My Experience of God

By Rev. Rebecca

It is difficult, if not impossible, to describe one’s experience and knowledge of God because words fail so miserably. However, this is my attempt to describe my experience, encounter, and understanding of God.

God is Being

Theologian Paul Tillich describes God as the “Ground of Being” and this has always deeply resonated with me. I see God as “Being”, the essence of being. We exist, we “are” only because we share in the Divine life- God’s Being. God Is. The Hebrew name for God, “Yahweh” as the “I Am” makes perfect intuitive sense to me. I feel my life, consciousness, my very essence as a being is rooted in God—in God’s Being. God is being, to be is to be in God.

God is Life

To live is to live in God. God is Life and all that has life is apart of the Divine Life. In that sense, all life is sacred. God is closer to me than my own heart or mind. I am more fundamentally apart of God than I am anything else. God is life itself; life is God.

God is Breath

The Hebrew concept of Spirit is “ruach” which means breath. I feel this intuitively. My creator breathes life into me, into all life. My very breath is evidence of the Spirit of God within me. The Holy Spirit is the energy of God that gives me life and breath. I live, move, and have my being in the Spirit of God which dwells in me and all of creation. With every breath I breathe I breathe in and through God’s Spirit and am energized with life. Perhaps this is why meditation focuses firstly on one’s breathing…this is the first step to centering oneself in God's Spirit.

God is Love

As a child I felt wrapped, as in a blanket, in love. I knew and felt God and God’s love around me. I felt in that pure and innocent state Love surrounding me and rejoicing in my very presence and personhood. That knowledge left me later as I became a rational adult and it is an ongoing work to recapture this innocent state of knowing Love—of knowing God. God is Love. You cannot separate love from God or God from love-they are one and the same. All love, just as all life, is of God. I love because I am first loved by God. My love is reflection of God’s love. The source of love is God. To accept love is to accept God because God is Love.

God is Creativity

To me, an essential attribute of the Divine is joyful creativity. The splendor, wonder, and diversity of God is the move obvious trait when looking at God’s creation. God displays creativity in over-abundance in the world and universe. The universe simply spills and runs over with the creativity of its creator the way an artist’s painting cannot contain his creativity in a single painting. When we create we share in God’s nature. We are compelled to create because we are part of God, made in God’s very image. Every creature, every person, everything reflects the magnificent glory and creativity of God. Our creativity is a reflection of God’s creativity…the Divine “work.”

God is Incomprehensible Mystery

God is mystery; God is shrouded in mystery, incomprehensibility, and hiddeness. While God is imminent and present in all of creation, God is not captured or understood clearly by any human. While it is possible to “touch God”—to gain tiny glimpses into the Divine, none can fathom God to even the smallest degree. As the mystics describe, to move into God is to move into a “Cloud of Unknowing.”

“If you think you’ve gotten God, it is not God you’ve gotten” said St. Augustine. God is so much greater, glorious, and awesome than any person can imagine: no mortal has begun to tap into God’s being. The human mind is totally incapable of conceiving even a fraction of God.

God is Immense

God is more ancient than the universe, greater than the universe, and sovereign over the universe. God encompasses and envelops the universe and transcends it.

To really begin to think of God, the immensity of God, will create fear. This is natural because when confronted with the true enormity and majesty of Divinity you realize how small, ignorant, and frail you and everything you know truly is.

God is Holiness

Holiness is “terrible.” God is holiness. Holiness is God. I believe holiness is the essence of God.

Holiness is a purity, a sanctity. Holiness is at once the hottest fire and the coldest ice. It threatens to melt and freeze me simultaneously. Holiness is both utter darkness and the brightest light. In holiness I am lost in darkness as in black hole, but blinded by a pure shining brightness that threatens to engulf my very being. Holiness is both the heaviest weight and the deepest void.

Holiness is the most fearful thing in all existence. Contrary to popular conceptions of evil as the most fearful aspect…holiness is. The full confrontation with holiness creates a response of sheer, horrible terror. It is for this reason, in part, that God remains hidden. Humans are not capable of facing pure terrible holiness.

However, holiness is our deepest craving and thirst. We are drawn to holiness as in a starving, crazed state. We are drawn, compelled, wooed by holiness. Even though we are frightened by it, we realize deep down it is the ultimate power and sustaining, sanctifying force of life.

When I have tasted holiness on rare occasions in the context of worship or prayer, it is a feeling more compelling than any other. It is intoxicating beyond the deepest emotional or physical desire—it draws me in a way that is irresistible—beyond any natural craving. My being, my spirit craves holiness beyond all else. It drives me. It is more attractive than all else.

When I gain a sense of God’s holiness—I feel at once drawn irresistibly and at the same time stricken with terror. It is, it seems, the juxtaposition of these two feelings that creates an even stronger pull in me towards holiness. I want it, desire it, and crave it with my whole being. It is my desire for God that cannot be quenched, where my body and spirit shake and sob for it. To touch holiness is bliss and ecstasy. It causes me to cry: “Come to me Holiness and pour your love and power over me that I may receive and know you the deepest recesses of my being. Open me, find me, cause me to be filled with a greater capacity to contain you so that I can feel more of you within me. I desire you above all else!”

Some Scriptures speak to me of God’s holiness like Psalm 18:11: ”God parted the heavens and came down with a storm cloud under his feet. He wrapped darkness about him, he made dark waters and thick clouds his pavilion. From the brightness of his presence, through the clouds burst hailstones and coals of fire.”

In this verse we see the combination of darkness and brightness, of ice and fire simultaneously accompanying God. I feel, as I enter into God, I am falling into a dark hole, a cold cavern with no walls, utter blackness, and unknowing…an infinite void. I feel too that I am pressed in by hot light that overpowers me and all my senses, I am weighted down by its brightness, melted by it, thoroughly crushed by it. I am irresistibly drawn and utterly horrified by Holiness with equal intensity.

Isaiah describes his vision of God’s holiness using tangible symbols and signs to represent holiness:

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings; with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said, ‘Woe is me! I am undone…’ (6:1-5a).

This is one of the most moving portrayals in Scripture of God for me. Related to it is Daniel’s vision:

“As I watched, thrones were set in place, and an Ancient One took his throne, his clothing was white as snow and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames and its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire issued and flowed out from his presence” (7:9-10).

Rudolph Otto explains that the human mind has a sense, which he terms the “numinous” which knows that “there is in this world a vague, incomprehensible Something, the Mysterium Tremendum, the awesome Mystery, surrounding and enfolding the universe. This is an It, an awful Thing, and can never be intellectually conceived, only sensed and felt in the depths of the Human spirit. It remains a permanent religious instinct, a feeling for that unnamed, undiscoverable Presence that ‘runs quicksilverlike through creation’s veins’ and sometimes stirs the mind by confronting it with a supernatural, suprational manifestation of itself. The man thus confronted is brought down and overwhelmed and can only tremble and be silent” (A. Tozer, The Knowledge of The Holy, pp. 104-105).

God is Within

St. Teresa of Avila describes the journey of prayer and knowing God as a journey through an interior castle…the castle is the depths of our selves, our souls. The innermost chamber is the place of complete communion with God. While God is above and beyond me, God is also found within me, closer to me than myself, in my innermost being. I invite God and accept God inside me, into the core and center of myself. God is present to me in the most intimate and personal way.

It is a paradox that God is simultaneously imminent and transcendent, knowable and unknowable, terrifying and comforting. This is my experience of God. I long for God everyday in every way. I believe it is the longing I share with all of humanity from every age because it is innate to being human. I believe all my desires are ultimately met in God.

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