Ferocious Encounter

A New Year rings in.

Quietly.

The last of the Christmas lights fade. The pine needles get swept up off the floor and the house returns to normal.

As normal as it will be I suppose. As normal as it can be when you feel as if every breath you take is full of expectancy. Every breath in and every exhale makes you acutely aware of the sweetest ache in your chest that will not go away.

In. Out. In…

A New Year stands ready and beckons with fresh ideas, changes and surprises.

It is on this cusp that my breath catches and I remind myself to inhale and then exhale. Again. And then, once again.

I sit half terrified.

ENCOUNTER

I’ve had that word swirling through my head for weeks now and I am not even sure I fully understand its concept. Yet somehow I sense its presence, like a comfort wrapped up in expectation. Heady, breathtaking, terrifyingly wonderful expectation.

I have dreams and goals and plans for the coming year, things I want to see come to fruition, things I want to experience. Things I want to touch and to feel and to know. So I sit and I make lists, etch goals with ink as if I am carving them in stone and then that word whispers out with my breath…

ENCOUNTER

I see now how carved-in-stone goals can become the epitaph of ENCOUNTER.

Experiences are safe. Experiences are wrapped up in self, writes Tim Willard. Experiences are all the things that happen around us and to us. Experiences leave our insides hollowed out and empty.

“God should be a daily destination for us. He should be one with whom we seek audience, a place we long to be in, a river we seek to wash in, a canyon we want to get lost in.” - Tim Willard {Veneer}

Y’all I want to get LOST in God!!

I have lived my life by experiences, snippets of time and events. If I had a blank wall that stretched for miles I could fill it full with a timeline of experiences. I cannot seem to recall many encounters.

I want ENCOUNTERS with God that have Him pushing me into a cleft in the rock because His glory is just too great.

I want ENCOUNTERS with God that leave me limp and sore from a Jacob-wrestle, that have me watching a chariot of fire take a man to God.

It’s ferocious, these ENCOUNTERS, like a violent rending of self to dive head first in the glory of Him.

It is with doubt and not a small amount of trembling I declare that safe is no longer where I want to be. Safe has me looking for water further up the stream rather than from the place on the shores where He invites me to drink right by His side.

I want to free-fall. I want to free-fall into ENCOUNTER and know the feeling of His palms beneath me as I soar on the wings of the unexpected.

I pray that my shackles to the safety of experience will be removed. I pray that I will step boldly into the ferocity of His love for me and may His glory bend me low with ENCOUNTER.