Master 244: "Encountering God"

Rafting Reflections, Part 1

What does it mean to "encounter God"?

This past week I had the exciting opportunity to join a friend of mine and the church youth group that he leads on their summer camping trip. We spent two days white-water rafting (--a total of four days camping--) on portions of the American River.

We spent a lot of time rafting, swimming, playing volleyball, sitting around the camp fire, and relaxing. At various points, we also took time to sing together, pray, and hear from the word of God. Our speaker took as his theme the topic of encountering God. We talked, at various points, about the Apostle Paul's conversion, the miraculous healing that Jesus brought about in Luke 8:43-48, and the youths' various experiences of meeting with God through their camping experience.

Reflection on what was discussed and shared prompts me to raise (yet again, perhaps) the question: What does it mean to "encounter God"? It's very easy for those of us who have grown up in Christian circles to throw this kind of language around, but it's not necessarily obvious just what it means. People who are not steeped in Christian culture may be confused by this idea, and I suspect that many within the Christian community, if honest, would admit that it is mysterious to them as well. Regardless of where you find yourself at present, it is worthwhile and helpful for us to reflect on this question: What does it mean to "encounter God"?

One of the reasons that people go on spiritual camps and retreats is to "meet with God". But what does that mean? What are people looking for when they pull away from the normal routine and the busyness of daily life? What are people experiencing in a moment of "worship"? What sense can we make of the "feelings" that people sometimes have? Do all of those count as "encounters with God"?

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Of course we need to take seriously, if we take the notion of encountering God seriously and want to treat the Bible as the foundation for thinking about it, that what we are trying to get at involves some kind of personal encounter--i.e. an encounter with a person. For that reason, we should not expect that all "encounters with God" will be identical, either in form or content. In fact, if every person's "encounter with God" was identical to every other, that would be good reason to doubt that they were actually engaging with a living, responsive, dynamic, personal presence.

At the same time, however, not just any experience can or will count as an encounter with God. Along these same lines, not any experience can or will count as an encounter with me, or with any person. My various friends' encounters with me will all be different, but they will still be ordered and structured--in particular, by who I am, my character and personality. If the person you meet is a pop culture and sports trivia fanatic, enthusiastic about business and finance, and can't stand tea, then you have not met me.

So there are two points that stand in tension with one another and serve as constraints on our attempting to articulate what it means to encounter God. On the one hand, our conception of such encounters should not be too narrow. On the other hand, it should not be too inclusive. But when we talk about these two points constraining our articulations, we are not saying that either or both should serve as starting points. It is not as if these were two facets of reality that we have latched on to and from which we can derive helpful conclusions about the nature of encounters with God. They are only descriptions of the limitations of our articulations. To get at the substance of what falls within those limiting constraints, we must look to the thing itself. That is what we are trying to get at when we ask: What does it mean to encounter God?

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In seeking to answer this question, it would be very easy for us to fall into the error of confusing some aspect of such encounters with the essence of that encounter. For instance, many people may point to some kind of emotional experience or feeling, images, impressions, or sensations. Others may point to outward actions like speaking in tongues, singing, or shouting. Others may look for miraculous events as marking an encounter with God. Others will point to a settledness, feeling of peace, tranquility, or sense contentment. None of these, I expect, gets at the essence of what it means to encounter God. If we pick out any one of these items and try to peg that as what encountering God consists in, we will have moved to one of the extremes that we were supposed to avoid.

If this route to answering our question is no good, how should we begin. First, I think, we need to return to a point mentioned earlier and, perhaps, spend some extended time reflecting on the fact that encountering God involves and consists in interacting with a person. A person who encounters me--who interacts with me--will have all sorts of experiences that he or she may describe in various ways. But if those experiences were somehow separated from me--if those "experiences" were part of some artificial or virtual reality simulation--they would not amount to experiences of or interactions with me.

This point might seem so obvious as to not require even being mentioned. It's obviousness may also give some people the sense that, in pointing out that encountering God involves encountering a person, we have not said anything really helpful. We started out by asking, "What does it mean to encounter God?" The answer, "Encountering God means encountering a person," may not seem to be very helpful. But if that's right, it suggests that we may actually be unclear about the question we're asking.

Perhaps we are really asking a question like, "How can I recognize that some experience is actually an instance of encountering God?" "By what marks or signs can I be certain that I am encountering God?" These questions might not seem to be very different from the original one that we raised. But these ways of formulating the question, I think, do a better job of making transparent the fact that while the object of our inquiry is related to the core and essence of "encountering God" what we are asking about is not identical to that essence. At the heart of "encountering God" is an instance of real interaction between two persons. But how do we cultivate that interaction? What sense can we have of how it's progressing? Is it possible to know with any certainty that I am, in fact, connecting to God? How so?

