html> Prophetic Mini-Course Series: Angels Among Us, 2nd edition

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND CONTRIBUTING RESOURCES
Author: Teresa Seputis ts@godspeak.net http://www.godspeak.net

Encountering God

Lesson 9
Being Proactive To Encounter God
Part 1 - Prayer And Devotions

By Teresa Seputis

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.


-- © GodSpeak International 2008 --
-- Do not republish without written permission from <copyright@godspeak.net> --

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