I don’t want encounter!

I was looking again this week at John 1 and in verse 14 comes this beautiful sentence:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, became flesh, human like you and me and made his home among us.  He left behind life in heaven with the Father, sacrificing that splendour and glory to come and be with us on earth amongst our broken lives.  The circumstances of his birthplace a prophetic picture of him engaging fully with the muck and mess of our lives.

If we look at the word translated “dwelt” it comes from a word meaning to encamp, or to pitch, or live in a tent, like the Israelites living in the wilderness in tents.  They even built a tent for God so that he too could stay with them. They were nomadic, moving around intents with their flocks and herds.  God was promising them a more permanent existence where they could build homes and settle more permanently in the promised land.  His heart was to live with them.

This picture of God making his home with us is littered throughout the whole arc of scripture from Genesis and the garden of Eden, where he had planned a beautiful life of communion with mankind, all the way through to Revelation and the description of the new Jerusalem where we read:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling-place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. Revelation 21:3

He longs to be with us, permanently, not in tents in a temporary way.  There is a corresponding longing in my heart that is expressed so beautifully in many of the psalms.  Here in Psalm 27:4, for example:

One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.

When I was a relatively young Christian, I read Brother Lawrence’s “Practising the Presence”, a little book describing the monk’s journey in learning to experience God throughout the day regardless of what he was doing.  I remember struggling with the fact that unlike the monk, especially when I went in to work, I would click into “work mode” and seemingly not contemplate God again until later in the day.  I tried various things over the years to help me move in this, from alarms on my phone to help me remember to “check-in” with God at regular intervals, establishing more regular prayer times, or reading my bible at lunchtime.  When I have read of some of the contemplative and monastic orders, there is often a sense of a daily rhythm of prayer, but this monk seemed to go further than that.

I am aware that we in the West so compartmentalise our lives into God and non-God boxes, but really there are no non-God moments in our lives, we are united with him in spirit.  We are always with him!  Hebraic thought has him woven throughout every aspect of life.  Jewish tradition has prayers for everything from eating or going to the toilet, waking up and going to sleep and a myriad of events in between.  This brings about a God-consciousness that also helps not to forget that he is the one who sustains life; that everything comes from him.

I remember after a conference where I had experienced God’s presence in a more tangible way, talking to someone about wanting to live in that place and not leave.  I was told that we “cannot live permanently on the mountaintops, we have to come down into the valleys”.  The implication was that if I had my head “permanently stuck in the clouds” I would be no earthly good.  I’m not sure I completely agree.

As I grew in my relationship with God and as I met different people, I learned of those who regularly have what they termed “encounters with God”, a deeper more real, spirit-realm experience.  This filled me with hunger for more.  They spoke of God in a way that I had not experienced and have a degree of intimacy and friendship with him as a result of these encounters that was new to me.

An encounter can be defined as a meeting that is casual or unexpected.  I don’t want my meetings with God to be casual but what I have heard of some people’s encounters with God, they are definitely unexpected.  Maybe a bit like Ezekiel in chapter 8 where he is whisked up to heaven having been grabbed by his hair; that would be unexpected!  I heard of one lady who had a sudden heavenly encounter while she was on the toilet!  Not always so convenient either then, these encounters with God. 

However, although I long to know God in a deeper way, I don’t just want encounter. A brief one-off is not the picture, I long for sustained awareness of his presence.  I want to know his presence woven throughout my day.  I want to be aware of the spirit realm all the time.  If I focus on encounter and that becomes my goal, I become “experience-focussed” and approach my times with God with an expectancy about what I am going to “get out of it”.  In this regard, the difference between encounter and dwelling with God feels like the difference between a date, or a one-night stand, and marriage.  It’s maybe more about a commitment to a lifestyle of communion than amazing one-off moments.

Jesus was aware of what his Father was doing and saying constantly.  In constant communion.  We are exhorted by Paul to “pray continually” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).  This theme of continual communion is in many scriptures when we start to look for it.

I think this is some of what I find unsatisfactory about the concept of a Sunday service as ‘church’.  Hear me right here – I love to meet up and worship corporately.  There is something powerful about the corporate dynamic of worship that is not the same when it is just me and the Tribl app or a YouTube stream.  God’s blueprint for his people included times of gathering everyone together for celebration, for feasting and for bigger corporate times of worship.  I am not saying that Sunday morning meetings (or any other day!) should not happen.

When I read about the early church and what it looked like, our meeting on a Sunday morning is not the full picture.  I think the ‘dwelling’ is supposed to take place not only between me and God, or us and God, in a meeting, but it is meant to include a continual sense of community, of dwelling amongst one another. We are to dwell with God AND each other continually.  It is easy to get so focussed on me and my relationship with Jesus, especially after the lockdown year we have experienced, and miss the bigger, corporate picture that is so important.  Not just me in my little “tent” with God, but a community of tents.

Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts … (Acts 2:46)

“Every day” doesn’t sound like random moments of “encounter”.  “Breaking bread in each other’s home” does not sound like a quick coffee after the service before rushing home for Sunday lunch in our separate spaces.  It sounds like interwoven lives.  It sounds like family living alongside each other. 

Having spent large parts of the last year disconnected from each other in many ways, particularly those of us who live alone, or those who were less able to grapple with technology, I think that God’s heart is for us to learn to value and pursue deep connection, with him obviously, but also with each other.  There is a saying that “absence makes the heart grow fonder”.  I think absence has certainly made us re-evaluate and contemplate what really matters.  I also think that in order to move forward into this new depth of connection with God, and with each other, there is a need to push past some awkwardness, some barriers, some fears and anxieties and the inevitable distractions.

But it will be so worth it.