Whenever I minister to anyone - believer or unbeliever - I want them to go away with an experience with the Lord. I want them to know practically, through experience for themselves, the love of Christ. I want to do more than just fill their mind with knowledge. I want to do more than just simply win an argument. I want them to come into an encounter.
Depending on where you are with the Lord that may sound like a strange statement. However, accepting Christ always brings people into an encounter. Discovering the love of God for yourself will bring you into an encounter. And realizing who you are in Christ will continue to deepen your encounters with the Lord. What does that mean for me? It means that I must be willing to enter into encounters with the Lord myself because it's hard to bring people to a place where I haven't walked.
There is something quite different about taking a trip to a place where you have already been versus going somewhere for the first time. My first time traveling to the beach (for instance) meant that I had to follow directions. I had to pay attention to all the details of the route. I had to make sure that I knew the direction I was heading every mile of the journey. Once I got used to the route it made traveling a lot easier and a lot more fun. I was able to enjoy the journey. I was able to pick up on things that I had never seen before. I was also able to handle the different things that come with traveling because I had been there before. When you and I learn to encounter the Lord for ourselves then it means we don't have to focus so much on the map but get to listen to the Guide (Holy Spirit). Directions are good when you don't know where you are going. But once you've been there then you get to handle any situation that comes up in the journey.
I'm always amazed at the conversation that come up with different believers. Some people are encounter oriented while others are Scripture oriented. Both groups tend to view these two thought processes in conflict with one another. In some ways that may be true. I do want to have a scriptural basis for what I encounter, but at the same time I also want to trust the Holy Spirit. How many times have we heard someone ask "where is that in the Bible?" when referring to someone's encounter with God? Can you imagine if Mary would have took that same approach: "Where's the chapter and verse that says virgins become pregnant when the Holy Spirit comes upon them?"
The point I'm trying to make is very simple - you can actually enter into a place with the Lord where you experience Him practically for yourself. You can move past the place of mere knowledge (without experience) and into a place of knowledge and experience. Which would you rather have? There are plenty of schools designed to help people increase in their knowledge of God. There are plenty of places you can go to increase in your knowledge of the Bible. Where can you go to come into an experience with the Lord? I mean...at some point all of this knowledge should lead us to an encounter. At some point, what we believe should be what we are seeing.
If you have confessed Jesus as Lord then you have entered into a relationship that you can feel, you can touch, you can see, smell, hear, and taste. You have entered into a relationship that can be just as tangible as any other relationship. I'm not saying that you will always see the Lord nor that you will always hear Him. What I am saying is that you can. There may be seasons where it seems the Lord is distant and there may be seasons where everywhere you turn you sense the presence of the Lord in one fashion or another. The key for us is that whatever season we find ourselves in is that we never stop pressing in to encounter Him.
In this journey with the Lord, I want you to know the love of Christ. I want you to move past the mere knowledge of it. I want you to move into an experience with it and with Him. You can have this. It's a part of your fellowship with the Beloved.
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