Encountering God
Part 4
So, some people are lucky. They say that God, in his grace, always makes the first move, and they have encountered God: he is a reality in their lives, and they love him. What about those others who want to know God and God just isn’t playing his part? If you are saying to yourself, “I want to believe in God”, then, by definition you have made a move towards him. If God is supposed to always make the first move, then he should certainly make a move toward you now that you have declared an interest. God just needs to get a move on!
This is why I say we need to reach out to him before we know that he is there. Consider the gap between knowing about God and knowing God. Everybody knows something about God – even if they then totally reject those ideas. But knowing God requires some sort of encounter and relationship. We may say, “I used to just know what others said about God, but now I know him for myself”. This sort of knowledge of God very naturally overflows into having faith in him. However, we are considering the situation in which we don’t at the moment believe in God. We understand what belief in God is, but we don’t actually have that belief, so we have neither knowledge of God nor belief in him. So, it is an act of faith to reach out our hand before we have either knowledge or belief that he is there. It’s so counter-intuitive. But if we wait until we have faith before we reach out our hand, then we will never reach out, for reaching out is what faith is. When we reach out, we already have faith, because we are showing our faith, even before God takes our hand. Now that is faith!
So, you reach out your hand. What happens next? What should happen is that you experience your hand being taken into another’s hand, an experience of someone leaning into you in an embrace, of a whisper in your ear, which should say, “Hello. Welcome” but instead audaciously says, as the very first words you hear, “I love you”. Of course, I am speaking in analogies; please don’t expect sensory experiences with your external senses; this is all going on in our minds and hearts, but this is the closest I can come to in explaining what an encounter with God is like, and so, if you have reached out your hand, this is what you should experience.
And you might.
Or you might not. God, of course, has no physical hands, so if you literally reach out your hand – which is a lovely gesture and very helpful once you have got to know and love God – you will not actually feel anything. The voice in your ear, which is, of course, the inner ear of your mind, and the feeling of close intimacy are easier to come to terms with, but cannot be forced, and are in no way guaranteed. You just have to take the risk that you reach out your hand, give yourself, and you get nothing back. I can’t explain this. Except perhaps to say that God is a personal agent in charge of his actions, whom we cannot control. He is not like electricity and if we plug in our plug then our device will power up.
Spiritual Devotion 