What does it mean to meet with God?
Do we desire it as Christians?
Do we understand what it means?
Why would we want to meet with the God of the universe?
Reading the stories of the Bible, we see that God regularly met with people. Sometimes it was in the quiet and sometimes in all of His majestic glory. Sometimes God offered encouragement and hope, instruction, or a challenge. Sometimes there was judgment.
Since Adam and Eve, God has wanted to meet with us. He wants to spend time with us. It’s not because we deserve it, but because we are His, He made us, and He loves us. He wants to be able to share His goodness and glory with us. But, for that to happen, we need to be willing to meet Him and engage.
Here’s the thing I’ve observed: we may want to meet God, but we also usually want to meet God on our terms.
Can you see the difficulty in that? He is God, and to meet Him is to meet Him on His terms because of that. He is the King. His terms mean the love, goodness, and mercy as well as the holiness, righteousness, and justice. Both the warm loving parts and the scary mighty parts.
In Exodus 33 & 34, Moses discovered that to meet God was risky. He wanted to know God’s presence, but could not see the face of God because of God’s intense glory. Yet, later in 1 Kings 19, Elijah encountered God in his time of need through a small whisper, not the might of an earthquake or fire. Job encountered God in his place of despair and had to come face to face with the reality of God’s greatness.
If we do not meet with God, then our relationship with and worship of Him will be severely strained. But, we need to get past preconceived notions of what meeting with God looks like. God will meet us where we are and in just the way we need.
Where can we meet with God? It can be done together and individually every day of our life.
How can we meet with God? By asking, preparing, and being willing. By recognizing it happens through Jesus Christ and calling on His name. He will respond and meet with us. And in that, our life will continually be transformed because of those encounters.
If you would like to read more in depth about this, I recommend a blog post from worship leader and writer Kim Gentes called Can I Meet with God? from his online journal.
Then, share with the community:
How do you meet with God, and what is it like?
