying Him. I truly believe that having a heart to obey God is one of the keys to having direct encounters with Him.

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