HAVE YOU ENCOUNTERED GOD?

Friday: March 6, 2020

We often hear the words ‘I know you’, suggesting a degree of knowledge about personality and possible choices that can be made as a result. From Catechism, one of the very first questions we are invited to answer is ‘why did God make me? Its answer is presented in very short statements:’ To know Him, to love Him, and serve Him in this life and be happy with Him in the next.

Our focus today is on the very first statement hence the question: ‘What does it mean to know God? Over the next 48 hours, permit me to share an exposition with you along those lines.

1. To know God is to have an encounter with His person.

The definition of an encounter in this context is’ a supernatural experience that makes a person or thing real to you’. Therefore, following an encounter, one ought to be translated from a realm of the imaginary to concrete reality – to acknowledge a tactile and tangible presence of God. Not the kind that is built on the words of others, but the kind originating from an experiential encounter with Him.

Beloved, the purpose of any encounter is to build conviction, an unwavering and unshakeable acceptance of the reality of God. For without that follow up, an encounter is of no use. What I refer to is the kind of resultant conviction that moved Paul to say ‘I know whom I have believed and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have entrusted to Him'(2 Tim 1:12) That is the product of an encounter.

So we say we know God, but have we truly encountered Him? What happens when we encounter another ‘reality’ that knocks us off our perch? Do we question His presence then or like Job, can we also afford to say ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him’?(Job 13:15)

Sweetheart, how real is God to you?

#sly