Encountering God

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 say 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.