Encounters with God

Encounters with God

Now get up and stand on your feet. 
I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me.
Acts 26:16

God was working in your life long before you began working with him. The Lord knew you before time began, and he knew what he wanted to do with your life:

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.
Jeremiah 1:5

You it was who fashioned my inward parts; 
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
Psalm 139:13

Before the apostle Paul’s conversion experience on the road to Damascus, Jesus already knew Paul and had a specific assignment for him. But Jesus only revealed this assignment after Paul’s conversion:

‘…this man is my chosen instrument to bring my name before the nations and their kings, and before the people of Israel.’
Acts 9:15

So misguided was Paul that in his sincere efforts to serve God, he had actually been waging war against Christians! Although God knew what he wanted for Paul, he waited to reveal it to him until he gained his attention and became his Lord.

Our Lord does not come to us to discover what we would like to accomplish for him. He encounters us in order to reveal his activity and invite us to become involved in his work. An encounter with God requires us to adjust ourselves to the activity of God that has been revealed. God never communicates with us merely to give us a warm devotional thought for that day. He never speaks to us simply to increase our biblical knowledge. Our Lord has far more significant things to reveal to us than that!

When God shows us what he is doing, he invites us to join him in the work he is doing.

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10

Are you prepared to meet God today?

Don’t seek to hear from God unless you are ready to ask, as Paul did,

“What shall I do, Lord?”

 

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