Living in the Presence: Experiencing God Beyond Beliefs

Twenty years ago, I taught my first class as a newly ordained minister in the small church I was serving. It was a class based on a book entitled Encountering God , which was a popular course in churches at that time. As I look back now, it seems interesting to me that the course essentially broke down the process of encountering God into steps that participants needed to undertake for it to happen. This is not to say that there weren't terrific insights in the class, but with hindsight, I can clearly see the holes in the theology that it was based on then. The class outlined how, if we do the right things, we put ourselves in a position to experience God. As it turns out, God doesn't operate that way. Whenever we try to put God in a box, God always manages to break those boxes apart. Experiencing God isn't about doing the right things; it's about finally waking up to the truth about who we are and who God is for us. The ...