Hopefully it's clear that this question has important implications for the work of pastors and disciples alike. The question struck me particularly forcefully as I interacted with the students at this youth camp. One desire of Christian pastors and teachers is that people would "encounter God." Our expectation is that, as people grow in their relationship with God, they would have an increasing number of "encounters" and "interactions" with God. Also, we expect that mature Christians would be aware of God's presence with them and activity in and around them. But how do we communicate this desire and help individual disciples to take ownership of that? How can I communicate to a teenager (or any person) what it means to encounter God, so that they can actually make sense of my desire for them to have such an encounter?

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Here's my attempt to answer this question:

Encountering God involves recognizing His presence and activity in our lives. We do this most clearly when we notice that our lives (or aspects of our lives) are taking on a shape that accords with the particular patterns that God has revealed in Scripture.

Some important manifestations of this pattern include: obedience, prayer, Bible study, sacrifice, worship, devotion to God, loving and serving people, trusting and believing in Jesus Christ. These, it's important to note, are just part of the overall pattern to which we want to attend. I already indicated that a person may have many experiences that seem to be of me, but if they are not appropriately connected to me, then they are not experiences of or encounters with me. In the same way, just the acts of obeying the instructions written in the Bible, offering prayers, and studying a particular set of revered texts do not by themselves amount to encountering God. Obedience is always done in faith and trust. Prayers are offered with the expectation of a response. And Christians study the Bible because they believe that God will speak through the text. That response on God's part is a crucial part of the pattern with which we are concerned. I said we encounter God most clearly in situations where we actually notice that our lives are taking on a shape that accords with the biblical pattern. That pattern is one of our acting and God responding.

A side-bar: some people may become concerned at this point and want to remind us or otherwise assert that any encounter with God requires that God take the initiative. And most Christians (should) take seriously that in our fallen state, humankind's ability to initiate such interactions is, at least, seriously impaired. It is true that, for instance, "We love because He first loved us," and that the possibility of our enjoying significant relationship with God depends upon His having reached out to us. But insofar as He has reached out to us, as He has sent His Son who has made atonement for sin, the question that we have to consider is: Will we receive God's gracious gift and accept His provision? Our response to God's action and His offer of salvation and relationship is what opens the way for applying what God has done in Jesus Christ to our lives through the Holy Spirit. So I think it is not misleading to say that the biblical pattern into which we are invited is one in which we act and God responds. Or another way of saying it: the invitation is to enter into a pattern that God has already erected and put in place.

The kinds of actions that we are called to have been laid out already: obedience, prayer, Bible study, sacrifice, worship, devotion, love, service, trust, belief, etc. But I don't want us to focus just on the particular actions but on the overarching pattern. We may already be so used to hearing teachers talk about the importance of prayer and Bible study that we may have missed the way in which those activities fit into this larger pattern. To get some sense of that larger pattern, and to illustrate it, we turn to the pages of Scripture: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Rahab, Gideon, Barack, Samuel, David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, the twelve apostles, the various people with whom Jesus interacted during His ministry, and the Apostle Paul. What their stories help us to understand is the various ways in which God works. All of their interactions with God involved them acting (entering into the pattern that God had put in place) and God responding.

Again, all of this may seem obvious but I suspect that many Christians have a hard time connecting these dots where their own lives are concerned. They hear messages over and over about all the things that they ought to be doing. They ought to read their Bibles and pray and evangelize and serve in the church and be part of a small group and periodically participate in fasting and join a Bible study and help the poor and go on spiritual retreats and volunteer for outside projects and memorize Scripture and have daily devotions, etc., etc., etc. Christians hear these messages all the time and they may submit to such teaching and (try to) participate in these activities. But do those people understand that when they engage in those activities they are entering into this pattern of our acting and God's responding? Do they see themselves as doing the same thing that Abraham, David, Hezekiah, Josiah, the ten lepers, or the Syrophonecian woman did?

This is one of the main reasons that Bible study is so important--because that acquaints us with the pattern and manner after which God works. Familiarity with the history of the church over the past two millennia is important for the same reasons. Without that foundation, we don't have a way of interpreting or making sense of our experiences. We have no way of understanding what is going on when bad things happen or when good things happen. We may mistakenly interpret good things as signs of God's favor and we may mistakenly interpret bad things as signs of His displeasure. We may shake our fist at God and ask Him 'Why?' when He's already given us all the information we need to make sense of our experiences through the words of Scripture and the history of the Christian movement.

Notice that this damaging kind of ignorance does not necessarily have to be total. People who focus on just a few passages of Scripture, rather than on the whole revelation, may misinterpret their experiences. They may think that they are encountering God when they are actually not. They may think that certain people are blessed by God and others not when the exact opposite is the case. Jesus taught on just this point at several places.

