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Practical Images of Encounter God

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This article is part of a series on finding peace in everyday chaos. It may be better to start from the beginning.

So, there it is. Encountering God is the source of the peace that we’re chasing.

I’m sure no one is surprised. What else could it have been? Everything else that we chase around melts when we catch it. The things, people, and plans that promise peace don’t deliver.

Before we keep talking about peace in everyday chaos—there are two more steps to complete the journey—let’s spend a little more time with the concept of encounter.

Encountering God sounds great on paper, but how do we do it and what does it look like?

Here are three images to help us welcome and recognize an encounter.

Being on God’s Frequency

God constantly communicates His love for us, His desire to spend time with us, and the next steps He wants us to take from where we are.

Why don’t we hear Him more often?

Maybe our souls are like old-fashioned radios, I envision a classic ‘80s boombox, with a dial that adjusts the frequency. God is always broadcasting on the same station, but our souls get out of tune. Sometimes, I change the channel to something entertaining. Other times I tune into whatever my anxiety wants to control.

Defining success, building our team, riding the wave, and all the rest of this series serve to tune our souls to God. These are the ways we calibrate the ear of our heart. These things don’t bring us peace by themselves. They tune us so we’re able to receive peace.

I find it easiest to let my soul be tuned in quiet prayer, but there’s never a bad time to take a step back from the task of the moment and ask God to adjust us so we can hear Him.

I pray this every morning, you’re welcome to join me:

That my heart may stay tuned to God through this day and that I promptly, diligently, meekly, and cheerfully do His will and be free from anxiety about the future.

Yes, that’s three prayers in one run-on sentence. Let’s pretend it’s inspired by St. Paul’s writing.

Do you surrender control of your tuning dial to God so He may draw you away from the world's static and toward His voice? Or, do you frantically scan the channels, scrambling to fill the silence with the next passing distraction?

Experiencing Beauty

Beauty is weird. How do we define it? How do we capture it? Beauty lives in a land of mystery and wonder. If we understood it, we would destroy it.

Music often stirs my insides with beauty. Art pulls some people into mystery. Ordinary things done extraordinarily can trigger a sense of beauty. The appreciation of ordinary things—watching the sun rise or a child sleeping—can bring emotions welling to the surface.

Encountering God rhymes with recognizing beauty. It feels similar. We want something we can understand, quantify, and control, but neither beauty nor God plays by those rules.

Sometimes people describe God as “winking” at them when something that only they could appreciate catches their attention.

Once, I hung up a stressful call at work only to have a daughter bring me a plate of snacks “just because.” Was it a coincidence or did God wink at me?

That’s what the mystery of encountering God feels like.

Do you allow beauty to pierce you, enter you, and carry you from the land of facts, logic, and senses to a place of wonder and mystery? Or, do you turn away from beauty because it shatters your illusion of being in control?

God’s still small voice

More than anything, God meets us in a quiet moment that’s easy to write off as nothing significant. Think of when God told Elijah that He would pass by. There was a fire, an earthquake, and a storm, but God wasn’t in any of these loud, attention-grabbing things. Then there was a “light silent sound,” which prompted Elijah to cover his face because he recognized God’s presence (see 1 Kgs 19: 11-12).

What, on earth, is a light silent sound? Well, have you wondered what your conscience sounds like? There’s no discernible noise but the jolt of a pricked conscience is unmistakable. It’s also an encounter with God’s still small voice.

Hearing that silent sound is possible if we learn to listen for it. Turning down the volume on the world and our rambling thoughts helps, too.

Is your life quiet enough to hear the still small voice of God or do you fill every waking moment with noise?

Conclusion

Peace comes from the conviction that God is real and that He loves us. Encountering Him is one source of our conviction. We stop believing in an idea and start believing in a person we have met. What can be more convincing than that?

This is where we must leave behind the world’s definition of peace. God doesn’t offer comfort, wealth, security, or freedom from suffering. If we think peace means easy circumstances then we will be very disappointed.

God’s peace is simply the calm that comes from the conviction that, as the world melts down around us, God is real and He loves us.

God bless us on our journey!
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