Everyone has their own way to experience God. Some people have had an encounter with Jesus where they have actually seen Him walk into the room and sit on the bed. Amazing. I have heard stories of villages where everyone had the same dream that they saw Jesus, and whole villages are being converted. Paul the Apostle saw Jesus on the road to Damascus and was changed forever. Some people experience God through a gift of healing others by praying in the name of Jesus. There are so many ways to experience God, to really feel and see and taste His presence in your life.
Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him. Psalm 34:8
Have you experienced God for yourself? Have you had an encounter with the one true Living God that has blown you away? If not, then prepare to open your heart friend, because He is waiting to show you so much more. When we open are hearts and minds to Jesus, when we are obedient to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, you can watch God do the most amazing things in your life!
During the first year of my walk with Jesus I was very open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. He asked me to change many things in my life, things that I didn’t really want to change, but I knew it was right. And I wanted to honor and obey my Lord, because I love Him. He knows whats best for me, much better than I do. I tried to keep myself open to the Holy Spirit and let Him led me often. Unfortunately there were times when I refused to listen, and I can see how it has impacted my life. Not because I was punished by God, but much as a child refuses to listen to a parent, they reap the consequences of it.
Yet many times I followed through with things I felt the Spirit moving me to do, even when it seemed downright crazy. There have been many times I felt God prompting me to tell different people things. I went with it. It was weird for me. But it was also so cool. God wants to work through us to speak to others! We just have to listen, trust and obey. I am learning many of the spiritual gifts God has given me because of my willingness to obey Him. For instance, I felt very strongly at one point to email one of the church leaders and tell them a message God wanted me to give. I really did not want to. I really felt it was very crazy and dumb. I mean who emails church leaders with a message from God?
God doesn’t really speak through people to prophecy anymore, right? God doesn’t use people to heal or work miracles still. Those are all just stories from the Bible. Stories from 2000 years ago! Right? WRONG! Do not be fooled into thinking God has changed! He has not. The God who walked with His people and commanded us to go out and heal and cast out demons and prophecy is still real, still alive and still exactly the same.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Hebrews 13:8
Satan does not want you to experience God, however. It is his job to keep you away from God. To deceive you into forgetting the truth and thinking that the stories from the Bible are dead and done for our generation. Look at all the distractions in life that take you away from God? Do you think it is a coincidence? Are lives are jam-packed with things to do and stress and problems – all designed to mask the reality that we have been given by God. We are here on earth to live a victorious life and to spread the Gospel message so others can live a victorious life as well. Are you claiming your life of victory right now? Or living just trying to get by every day?
Last year there was a homeless man who began to stand on a little strip of concrete that divided the road near a busy intersection. Honestly I didn’t think much about him and he was there for probably a couple of weeks. Until one night my husband and I were driving home from Bible study. Suddenly I was overcome by compassion for the man and I told my husband we needed to stop. He said he would stop tomorrow on the way home from work, but I insisted we needed too. He declined again and as were rounded the corner into our neighborhood we saw a cat that looked like the one that had run away. My husband turned the car around so we could look for her, and I asked him again to go back to the homeless man. I knew God wanted us to talk to him.
So he turned around and we went back to the corner and parked in a parking lot. My husband went over to the man and knelt down next to him and prayed. It was so weird because there was something almost angelic about the man. I felt very strongly that we needed to give him a Bible and I told my husband so when he got back in the car. He said the man was Christian was quoting scripture to him. He said he would bring him a Bible tomorrow. I said no he needed one now. So I handed my Bible to give to the man. Of course we had already started driving away again, so my husband had to turn around and go back. But the man was gone. So we looked for him and found him at the gas station on the opposite side of the street. My husband gave him the Bible, then came back to the car. I asked him if he had given him money for food, and he hadn’t, so he went to find him again to give him money.
The whole thing was just crazy in my mind. I started to feel very strongly that I needed to talk to the man and tell him that his daughter was looking for him. His daughter? How could I know that he had a daughter. I did not want to just start talking crazy talk to someone like that, but I felt so strongly that I needed to tell him this. The conviction was so strong I could not get away from it. I had to obey it.
So again my husband came back to the car and I told him. He said OK, let’s go talk to him together. I did not want to, I was so scared! Finally I got up enough nerve to do it. I had not really had any encounters with homeless people before. I had looked down on them really. This man’s name was Charles. He was very dirty and smelled like alcohol very strongly. I began to talk to him and I could tell he was drunk. He said angels protected him while he was on the streets, and I believed it. Like I said, there was something almost angelic about him, and I knew then that what he said was true.
I asked him if he had a daughter, and he did. He hadn’t talked to her in a number of years. I told him that she was looking for him, and that she Jesus was in her life. I told him that she was going to find him and he was going to go live with her. Crazy. Then I told my husband we needed to pray and cast out demons from him. We did. Super crazy. But real. So real.
We believed in God, and trusted in Him that this happened to help this man. I felt very strongly that he had been oppressed for many years by Satan who used the alcohol and other things to keep him away from doing what God wanted him to do. The next afternoon I did see Charles at the corner again. I was driving by to get my son from school and could not stop. He looked like he had a shower though. That was the last time I saw Charles. I believe that God worked through prayer to save this man from his oppression and deliver him.
Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover. Mark 16:16-18
This is real. Everyone can experience God this way. I am not special, I do not possess something unusual that others do not. Jesus tells us right in the Bible that we can and should live a supernatural life. We are not physical body’s having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual bodies having a human experience. And why should these things sound crazy? Perhaps you have been tricked by the horror movies into thinking it is all fake. Do you know in other countries they believe and know demons are real and active. They see them and have spiritual battles daily. Why is it that here in the US we are so blinded to the wiles of the devil? His biggest ally here is that we do not believe in him.
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:12
Doubtful? Repent to God for being closed to His prompting in your life. Open yourself up to the Holy Spirit and ask Him to reveal Himself to you. Trust Him and obey any convictions or promptings you begin to feel. God wants to work in you and through you. You have spiritual gifts that are waiting to be discovered. They were not given to you for your own use, but to share with others. God loves His people – all people, and He wants each of them to experience salvation and hope and love. You can be a conduit in which that can happen, all you have to do is allow God to use you.
You can experience God in amazing and powerful ways. You were created to have a relationship with the Almighty God. It can be overwhelming and scary to think about this being real. But once you taste and see the Lord and His true love for you, you will never want to go back to an ordinary life where distractions carry you far away from Him.
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10
