How Can We Position Ourselves for a Life-Changing “God Experience”?
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“Experience is the teacher of all things.” - Julius Caesar
It seems most people have things that they desire to change about themselves in order to produce a better life. We make our financial plans, buy gym memberships, and enroll in professional development classes. Sometimes it’s a New Year’s Resolution or a new love interest. Or maybe we hit a significant birthday, like 30 or 40 or 50, and decide it’s finally time. But for all of our sincerity, we usually focus on making merely superficial changes, while God wants us to experience truly transformational change. God’s will for all of our lives is that we experience that inside-out change, the kind that transforms us into the image of Christ.
From the beginning, His purpose was clear: we were created to be reflections of the image of Almighty God.
“Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…” (Genesis 1:26).
That means God is more concerned with changing things like our sin-marred characters, rather than our circumstances, our fallen inner man rather than our outward appearance. And He often uses the circumstances and situations that we want Him to change, to change us before He changes them. He can use every test, trial, struggle, pain, promise or promotion to help us be transformed.
Our lives are the sum total of our experience, and those experiences can be categorized into three types:
- Bad experiences
- Good experiences
- God experiences
Bad experiences are those that we feel negatively affect our lives. They may be things we want to forget, events we wish never happened, and conversations that have wounded us and left scars. Good experiences are experiences that we feel positively affect our lives. They are things that bring us feelings of joy, happiness and pleasure.
The truth is that not all experiences that we deem as “good,” in the sense just mentioned, are actually good. Sometimes they turn out to be shallow, temporary, and usher in seasons of pain. Remember Samson. His trips to Gaza to visit Delilah seemed good to him, but led to destruction. And sometimes our bad experiences actually become fuel that leads us to experience great blessing. In hindsight, you can see how the trial eventually reshaped you and conformed you more to Christ.
The Best Kind of Experience
God experiences are the best, because one authentic encounter with the living God can change your entire life. It can take life’s bad experiences and turn them entirely around for your good; and it can take the good experiences and transform them into defining moments of life.
God experiences can change the trajectory of a person’s life in an instant. It can break the hold of a lifetime of addiction, mend a relationship in a moment of time, or melt a hardened heart in a millisecond and make all things new! The power of a God experience is unprecedented and unparalleled, even if unpredictable.
What Is a God Experience?
A God experience is simply a moment in time when the eternal and Almighty God of creation suddenly, and possibly unexpectedly, makes Himself known to us. He speaks, appears, reveals, or intervenes in our reality in a way that is clearly and undeniably Him, dispelling our doubts and instilling a deep sense of awe. These encounters are completely transformative.
What if I told you that I knew a guy whose heart was so cold, and mind so twisted in his religious beliefs, that he could torture and kill men, women and children who held opposing religious beliefs?
What if I told you he planned and schemed new ways to hunt down, capture and torment more innocent people? What if I told you that the man justified his behavior by his superior education, cultural bias, and elitist social position? What if I told you that Christians who knew him, believed him to be beyond the salvation of God?
It turns out, they were wrong. The man’s name was Saul of Tarsus, and he was radically transformed into the great Apostle Paul…by a God experience.
Saul’s God Experience
Many believe that Saul was raised in a family of social influence, probably by a father who was a Pharisee. We know Saul was highly educated, and he discipled under the well-respected Rabbi Gamaliel. He was zealous in his faith, and deeply racist. He believed that the non-Jewish gentiles who lived around and among the Israelite people were infidels and intermarrying with them was an abomination to God.
Saul eventually ascended to the highest rank in Jewish society as a leading member of the Sanhedrin, a group of seventy-one members who were judges, senators and spiritual advisors to the people of their region. Saul was an “intellectual of intellectuals,” and yet, his obsession was to torture or murder anyone who believed in the deity and Lordship of Jesus Christ.
“Then Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked letters from him to the synagogues of Damascus, so that if he found any who were of the Way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem” (Acts 9:1-2).
Saul of Tarsus was the sum total of his bad and good experiences in life; experiences which had unfortunately shaped him to be someone completely deceived about his true spiritual walk with God. But he had not had a God experience...yet.
