A few months ago, a young woman wrote me about an experience she had while lying in the intensive care unit. Severely battered in an automobile accident, she had suffered many broken bones and lacerations.
“Suddenly I felt my bed rising,” she wrote. “And when it stopped, my body continued to rise. Instantly, my pain vanished, and I felt wrapped in peace.”
She was conscious of nurses running around frantically, and one of them was saying, “We’re losing her!”
At one point, she said, she stood face to face with Jesus.
“He asked me if I was ready to go with him. I then realized my life didn’t amount to good ‘heaven material,’ so I told him, ‘No, I’m not.’
“He told me, ‘If you go back, it will be hard and painful.’ When I repeated that I wasn’t ready to go with him, I came back to consciousness.”
She closed her letter by telling me how much she needed to tell someone about the experience. Although her story sounds like many other “near death” experiences, her husband had refused to let her talk about it-he was afraid their friends would think her crazy. But she wanted to tell someone who understood.
Many people have been profoundly influenced by a spiritual experience, but they have no one to tell.
George Gallup writes, “Over the past decade or more, a consistent one-third of the American people have reported having had a ‘religious experience,’ or ‘a moment of religious insight or awakening that changed the direction of their lives.’ This is one of the most significant survey results ever uncovered” (The People’s Religion: American Faith in the 90’s, Macmillan, 1989).
The number of people who have had God-encounters could be higher, but experiences that are not valued, or receive only negative reaction, tend to be forgotten. Often our society, disturbed by reports of the supernatural, tries to suppress them or explain them away.
Yet if 33 percent of Americans have had such an experience, this represents a great opportunity for us in ministry. As Gallup says, churches “need to listen more closely to people’s inner spiritual journeys and religious experiences . . . and help them build on these experiences.”
The Nature of God-Encounters
A God-encounter is sometimes referred to as a “mystical experience” because it is non-material and non-rational. But some mystical experiences amount to no more than the affect of chemicals on our brains. God-encounters, though, involve non-physical reality.
In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James described several types of mystical experience. The first was a “deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one.”
He uses Martin Luther as an illustration. “When a fellow-monk one day repeated the words of the creed: ‘I believe in the forgiveness of sins,’ I saw the Scripture in an entirely new light; and straightaway I felt as if I were born anew. It was as if I had found the door of paradise thrown open.”
Other mystic states include dj … vu, drug or alcohol induced states, and states intentionally induced by people of all religious traditions through meditation, silence, and worship. Obviously these mystic states are not all God-encounters. But they are awakenings, experiences of “something more,” and, like C.S. Lewis’s “stabs of Joy,” they serve as “a pointer to something other and outer.”
As Christians, of course, we concern ourselves with the nature and content of spiritual experience, especially whether it conforms to the truth of Scripture and is a genuine encounter with God rather than a neurological malfunction.
If God has given humans a capacity for mystic states (and millions of people report having experienced them), then I believe we can cooperate with God in helping people understand these experiences. And when we do, we discover God working outside our churches, performing a significant amount of pre-evangelism.
I was impressed that in Scripture, the context of a God-encounter isn’t always religious nor does it involve religious people. Even a heathen prophet like Balaam can have a God-encounter. Faith and moral character do not indicate whether an encounter is valid. God really did speak to Balaam, despite his association with paganism.
Admittedly, there are other types of spiritual experiences, besides God-encounters, that do not bring people to faith in Christ. The Bible acknowledges demonic, spiritualistic, and mediumistic experiences and condemns them. Nevertheless, these “false encounters” don’t annul true encounters.
The Lingering Longing
Consider an even more common experience. Pretend you’ve been outside the church most of your life. One day the coldness of the world and your own loneliness leave you with an overwhelming desire for God. What do you do?
Since “God” isn’t listed in the telephone directory, you turn to the yellow pages or religious section of a local paper and look for a church to help you find him. As you scan the pages, discouragement sets in. Plenty of churches are listed, but what they advertise isn’t what you want.
One church is “An Adventure in Faith.” Others include “A Church for the Whole Family” and “People Who Care” and “Let Your Bible be the Authority” and “A reformed, charismatic church preaching the gospel of the Kingdom.”
Disappointed, you close the directory. Not one church offers you an encounter with God or suggests that it’s open to the possibility. And what the churches do promise makes little sense to you.
Not long ago, I began to ask myself, Why don’t we market our unique contribution to the community-that we help people find God? Are we afraid to make this promise? Do we think people need other reasons for coming to church? Wouldn’t the “Church for the Whole Family” be spending its advertising dollars more wisely in the “Marriage and Family Counseling” section of the phone directory?
I began to see that the church, which is supposed to live in both the natural and supernatural parts of reality, can celebrate God-encounters, taking seriously the times people have felt his presence or were lifted into a higher state of awareness of his goodness, truth, or love.
Millions of Americans have had God-encounters. People say they’ve felt the presence of God, seen Jesus, been miraculously preserved from an accident, had a prayer answered dramatically, or had a dream or some other kind of “unearthly” religious experience.
But who talks about these spiritual experiences? Who helps these people build on them to develop a healthy Christian faith? Who validates their God-encounter and recognizes it as a stage of spiritual development? The church, of course, is in a unique position to help people understand and appreciate such experiences.
What to Do with God-Encounters?
What can we do with such experiences?
To begin with, we must guard against an unhealthy skepticism. In particular, we must contend against two attitudes.
The first is the assumption that only church activities are sacred and the rest of life is secular. I was intrigued by Abraham Maslow’s observation in Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences that religious organization can tend to suppress religious experience:
“The experiences of the holy, the sacred, the divine . . . if they happen at all, tend to be confined to a single day of the week, to happen under the roof of only one kind of structure, and only under certain triggering circumstances. They rest heavily on the presence of certain tradition and powerful, but intrinsically irrelevant, stimuli and other arbitrary triggers. … ‘Religionizing’ only one part of life secularizes the rest of it.”
