You are pursuing hard after God. You are praying and doing some fasting. You are groaning for closeness with God. You are searching your heart. You are making adjustments. You are hungering and thirsting. You aren’t sure if you are getting anywhere. You still feel the same. You feel pretty good that you are doing these spiritual practices but it’s hard to measure progress. Rather than feeling stronger you actually feel weaker. Rather than feeling more holy, you feel more aware of your sinfulness.
Here’s what’s going to happen.
As your resolve deepens and you sink lower into poverty of spirit, suddenly, when you least expect it, the Lord God will visit you. He will reveal Himself. He will unveil His glory. Some call this encountering God. It’s a work of the Spirit awakening us to who God is. He opens the eyes of our understanding to grasp His love, His holiness, His infinite power and His beauty.
My experience
There’s never been a time in my walk with God over the last three decades that this has not happened. Every time I set my heart to seek God with all my heart the Lord pours out His glory "in due season.” Sometimes the waiting is weeks, sometimes months. But eventually, the Lord breaks forth upon me and manifests Himself.
I’m not talking about a sense of peace or a good prayer time or the Scriptures opening up. I’m talking about moments when the heavens seem to open and we see a glimpse of Jesus. I have no idea how the Spirit does this but He somehow makes eternal things real. It all hits us like a flash of lightning. Everything we’ve contemplated day and night suddenly becomes real.
This will happen in due time. Don’t shrink back. Don’t get weary. Don’t stop crying out to Him. Keep searching your heart in raw honesty and repenting of anything the Lord shows you. Just stay low and keep calling out to Him and He will shower out His presence upon you exceedingly abundantly beyond what you ask or imagine (Eph 3).
And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. — Galatians 6:9
Encounters with God are preceded by waiting patiently for them. The Lord always makes us hunger and thirst leading up to them. But He always makes Himself known eventually.
Transformation
I believe that both the mountain and the valley work together to transform us. The valley of waiting and thirsting purifies motives and prepares us. The valley humbles us and shows us our need for God. Character is shaped in the valley. Shallowness is burned away and longing for eternity develops. But the mountaintop is something altogether different. Encountering God changes us.
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. — 2 Corinthians 3:18
Think of the individuals in the Bible like Moses, Jacob, Daniel, Isaiah, Job, John … who encountered the glory of God. They were never the same! It’s not that their ideas of God were wrong but their ideas were just way too small! The vastness of the Eternal God and the otherness of His holiness would cause them to quake. Many of them fell to the ground in terror. Daniel trembled. Isaiah cried, “Woe is me, I’m a man of unclean lips.”
Nobody encounters God without being overwhelmed. The sudden revealing of the infinite difference between the holiness of God and our sinfulness produces deep contrition. Many cannot even speak. They just weep as the glory of God washes over them and the fire of God purges their innermost being.
This will happen as you continue. Wait for it. Seriously wait for it. Pray until it comes. Search your heart vigorously and groan over your sins.
Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. — James 4:8-10
Fire
Again, I’ve never set my face to seek hard after the Lord that He did not eventually manifest His glory. He is faithful to His promises. Many Christians don’t understand this because they give up too soon. Faith is about believing and believing persistently until we obtain the promise. He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him (Heb 11).
And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the LORD. — Malachi 3:1-3
When He comes it is often with cleansing fire. When He came to Moses He was a burning fire in a bush. When He came upon the Church in Acts 2 it was tongues of fire. Our God is a consuming fire (Heb 12:29). Fire purifies.
Again, I’m not sure what is happening when He does this but all I know is that thousands of layers of sin in my heart are revealed as I am exposed in the light, and then God touches my heart with holy fire and burns away everything unholy. The inner spirit within me quakes and trembles. Tears stream from my eyes because in those moments every part of my being is aware that God is real and His hand is upon my life.
We are on day 25. Don’t get weary. Keep pushing on. Wait for the heavens to part. It will happen in due time. And you’ll never be the same. It’s coming. Can you see the tiny cloud, the size of a man’s fist, forming in the distance?
And in a little while the heavens grew black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. — 1 Kings 18:45