Quotes about Encounter

Prayer is simply relaxing and delighting in Jesus with no agenda except celebrating the deep affection between you. This interpersonal encounter deepens the sense of our own belovedness and alters our relationships with others.

You can only seek God when you have already found God. The desire for God's unconditional love is the fruit of having been touched by that love.

Prayer is standing in the presence of God with the mind in the heart; that is, at that point of our being where there are no divisions or distinctions and where we are totally one. There God's Spirit dwells and there the great encounter takes place. There heart speaks to heart, because there we stand before the face of the Lord, all-seeing, with us.

I am beginning now to see how radically the character of my spiritual journey will change when I no longer think of God as hiding out and making it as difficult as possible for me to find him, but, instead, as the one who is looking for me while I am doing the hiding.

What matters here is that the moment Cleopas and his friend recognized Jesus in the breaking of bread, his bodily presence was no longer required as a condition for their new hope.

Solitude is the place of the great struggle and the great encounter — the struggle against the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self.

ministry can be fruitful only if it grows out of a direct and intimate encounter with our Lord.

Through the generations there seems to run a chain of wounds and needs. And when we try to avoid inflicting wounds ourselves, we discover that even with our best intentions we cannot avoid encountering people who feel rejected, misunderstood, or hurt by us.

Divine guidance can be found in the books we read, the nature we enjoy, the people we meet, and the events we experience.

The question is not "How am I to find God?" but "How am I to let myself be found by him?

Whenever God reveals His nature in a new way, it is always for a purpose. He created you for a love relationship with Him. When He encounters you, He is allowing you to know Him by experience. Encounters with God are always an expression of God's love for you. Jesus said: "The one who has My commands and keeps them is the one who loves Me. And the one who loves Me will be loved by My Father. I also will love him and will reveal Myself to him" (John 14:21).

God doesn't bless programs-God blesses people. Men today are in danger of following a God they read about and hear about but never actually know personally. When God encounters a man, he reveals something that is God-like and God-sized. Too often we reduce our lives and futures down to what we can handle. When you start to listen to God, you will hear him tell you that he is about to do the impossible. And when you obey him, you will experience what he said to you.