Who is God?

This pivotal moment turned aside all doubt now and forevermore for me and my wife. It is a chapter in our history. I hope it serves to encourage you to listen for His calling.

We are both lighthearted deep thinkers. We prefer evidence, logic, and understanding above feelings, insights, and notions (though we do not neglect the place of feelings, insights, and notions as meaningful). We have an ardent desire to have an undeniable understanding of the presence of God that could only come from God and not through the logic or evidence presented by well-educated apologists, teachers, or anyone else.

Our understanding and experience of a person is based on having an encounter with that person, not on hearing about them. Hearing about Thomas Jefferson in school is different from living with Thomas Jefferson.

My wife and I were living with God, but we desired something concrete that we can forever share with family and friends that would support our convictions of Him.

We desired for God to reciprocate on a meaningful (to us) level. Imagine going a long time without meaningful communication from a friend. Would you wonder if they really cared? We were getting to that point with God. This is not to say that God was not speaking to us. This is to say we were not hearing Him lately and desired to do so in a concrete (to us) way.

So, we sought the Lord for a few nights. We desired for Him to tell us for Himself who He really is. I was asking for Him to officially introduce Himself.

We sought to know this God who has been part of our lives for so long. We wanted to not just know of Him, His ways, and witness His handiwork in our lives; we wanted to experience Him as if talking to a friend.

We decided we would come together in prayer every night to seek Him as best as we know how - in whatever way is required. In any relationship, self-sacrifice is required. We knew that God valued when we "humbled" ourselves, and so we attempted to do so.

The First Night

After the first night of intense seeking/praying/pondering, I had a dream that I saw Jesus...

I was walking down a church hallway checking on rooms along the way. I turned the corner, and there He was. Somehow, I knew it was Him, and I could barely look at Him before my knees buckled and my head bowed as I exclaimed, "Oh! My Lord Jesus!" This was a powerfully frightening encounter within a dream. As I awoke, I felt the continuance of what I felt in the dream. I still, days later, have a distinct memory of this dream. Those that know me are aware that I do not recall any of my dreams. Rarely if ever do I even realize I dreamt.

This experience was impressionable, but no doubt a dream. It very well may have been God, but dreams can be what we want them to be. I filed this experience in the "well that was something" box - because it was not concrete evidence (to me). I was left unsure.

The Second Night

The second night, my wife was up taking care of our baby. As she did, deep distress enveloped her as she attempted to seek Him. She had some tough questions for Him about the world and its evil workings. Instead of asking the "universe", or her own intellect, she was acknowledging Him by attempting to discussing her anguish with Him.

Suddenly, while bending over the crib to lay our baby down, she saw a fantastic light fill the room that seemed to originate from the corner of the room behind her. The light lit up the entire room as if a lightning bolt had gone off inside of the room (there were no storms that day). The glow from the light faded slower than any real bolt of light would. She went to investigate where she thought the source of the light originated and felt what she described as a peaceful terror (an oxymoron, I know, but feelings are that way). She found nothing - not even electrical machinery, outlets, cords, nothing...

This did not make sense to her or me, but it was another experience to log away.

She was not sure what caused the light. She is a nurse. