Over the last few years there has been a sentence that I have heard again and again. I have heard it from people who have never explored faith before but feel a pulling towards God, its been on the lips of friends who just a few years ago were on fire and now feel lost and confused, people who long for a deeper connection but don’t know how to get there. I have heard it from old people and from teenagers.
I want to know if God is real, if He would just reveal Himself to me, I would believe.
In other words, I just need an experience.
Every time I hear this I feel hope mixed with frustration. This is my prayer for them too, that God would reveal Himself to them, that they would know God intimately and closely and that their lives would be turned upside for Him. That they could have confidence. Yet, I also realise how powerless that I am to really help. I can share my story and point them into good environments but I am unable to manufacture an encounter with God for them. So we wait and hope.
But what if we are looking at this wrong. What if there is an experience that you could have but are missing?
I have been thinking this week about how relationships work in my life. For me, and I may be unusual, my closest friendships come through two patterns: proximity and adventure. I need regular connection points but I also need a bit of danger. So, we climb mountains or dinghy down rivers, we have planted churches and gone on mission trips to dangerous countries. We do things that force us to connect deeper than over a V60.
Sometimes life throws adventures at us but most of the time, we just decide to do something and see what happens. I am adventure-bonded with my best friends and we are connected for life. And it makes me wonder, what if the encounter you are looking for with God lies on the other side of an adventure you can choose.
We think that we are guided by our hearts but our hearts are being shaped by something deeper. I have a friend who chose to work for Tearfund because he needed the money and now he is obsessed with justice and helping the poor. His heart followed his choices. Perhaps you have a close friend that you chose to hang out with and developed a deep relationship with over time. Or you decided to run a marathon and started training. The activity came first, the feelings and experiences followed.
I heard someone tell a friend to follow their heart when they were struggling to make a decision and thought that is terrible advice. My heart can’t be trusted, it will lead me to all kinds of problems. What is your heart following? How much better would it be to encourage people to make good choices and then to see the experiences and emotions follow.
The word for faith in the Bible is pistis, which can just as accurately be translated as trust. This is how I think that it works with God. He invites Moses to climb a mountain, he tells Peter to throw his nets on the other side of the boat, he invites us to trust in him and to step into a relationship with him. If I sit back and wait for God to grow my connection with him, I find that it withers and falters. However, if I decide to trust as I start to live out that faith, I find that the connection, experiences and emotions that are an important fruit of the relationship follow. These then give me confidence to go deeper.
So, if you just need an experience of God to believe, try doing something wild. Choose to take some risks and the experiences will follow. That is just how life works.
