My First God Encounter

"Be strong and of good courage, do not fear or be afraid of them; for the Lord your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you."
Deuteronomy 31:6

My last post, It's Time for a God Encounter, was a general discussion about how we need an encounter with Godcand how God desires us to have an encounter with Him. It was inspired by a sermon series that we are in the middle of at Move Church presented by Pastor Mark Mcleod. 

In the post I reference a list of God encounters that famous people in the Bible had. However, sometimes we hear those stories so often that they are no longer inspiring to us. For this reason, I thought I would take this discussion a bit more personal and share with you, my readers, some of the personal encounters with God that I have had and have changed the trajectory of my life forever. 

My first story of an encounter with God is one that my long-time readers may recognize. Back in 2011 I wrote a little bit about this story in my post A Light in the Darkness: A Personal Story. 

When I was very young my parents divorced and my mother remarried. My stepfather had his moments of being nice but he took the verse, "spare the rod, spoil the child" to a bit of an extreme. I don't remember the details or the timeline but I do remember being locked in our rooms a lot. Instead of just grounding us he would take everything out of the room and actually lock the door with a padlock. One time he caught us reading books we had snuck into the room, so he took it a step further by taking the light bulbs out of the room and putting black tarp on the windows and around the door so that we didn't get any light in the room. 

It's rare for us to experience true pitch-black darkness. In the city there are always lights on and even when we go out into the country there are generally stars and the moon shining out at night. This was complete darkness. It was in this setting that I experienced my first encounter with God. 

I had no one else to go to but God was there, literally in my darkest hour. 

Some God encounters come out of necessity like this one. I encountered God at such a young age because there was literally nothing else for me to do, nowhere else for me to go. It was God reaching out to me and preserving me despite my horrible situation. And it is because of this encounter that I have never left Him since that young age. I share this example as an encouragement to any reader who may feel like they are in a desperate situation with no where else to go. 

God is there reaching out in the darkness ready to shed your situation with His light and love!

I plan to continue sharing personal examples of God encounters. Not all of them were out of necessity like this one. Sometimes God expects us to push through to out encounter with Him.