An extreme example of this is the Christian I met who felt his job-related talents were unworthy for use in the church because, as he described them, they were “worldly” skills, not spiritual. Such believers are suspicious of spiritual feelings, experiences, or encounters that occur outside church meetings.
The second attitude is the fear some Christian leaders feel about spiritual awakenings that occur apart from their own carefully structured program. Home prayer meetings are dismantled if they become more dynamic than other, “sanctioned” church activities. Too often we fear what we can’t control.
By the way, I see no indication that charismatic churches foster more freedom for God-encounters than non-charismatic. Charismatics simply promote a certain type of spiritual experience, but it’s not necessarily the only-or even the richest-kind of God-encounter.
We must also recognize this felt need in our community. There’s a huge vacuum in North America when it comes to spirituality. If millions claim they’ve “felt the presence of God” but rarely are encouraged to talk about their experiences, we can provide a much needed service by listening to them and helping them form a faith that incorporates experience as well as belief.
Often reports of God-encounters are met, even in our churches, with the kind of skepticism we reserve for the psychologically imbalanced. Yet the Bible is filled with God-encounters. “And the Lord appeared” frequently signals one. The Bible also stresses the magnitude of God’s ongoing encounter with us in Jesus Christ.
One Sunday after church a woman told me, “God spoke to me through a dream last night.”
Since people who approach ministers with “messages from God” are usually delivering personal rebukes or religious nonsense, I was skeptical. But I asked, “What did God tell you?”
Nothing she said posed any personal or theological threat, and in fact, her dream contained perceptions that had been on my mind for several weeks but which no one knew anything about. I was convinced God did speak to her, and I told her so.
Still, 1 John says, we can’t “believe every spirit.”
Shortly after one man joined our church, he began telling kids in the youth group that God was giving him messages for them. Some of the young people were fascinated by this almost magical gift. Others were skeptical.
After the situation came to the attention of the elders, we discovered the messages were not divinely inspired but stemmed from a personality disorder.
But people need to talk about their God-encounters. This is the only way their experiences can be examined and evaluated. Paul advised the Thessalonians to “test everything. Hold on to the good” (1 Thess. 5:21). We can’t hold on to the good until we have a chance to hear what people have to say.
This means we have to nurture a sense of mystery and wonder in church life. If we acknowledge the variety of experiences people have with God, our worship is lifted to a higher plane.
One way we can do this is to ask people if they’ve ever had an encounter with God.
When I told the staff at our church that I was writing this article, they spontaneously began to relate their own stories. I was surprised to find that every person had a profound experience, and a few couldn’t talk about it without choking up.
Since then, I’ve made a point of asking others if they’ve had a God-encounter. Those who have are eager to tell their stories, and they’re pleased that someone is interested in hearing them.
It is also vital to provide a biblical framework for God-encounters that includes our lives outside the church as well as within it. The Bible sets standards and limits for spiritual experience, but it also encourages a sense of expectation and reverence. Thus prepared, we can address God-encounters, as they occur, in the context of spiritual development.
By bringing examples of God-encounters to the attention of our members, we not only let them know such things still happen, but we also validate-even celebrate-their experiences with God. God-encounters aren’t unique to canonized saints.
When I realized the importance of acknowledging God-encounters even among non-believers, I became a more sensitive listener. I was then able to offer the promise of a deeper encounter with God through Jesus Christ. As a result, many people have told me that our church has “put them in touch with God.”
People coming to church for the first time often “feel” something they don’t understand.
One woman involved in the New Age movement told me she felt stronger “energy” in our church than anywhere else.
“What you’re feeling,” I said, “is not only stronger but completely different. It’s the power of God and his Spirit.” I explained the role of Jesus Christ and how he can connect us to God. I used her experience to point out that she could not only feel God’s power, but she could know God himself.
A Few Cautions
We shouldn’t blunder into spiritual experiences without a few cautions and controls. After all, the Bible warns of false visions, and there are forces bent on deceiving Christians (2 Cor. 11:3, 14).
I have an ever-present concern for the mental health of people who report having God-encounters. This is especially important when I don’t know them well. Religious delusions and hallucinations are common, for instance, in certain strains of schizophrenia.
I also need to guard against worshiping an experience. We can celebrate and validate spiritual experiences only as they glorify Jesus Christ and bring us closer to God.
In addition, I want to keep the Bible in the forefront of discussion whenever dealing with spiritual experience. For one thing, this protects us from deception. For another, the more biblically informed people are about their God-encounters, the more valid, tangible, and useful the experience becomes.
Recently a young woman made an appointment to see me because she felt God had been speaking to her, and she wanted my reaction. She described how, during worship or prayer, she would get a picture in her mind. These pictures were set apart from her normal thoughts by their clarity and persistence.
“Only later does God explain to me what the pictures mean,” she said. “Then, as I have opportunity, I tell my friends what I’ve been seeing and learning.”
I suspended judgment until she was finished. Then I opened my Bible to Jeremiah 1 and showed her how God also spoke to Jeremiah in “pictures”- the branch of an almond tree, for instance, and a boiling pot-and afterwards God explained what the pictures meant.
Through Scripture, I was able not only to affirm her experience but also to discuss the way various roles in the church are balanced to maintain stability and interdependence. Before leaving, she agreed to report future messages to me so I could have the privilege of keeping track of them and helping her apply them appropriately.
People are realizing “there must be something more to life.” They’re looking for a “safe and sane” spirituality that recognizes their experiences and incorporates them into their lives. By defining, describing, and talking about God-encounters, we meet their need and, at the same time, awaken the spiritual life of the church.
Copyright © 1991 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
