A few weeks ago, the church I attend dedicated eight days to seeking God and being in His presence. We called it Revival Week. It started on Sunday morning and then, every day throughout the week, between 10am and 10pm, the church was open for prayer, praise, journaling and various activities that focussed our attention on God and seeking His purpose. It ended the following Sunday afternoon after our usual gathering and some shared their experiences of the previous week during the service. I chose to save one of my experiences for this blog.
I came into the church during one of the weekday afternoons between work visits and sat quietly waiting on God. There was worship music playing in the background and I was aware of some of the lyrics, that spoke of God reigning forever. I was thinking about the idea of forever and musing that God exists outside our own idea of time; that He is both beginning and end (Revelation 22: 13), the first and the last (Isaiah 41: 4), and so ‘forever’, for Him, would be different to our human point of view. My understanding is that God exists in ALL of space (and beyond!), at EVERY point of time (and beyond!), continuously.
When I was pondering these thoughts with my eyes shut, I had a sense of His presence moving out in all directions, through all dimensions, filling every notion of time and space all at once. It’s hard to describe now but the feeling was almost overwhelming and all I could do was weep. I was reminded of God’s conversation with Moses when Moses asks Him, “Who shall I say sent me?” and God says, “Tell them ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3 14).
I AM is such an incredible statement that contains so many layers of meaning. I was contemplating one of these as I sat in His presence: not only is ‘I am’ a statement of being, a declaration of God’s existence revealed to Moses there in the desert, the present continuous tense of the statement ‘I am’ does not limit that existence to a specific time. To me, it says that God’s existence has not past nor it is not something Moses will have to wait for in the future, God’s existence is both present and timeless; He is in all places, at all times, always.
My words do not do that afternoon’s experience justice. Glimpsing the boundlessness of God, if only for a few moments is pretty indescribable, but I believe that God met with me in those moments as He did with Moses in the desert and as He does with all who seek His presence (and some who don’t but he meets with them anyway). Somehow, in the miraculousness of His nature, the Creator of the Universe, who is outside of all time and space, breaks through the Heavenlies to be with us; to touch our lives, to walk with us, to talk with us, to be our Father.
He’s waiting. For us to reach out, for us to be still, for us seek an encounter with Him. He who was, and is, and is to come wants to meet you in the here-and-now, now!
-Lara