From: alarm@yabbs
To: Natalie@yabbs
Subject: encounter
Date: Thu Jul 28 17:28:33 1994
You asked me to explain how I had a personal encounter with Jesus.

This may get a little philosophical, but try to bear with me. I am getting 
ready right now to go to church and teach a Bible study on Acts 9 where 
Paul encounters Jesus on the Damascus road. While my "encounter" was not 
of a physical nature like Paul's was, it was still a real encounter. After 
studying the different defenses that people give for the existence of God 
I have chosen to use the experiential defense, except that I try not to 
put in into a defensive posture. Here is how it goes, sort a:

If you were blind you would have no experience with the phenomena of a 
desert orange and purple sunset. I might try to explain it to you and you 
may get some sort of  very limited idea of it, but without the experience 
you will never really understand what I am talking about.

I have had experiences with God, but they are not the kind of experience 
that corresponds with any of the natural senses that you have. It is a 
spiritual experience. It takes spiritual eyes and ears to see and hear 
God. When you read the Bible and the Holy Spirit dwells in you He confirms 
the reality of what you are reading. Calvin spoke of this type of thing. 
Jesus often said _for him who has ears to hear let him hear_. Isaiah said 
_having ears they do not hear_ or something like that. 

The only solution that I can really give you is that I you will truly seek 
God and ask him to reveal himself to you he can do it; I cannot. As you 
can see, this is not much of a defense of God, but then, neither is the 
ontological argument, or the cosmological argument, or the teleological 
argument. What I see my role as, is showing people where God is already at 
work in their lives. If I knew more about where you were spiritually, I 
might (might) be able to help you see where you may have already 
encountered God, because I think that it probably already happened to some 
extent. I had a friend who became a christian and he said afterwards, now 
I can see that God has been at work in my life here, and here, and here 
and I never saw it before. It too conversion before he could truly see.

alarm,
btw, that is really sort of my name, it's Terry A. Larm :) => alarm