A True Encounter
To encounter the grandeur of the Four Corners, you have to go there. And when you do, the heavy silence and vast solitude are waiting, by-products of the journey to this splendid destination. God should be a daily destination for us. He should be one with whom we seek audience, a place we long to be in, a river we seek to wash in, a canyon we want to get lost in.
We need to go to God and then stop. We need to lay down our burdens and requests for a moment and attempt to gather him in, encountering his vastness. We do not approach him with a laundry list of wants. Rather, we approach him in order to worship him — giving him his worth — hoping that by being in his presence, we will glean a small piece of his glory to season our daily existence.
But our society makes it difficult for us to fully understand what it means to encounter God in this way. We use personal experience as our doping needle for the transcendent. We think that if we can manipulate experiences, the world will feel better. We will be better.
We pile our experiences high, and though they shape us to some extent, they do not understand or know us. Experiences are great but by definition they are merely emotional, self-focused events.13 They leave us just as alone as we were before. If we focus only on experience, we miss the most important part of the life equation: encounter.
Think about the whale stars. Think about peeking through the ponderosa pine and seeing a few falling stars light up the sky. After it happens, you feel like you have to tell someone; you feel like you just stole something so beautiful from the sky and you can’t even explain why. You’re dizzy with excitement.
That’s how our interaction with God should be. When we seek encounters with God, we never know what to expect. He’s as unpredictable as a fall day in the Colorado Rockies. Why can’t our worship gatherings reflect this truth about God? Maybe because most of us like to plan for God like we plan for the weather.
When we make worship a sensory experience, we devalue its authenticity. The primary focus, which should be on God, turns to those manipulating the experience. God doesn’t speak to us through the cool of culture; he speaks in gentle whispers. What would happen to the church if we walked in on Sunday open and broken before God, ready to encounter his ravishing Spirit and Word?
Unlike experience, the word encounter carries a relational meaning. It can mean “a chance meeting” or “a hostile confrontation.” Is God more an event that we attend in order to accumulate knowledge or is he a being whom we meet with or even clash with? Does he reveal himself throughout the world in creation and through his Word? Do we not have very deep ways to come up against his vast and untamed glory?
When we attend worship services that allow us to stop in and see God, who is he really to us? Is he not more than this?
Who is God if not the divine Father whom we encounter with awe and reverence, fire devouring before him and around him a tempest raging?15 Who is God if not the Son, the head of the church, whom we encounter together, corporately, speaking truth and love to one another, growing into him who is our Head?16 Who is God if not the Holy Spirit, whom we encounter within — our Great Teacher, Counselor, and Reminder of Truth?17 God did not create humankind to experience us and then walk away. He created humankind to walk with us, to love us, and for us to be loved by him.
When we exchange a true encounter with God for a veneered experience that satisfies our selfish desires, we proclaim the self above God.
Barking Lines
When we talk about encounter, we must address the relational element. Think about life as if it were one giant conversation. Conversation is a dialogue between two or more -people, which makes those we live with and among part of the dialogue. There is give and take, reciprocity, and confrontation. We serve the conversation when we listen, considering the other person’s needs more important than our own. It can be a beautiful dance.
But when we live experientially, the dialogue breaks down; it becomes one-sided, a monologue. In a monologue, only one person speaks, only one person matters. A monologuer does not stand in a position of true relationship. He stands alone, barking lines to everyone.
It’s the same in life. If we live like the monologuer, we begin to use -people as leverage devices, seen only for their use to our particular needs. Our interactions with them turn into a power, dominance, and manipulation structure and less of a relationship. The monologuer does not need interaction, because he just wants to control -people and events. To the monologuer, people exist as a means to success. He does not understand others, nor is he understood. He speaks, and lives, to hear his own voice.18
Is this how we interact with God? We fail to realize that he originated the dialogue and that he longs to interact with us. The fact that we can have real interaction with the God of the universe is staggering. It’s a reality that comes to life when you walk outside during a fall sunset, see the colors, and whisper to God. Eyes filling up and heart bursting, you hear his voice. You shudder.
The monologuer sees the world as his audience, a stage meant only for him. He speaks from a position “of his own.” Stiff and rigid, brash and bold, the monologuer misses the beauty and romance of dialogue with God. For there must be tender compliance as we speak to and with God. As the Teacher reminds us in Ecclesiastes, we must come first to listen, keeping our words few and our hearts open, ready for the radiance of the Father.1
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The Four Corners area feels like a frontier we can all learn from — just wild enough to scare us a bit but tame enough to invite us in. The greatest part about it is you cannot turn to leave when you start to feel uncomfortable. If you abide there long enough, you will find all your secret thoughts exposed, waving in the mountain air. No place for veneer; no place for selfish desires. Just you and God, if you dare encounter him, if you dare enter into conversation with him.