If we want to know how we can move into the pattern that God has laid out--how we should act and in what ways God will respond--then we need to look at the whole of the biblical revelation. If we do that, we will notice two things: first, the external manifestations of God's presence and activity vary widely. Moses, Elijah, and Elisha stand out in the Old Testament as miracle-working prophets. They are the only one's in the Old Testament who were gifted in this particularly dramatic way. God allowed Joseph and Daniel to interpret dreams. He gave visions to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the other prophets. He spoke to the kings of Israel through the prophets. Sometimes He showed up in a cloud, or in fire, or in a gentle breeze. When Jesus healed people, He did so in many different ways. He spit on one guy's tongue, put mud in another's eyes and told that man to wash, spoke to one dead girl, touched another dead man, and called out to a third in order to raise them to life. Sometimes He didn't do anything at all, as when one woman was healed after just touching His robe. In some cases He visited the sick or dying and in others He healed from a distance. Really, the manifestations of God's presence and activity will not fit into a single box. There is no formula for healing someone. There is no formula for meeting God. In pointing this out, we avoid one of the two unacceptable extremes that we pointed out at the beginning of this post.

We avoid the other unacceptable extreme by pointing out that, despite the fact that the manifestations of God's presence and activity are so varied, a common underlying logic unites them all. Each time someone encounters God, in the Old or New Testaments, there is a common underlying pattern. That pattern involves our acting and God's responding. So not just any experience of good things--not just any set of funny feelings, etc.--will count as an experience of God or encounter with Him. Where we encounter God is in those places where we recognize that our lives fit into this pattern.

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Here I am making the point in very broad strokes. I encourage anyone to read the Scriptures and look for this pattern at work. But for now let me skip ahead to address myself to a few particular practical points.

I started this post by talking about my time at a youth summer camp. Part of the reason for raising this question, "What does it mean to encounter God?" is that a better understanding of this will help us to better articulate to people what our desire for them is. If I say, "I want for you to encounter God," what does that mean for the person who's hearing it. He or she may also want to encounter God, but if they don't know what that means or what that looks like, then they will have a hard time making that happen.

Having gone through this bit of reflection, we are hopefully in a better position to be able to guide people into encounters with God. If the question is, "How can I have an encounter with God?" or the thought is, "I want to encounter God but I don't know how," or "I've tried to meet God but it's never worked," we now have a way of helping. If you want to encounter God, you need to move into the pattern of God's activity. You need to act in a way that moves you into that pattern with the expectation that God will respond. If you aren't acting, the encounter will not happen. If you are acting without being alert and expectant in the appropriate way, the encounter will not happen. If you act and are appropriately expectant, the testimony of all those who have done these things before us is that God will respond and meet us.

There are some further practical elements to consider in this connection. What does it really look like to act in accordance with this pattern? Is it just a matter of obeying the Bible, praying, studying, etc.? What does that really look like? We'll discuss those more in some of the other entries in this series. But there's at least one point I want to consider now.

One of the questions I raised earlier was about the connection of spiritual retreats and camps to "encountering God." One of the reasons that people go on spiritual camps and retreats is to "meet with God". Just what are people looking for when they pull away from the normal routine and the busyness of daily life in this way? Is it reasonable to expect that one could or would encounter God in this context?

Retreats play a very important role in one's life and walk with God. One of the biggest challenges that we face in life is the wealth of things that distract us from really attending to God and His activity. We become so easily preoccupied with the day-to-day. Our minds are filled with worries and anxieties. Our chief thoughts concern the next business deal, avoiding that troublesome co-worker, the problems at home, frustrations with kids, worries about the economy, grandmother's health problems, the custody battle, loan and credit card payments, etc., etc., etc. Our fixation on these things is often precisely what leads us away from God and outside of that crucial pattern of faithful obedience and submission to His will. Taking a spiritual retreat, then, when approached properly, is itself an act of faith and a step into God's pattern.

When a person makes a decision to step away from the mad rush, to intentionally pursue quiet time, to set aside those worries and anxieties and to spend a day or a week in intentional pursuit of God, that creates a space in which God may work and meet that person. Men and women from throughout the history of Christianity can attest to this. To encounter God in this context may involve experiencing a significant change in perspective (perhaps coming to recognize just how big God really is in comparison to all the little things about which we constantly obsess.) It may take the form of an audible voice, feeling, or sensation. But what marks out such experiences as divine is that they fit into this pattern and point toward more and deeper such movements.

It's important to remember that spiritual retreats are not just momentary glimpses of peace and tranquility that we enjoy before diving headlong right back into the madness of the routine. The purpose of retreats is to learn about and draw closer to God in such a way that we can carry those kinds of interactions with God back with us into our daily routine. The goal is to learn how to meet with God in the easy setting (away from the mad world) so that we can learn to meet with God in the difficult setting as well (amidst the mad world).

So spiritual retreats do fit in with the very pattern that I am pointing out here. You might want to consider taking one.

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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.