“As he journeyed he came near Damascus, and suddenly a light shone around him from heaven. Then he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’ And he said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ Then the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ So he, trembling and astonished, said, ‘Lord, what do You want me to do?’ Then the Lord said to him, ‘Arise and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.’ And the men who journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice but seeing no one. Then Saul arose from the ground, and when his eyes were opened he saw no one. But they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank” (Acts 9:3-9).
Jesus revealed Himself to Saul of Tarsus, a man who didn’t believe in Him. He demonstrated in an undeniable way that He was real, alive, active, involved and deeply interested in Saul’s life. That God experience turned the greatest persecutor of the Church into perhaps the greatest preacher of the Church the world has ever known. God then used this “intellectual of intellectuals” to write two-thirds of the New Testament.
Saul’s God experience transformed him from who he was, a man he was never destined to be, to the man whom God chose him to be from before the foundation of the earth. That’s what a God experience can do! So how does this happen, and can we position ourselves to encounter God in this life-changing way?
God Experiences Change Us Through “Imprinting”
The Cambridge Dictionary states to imprint means “to fix an event or experience so firmly in the memory that it cannot be forgotten although you do not try to remember it.” In life, we often face many negative things that leave deep marks on us that we wish weren’t there. Drugs, toxic relationships, stereotypes, abuse, loss, and sickness are just a few of these common life experiences.
These things in many ways shape and define us, and may remain even after we come to faith in Christ; the perceptions often exist unchallenged in the corners of our minds and cause us to experience an identity crisis. Instead of embracing our new life in Christ, we continue to see ourselves as losers, unworthy, undeserving, incapable, stupid, lazy, ugly, afraid, weak, vile, violated, or victimized.
Saul of Tarsus spent days in the solitude of his supernatural blindness, considering his life and the Scriptures in a whole new way. Random pieces started to fall into place, revealing God’s grand plan for mankind. The extraordinary love and grace of God for all people began to become evident as he re-evaluated current events.
As the sudden and unexpected reality of the Risen Savior imprinted on Saul, he began a radical internal transformation. He could not work to achieve acceptance. He was forgiven, delivered, accepted, cherished – chosen! This became the new “marks” that Saul carried on his soul. And because of his God experience, Saul developed a completely new identity.
“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
God Experiences Change Us Because They “Keep Us”
Imprinting creates a lifelong bond. When an animal is born it will imprint on whatever and whomever initially nurtures and cares for it in its weakness, usually its natural mother. The bond created is so strong, that even if the animal is separated from its mother for years, when reunited the animal will immediately connect and remember that mother as its source.
When we have an authentic experience with God, where He makes Himself or His Word real to us, so that we know that God is healer, provider, redeemer, restorer and forgiver, we imprint on God. He is our source and nothing can break the bond between us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: ‘For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.’ Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35-39).
Throughout Saul’s ministry as the great Apostle Paul, he had many circumstances challenge him to give up and lose faith. But because of the miraculous intervention of a God experience in his life, nothing could cause Paul to turn back from pursuing God’s will for his life.
In my own life, I have once heard the audible voice of God calm me during a raging emotional storm. And He gave me supernatural direction and encouragement to pursue a life of selfless ministry when my youthful plan was to pursue a big career and bank account. I have seen supernatural answers to prayers cried from the heart, and miracles happen before my very eyes. You just can’t tell me God is uninterested, uncaring, or out of touch. You just can’t tell me He doesn’t have a plan, or His arm is too short to save. I have had God experiences that imprinted me to the source, and it keeps me in peace.
God experiences are available to everyone, but they are not necessarily accessed by praying more, reading more of the Bible, going to church more, living right, or worshipping regularly. Perhaps they do position us to better perceive and understand God experiences when He moves miraculously in our lives. But if I could suggest anything, it would just be this simple thing: live.
Many of the most profound God experiences happened at a time the people were not even thinking about God. Moses was tending sheep, Peter was fishing, Gideon was hiding, one woman was fetching water and another was caught in adultery.
Just be ready, especially when your faith is being tried. Remember your Source, and expect a miracle!
Photo credit: ©Getty Images/Yori Hirokawa
