“You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart”

Jeremiah 29:13

What does it mean to encounter God? The word “encounter” means to meet personally. It carries the sense of an individual experience of God and can take many different forms. It can be a physical encounter, a stirring of the heart, a revelation or a picture in the mind, a pricking of the conscience, or a deep sense of reverence—to name but a few examples. For myself, encounters are gentle and, in the past, I think I have probably dismissed many as “just a feeling” or “just my imagination.” But I’m learning to take more heed now.

Have you ever had the experience of reading a passage of Scripture and suddenly seeing it in a new way? A sort of “Oh, I see!” moment? Well, the Word of God is “alive and active” (Heb. 4:12) . . . and in that moment you had an encounter with Jesus, the living Word! The mark of a genuine encounter is that it fosters goodness—the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Encounter with God is an ongoing experience

An encounter with God is not a one-off experience. Each one is an invitation to enter ever more deeply into relationship with the Creator of the universe. In other words, to enter into an ongoing, eternal encounter with the One who loves us with a burning, unending love.

The word “encounter” is a helpful expression to describe our awakening to a very wonderful truth: that in fact there is no longer any distance between us and God. All separation was abolished at the cross. The staggering truth of the Gospel is that we are now united with God. The issue is our conscious awareness of—and sensitivity to—this mind-bending fact.

Whether we “feel” it or not, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has already brought every single one of us into complete union with God. We are already “face-to-face” with Him—He indwells us and occupies the most intimate of relationships with us. Our role is, progressively, to awaken to this truth, and the experiences that we call encounters are all part of the process of awakening. 

Let’s look at some scriptural examples of people’s encounters with God—all very different.

The apostle Paul had, perhaps, one of the most dramatic encounters recorded in the New Testament. On the road to Damascus, Paul was blinded by a light from heaven, and he heard the voice of Jesus asking him, “Why are you persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:4). The result of that experience was massive transformation in Paul’s life. This man, who had zealously perse­cuted Christians, became their greatest supporter and a fervent devotee of Jesus Christ.

Paul had other dramatic encounters, too, such as when he was “caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words” (2 Cor. 12:4), and when he and Silas were worshipping while in prison, and an earthquake broke open the prison doors and loosed their chains (Acts 16:23–26).

I think it is deeply significant that Paul was not distracted by these and the many other dramatic happenings that he experienced from the Lord. He valued them, certainly, as is evident in his writing and reports, but he didn’t get stuck on them. They were simply springboards to take him deeper and deeper into his one all-consuming passion: the Lord Jesus. His heartfelt cry remained humble and laser-focused right up to his final imprisonment in Rome: “that I may know Him [Jesus Christ]” (Phil. 3:10).

Encounter through Inner Revelation

An example of encounter with God in the gospel accounts includes the remarkable experience of Bartimaeus, who was a blind beggar. This was the man who came face to face with the Son of God and heard the words “Go your way; your faith has made you well” (Mark 10:52). That is remark­able enough, but perhaps it is just as remarkable that even before he stood in front of the Word made flesh, Bartimaeus had—inwardly—already “met” with the Living Word. We know he had received a revelation that Jesus was the Son of David, the promised Messiah, because he cried “Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Mark 10:49). That was the fruit of an inner, invisible, but very real encounter. And it came to someone whom society would have categorized as a most unlikely kind of person to receive favour from God.

Yet another form of encounter appears in the book of Acts when an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, “Arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza” (Acts 8:26). As Philip journeyed, the Spirit then spoke, guiding him to a chariot carrying a high-ranking eunuch who was returning to Ethiopia. The man was reading verses from Isaiah 53, which he could not understand, and he invited Philip to sit in his chariot and explain them. It was an amazing, God-inspired meeting . . . in the middle of a desert! The eunuch certainly had his own personal encounter with God that day, declaring his conviction that Jesus Christ is indeed the Son of God, and receiving baptism from Philip.

God transcends culture and time, and He speaks to our individual hearts to bring us into an ever-greater awareness of His Person and Presence. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8), and what He does in the life of one human being He can do in your life, and in my life, in ways that speak directly and uniquely to each person.

“We praise Him!!!



Photographs courtesy of Pixabay.com

By Ann Shakespeare 28 June 2023