God Encounter

If I were to ask the question, "Do you believe in God?" I think it's safe to say I'd get the backing of a few individuals. If however I asked those same people to prove to me that He's real--I would probably be left standing alone.

Well, you don't have to prove to me that God exists, because once I began to seek God with everything I had, I experienced a real, personal encounter with Him that you only just read about. But for most people, encountering God is not something they can easily relate to--possibly because they weren't raised with a concept of God or maybe had issues in their lives that left little room for God. But the reason I believe most people don't get God is because of religion. Religion, like all institutions, was created for a sole purpose--in this case, to bridge the gap between God and man. But religion can only go so far to make God real because religion is founded on man made ideologies or doctrines and at some point, will fall short in the long run.

As I stated earlier--in my quest for truth I was led to Christianity and once there, I found the ultimate truth I was looking for. And while religion offered me a place to belong and a place to come to know God, I felt there was more about God that I needed to know. So, even as I attended church and bible studies, I took it upon myself to seek God, to go after Him the way you might go after a dream job or that perfect relationship. And it was when I started to look for God anywhere and everywhere--through philosophical conversations with friends, surfing the web, reading anything I could get my hands on, listening to inspirational music, and even crying out to Him--that I finally found the real God I had been searching for. And the surprising thing I uncovered on this journey of discovery is that God wanted to be found and that He was always there, but that I had to first move out of the box that is religion in order to encounter Him in a heartfelt one on one relationship.

Now I know this all sounds very cliche, but just as you can only learn so much through book learning or head knowledge, you've got to discover and relate to God on a more personal level in order to really get Him. And religion, unfortunately cannot always give you that, because sometimes religion's focus on doctrine paints a distant picture of God, one that is far from the truth. The truth is that God not only wants a one on one relationship with you, but He also wants to be the one you come to when you have problems and He also wants to be the one to bless you so that you can know how much He really cares. But until then, God remains in the background, an omnipotent power that holds the world together, an unseen force that guides our lives-- all the while waiting for that moment of discovery when you come to the realization that He does exist and that He is more than religion has ever made Him out to be.

God has placed a deep desire in each of our hearts to want to know Him and it is when you take that first step to go after Him with your whole heart and soul that you will find Him waiting there for you.

　

Faith Rocks
C Willson**********************