God Encounter Retreat

By David Hobbs

I know this is supposed to be part 2 of “Walking in the Spirit,” but I’ve got to tell about a God Encounter Retreat I went on this weekend. I’d been looking forward to it for weeks. My spiritual life has been dry, with a lot of warfare going on. In fact, I’ve been feeling banged up, like my armor had a lot of painful dents in it.
At the retreat, the first day was slow, as you’d expect. To encounter God and come into His presence, you’ve got to first deal with all the things that keep you apart from Him in the first place: sin, accusations of the enemy, lies we’ve been believing about ourselves or God, hurts and sorrows we're nurturing—all the junk that builds up from living in this world.
Even so, at the end of the first day, I didn’t know if I was ever going to meet with God. I remember being alone the first night after the meetings and ministry times and thinking to myself “I hope this works.” Something had come up at the last minute that threatened to keep my wife from coming. I recognized it as being a clever maneuver by the enemy and practically forced her to come in spite of it—I pulled rank on her. Now if it didn’t work out, if God didn’t meet with her... I would be in trouble!
I needn’t have worried. God met me before breakfast the second day, then again in ministry time later in the morning. I was praying, kneeling at my seat. Somebody threw a prayer shawl over my head (I can’t go into the details of what happened lest it ruin the experience for others still to come), and I found myself in heaven. Well, it was like this: from the waist up I was in heaven, from the waist down my legs and feet were still hanging out of the clouds in the earthly realm. I say I was in heaven. Yet I didn’t have any visions of heaven. I didn’t see God. I didn’t hear the melodious voices on angels. But I knew I was in heaven nonetheless. I was in heaven with Him. (If you have trouble with this, what do you do with Col. 3:1-3 that says we are seated with Christ in heavenly places at the right hand of God? I was only experiencing the reality of what the Bible teaches.)
For years I and my whole church have been looking forward to revival. In fact all my Christian life I have been looking forward to revival, having been born into the Kingdom at the tail end of the Jesus’ People Revival, seeing a lot and yet hearing stories of even greater things that happened before I’d gotten saved. In addition, we know our area has been chosen for powerful revival, and for years God has sent prophet after prophet to confirm that and add details, each of which seems more fantastic than the last: people getting healed as they walk onto the property, fire trucks circling the sanctuary looking for the source of the flames leaping from the top of the building, an "impact zone” within a radius of 100 miles around the church, a cancer-free zone, and on and on. Yet revival tarries. We pray, “How long O Lord? How long?”
I have found for myself, when I start getting into the “how long?” mode in my prayers, that it’s time to get back into the presence of Jesus, because nothing is greater than that. Now all of a sudden I was in His presence: I was in heaven with Him and nothing could draw me away! I feel sorry for those who would choose even the most powerful manifestation of revival over being in the presence of Jesus, because they still don’t get it. “In His presence,” the Bible says, “is fullness of joy. At His right hand are pleasures forever more.” And the song says, “In Your presence Lord is all I truly need.”
The devil beats me up a lot with accusations of what I like more than being in the presence of God. “You’d rather sit and write on your computer than pray,” he thunders, “you’d rather make love to your wife, eat a big steak dinner, take a nice nap—all kinds of things you prefer instead of being with the one you call your Savior!” Yet now, under this prayer shawl, locked in with Jesus in heaven, I realized there really was nothing back on earth I wanted: not the greatest revival, not a million people clamoring for my latest book, not the imploring faces of family and friends begging me to return. “If anybody wants me back, they’ll have to grab my dangling legs and pull me out of here,” I thought, “because there is no way I am ever voluntarily leaving this place!” All the filthy accusations of the devil were revealed to be the lies they were. I was not Lot’s wife. I wasn’t attracted to anything back on the earth: not my precious wife; not all my friends; not my 401K; not the work I love to do. When you’re with Jesus, nothing else matters!
Then why am I even back writing this? How do you know I am? Maybe I’m sending it from heaven via angelic messenger, huh? No but seriously I am back. Because even Jesus had to leave heaven and come to earth to do the Father’s will, though I’m sure He felt the same way about coming to this dark, cruel, morally polluted planet. But there were souls that needed to be saved, work that needed to be done. In fact, the earth itself needed to be reclaimed for the Kingdom of heaven: cleansed, refurbished, and restored to its original brilliance!
I visited a different church recently. The pastor was teaching on the end times. At one point he actually said to the congregation, “Your hope is in the rapture.” That set my mind spinning! But actually I find this is common among Christians. They’re hoping for the rapture to whisk them out of this world of woe and translate them to heaven forever. But if our hope is in anything other than Jesus, we are sadly deceived and out of sync with heaven. Friends, our hope is not in the rapture; it is not in a revival that’s going to come and fulfill all our unsatisfied longings. We are waiting for Jesus, and trying to grab whatever few moments with Him we can as we go through life’s journey. Seek His presence! Ask Him to let you come in and be with Him for awhile. Whatever it takes, get into the presence of Jesus. Then write and tell me if I’m wrong.