There is no getting around or escaping our ongoing encounters with God. How can God bring good out of my wretchedness? I know that I exhaust and frustrate Him. The Good News is that I also know that I am constantly being reborn, renewed and regenerated. As is evidenced in the Bible, God is constantly restoring creation, all things, all people. The encounters people have with God and Jesus are what make the story so believable and relatable to you and me. Abraham. Moses. Elijah. Job. So human, full of such hope for you and me. We are permitted to question God, even get angry with God. The names I mentioned were no different from you and me, when you get right down to it, in the eyes of God. We can remain puzzled by much of what God and Jesus have to say to us, and that’s okay. It is not necessary for us to use the Bible as a textbook, but rather as a storybook. Our encounters with God involve our personal struggles. It means our faith is vibrant and dynamic. We are freed up to engage others in spiritual conversations that may lead to a relationship cultivating into a friendship. These are the encounters our Lord loves us to have. Yes, they take courage and commitment. But in a world that is bent toward evil and dividing walls of suspicion and exclusion, we certainly owe it to the One who gave his life for us all to try and break through.

One of the most endearing insights I have received in my Christian walk was hearing a certain benediction in a church service. It isn’t in any of our hymnals, worship resources or liturgical handbooks that I have seen so far. It summarizes beautifully the encounter that Christ has with us constantly. The one true friend who never leaves us. “May the Lord be ahead of you to lead you and show you the way; behind you to encourage you, beside you to befriend you, above you to watch over you, and within you to give you peace.” No one – not John the Baptist, Peter the Rock, John, the disciple who Jesus loved, Paul the Apostle, – can lay any more special a claim on Jesus than you or I. Jesus believes in you. He entrusts everything to us, even knowing what we are made of. Because we are blessed in this way, we are able to be a blessing to others.

In your daily inward struggles, you can be confident and secure in the true promises of a God who loves you unconditionally. The fear factor goes away. The demons we punish ourselves with disappear. Read a little beyond John 3:16 for more amplifying verses describing the encounter our Lord chooses to make with us. Rejoice, and believe in this Good News!

Pastor Art