A Call to Encounter the Living God

In a world where many people are deconstructing, reconstructing, or dismantling their faith, I have found myself wondering what the essentials are and why we find ourselves adding embellishments to our relationship with God. I have seen countless people pursue religion from a hollow soul, doing outward works but never experiencing true, internal transformation. I have seen people lose themselves in “ministry”, pursuing the expansion of God’s kingdom.

And yet, the true pursuit of God cannot lead to empty, dead tradition. The true pursuit of God (as seen throughout the Bible and history) changes us, transforms us inside and out, and pushes us forward towards becoming more like Christ. It calls us higher.

Therefore, there must be something fundamentally wrong if the pursuit of ministry or religion is leaving people empty, burnt out, and straying from the calling of God over their lives. I’d like to suggest that the problem stems from a deviation from the fundamentals of our faith and a genuine connection with God and the Holy Spirit. In a world following influence and quick results, we have to remember to return to the essentials.

The Need For an Encounter with a Crucified and Resurrected Christ

Something that has always caught my attention has been the full transformation of the disciples when they met Christ. They met Him one way, but after living with Him and experiencing His death and resurrection, they were completely different.

A man who denied knowing Jesus three times later professed his love to Him thrice (John 21:15-19). A man full of fear and doubt who claimed that unless he saw, he wouldn’t believe, later confessed Jesus as his Lord and God with full conviction (John 20:24-29). Two disciples, disappointed and heartbroken, having lost all their hope, later became faithful witnesses of the resurrection of Christ and shared their experience with the twelve (Luke 24:13-35).

All these men (and women) encountered Christ personally. They witnessed his death and experienced His resurrection. This moment marked them and became the catalyst that determined the course of the rest of their lives.

What about us? Have we had a revelation of the weight of the cross, and have we had a personal encounter with the resurrected Christ? I believe that as a church we have grown too comfortable with second-hand knowledge and settled for a life without personal experience. We live off the breadcrumbs of someone else’s faith when Jesus has opened the way for us to experience Him as the bread of life. His blood was too costly for us to be satisfied with anything less than a genuine and personal experience.

If we are to live a life marked by a true pursuit of God, we must encounter the Crucified and Resurrected Christ.

The Need For an Encounter with the Holy Spirit

But what will empower us to hold on to this revelation? What will tide us through the dark nights, the silent doubts, and the disappointments of life? The resurrected Christ made provision for that! He rose to heaven to give us the key to living a life aligned with Him: the Holy Spirit.

“‘And now I will send the Holy Spirit, just as my Father promised. But stay here in the city until the Holy Spirit comes and fills you with power from heaven.’” – Luke 24:49 (NLT)

A life without a living and breathing relationship with the Holy Spirit will be a life in form without power. It would be like having a car, but no gasoline. And yet, so many Christians are content to live without cultivating this relationship. But it is essential to the Christian life, which is why Christ told His disciples not to begin their mission without Him.

And yet, this is what many do. They go into ministry without the Spirit. They pursue religion without the Spirit. And finally, they end up dying within, because the One Person who could sustain their life and their mission wasn’t invited to participate in it.

The Holy Spirit transformed Peter from an easily swayed man into one of boldness and undivided conviction (Acts 2:14-41; 3:11-26; 4:8-13). It transformed fearful believers from men terrified of persecution to men whose response to being imprisoned turned into greater zeal for preaching the word (Acts 4:23-31; 5:40-42). The Holy Spirit even changed a man who persecuted Christ into someone who would willingly give his life for the gospel.

This is the kind of transformation the Holy Spirit brings about. Why have we left an encounter with the Holy Spirit on the back burner of our lives? Or worse yet, why have we diminished it to one occasion, that ever-famous “infilling of the Spirit”, but forgotten the daily, cultivated walk with the Spirit?

“Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives.” – Galatians 5:25 (NLT)

The Need for an Encounter with the Father

What is faith, tradition, ministry, or religion worth if it does not lead us to the Father? Christ’s entire ministry was to reveal the Father. The Holy Spirit’s ministry is to reveal Christ, who in turn leads us to the Father. And yet, many of us are content with leaving God as a distant authority with a judge’s robe and a gavel. Christ paid too much for us to keep such distance. He spilled His blood so we would become sons and daughters of God.

“So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, ‘Abba, Father.’” – Romans 8:15 (NLT)

Sin created in us an orphan spirit, cutting us off from our Father and raising us to believe that we are abandoned, lacking, and without destiny. But through Christ and by the Spirit the door is open, and now we’ve been adopted into belonging, abundance and purpose. Why have we become satisfied with a servant-based church model, where approval and success are performance-based? That was our life when we were orphans. But Christ has called us higher. We have a Father!

If we had an encounter with God as our Father, our ministries would be richer because we wouldn’t perform to prove our worth, gain success, or fill the aching hole in our souls seeking worth and validation. We need an encounter with our Father, with no distance between us, no shame and no guilt. Why? Because a revelation of the Father is the one thing that will fulfill us and in turn enable us to minister unto Him out of the right heart.

The Need to Cling to the Word

How, then, will we pursue God, grow in faith, minister well, and save ourselves from empty religion? How will we stay the course? The fact is, we need an encounter with Christ, we need a relationship with the Holy Spirit, and we need to experience God as our Father. How will we do this? We need God’s Word to lead us, transform us, cut us, cleanse us, and empower us.

We need the power of the written Word, but we also need the power of the active, living, and breathing Word of God. It’s not either-or, it is both and. Curiously, this isn’t possible without the Holy Spirit. Nor is it possible without the resurrected Christ. To know the Father, we need Christ to open the way, the Holy Spirit to transform us, and the Spirit to breathe upon the Word and make it alive in us.

It all boils down to this: we need God. Not distantly, not traditionally, not religiously. We need God experientially, daily, constantly.

Maybe it’s time to rethink our faith. And instead of focusing so hard on tearing down and pulling apart, we should lock eyes with Christ and let Him pull us together, bringing sense and wholeness into the cracks of our lives.

We need an encounter with the Living God!

My prayer for you is that you would grow so desperate for the continuous revelation of Christ that you would be moved to seek Him and find Him.

Thanks for reading,
Anna

---

Photo by Kristina Kutleša on Unsplash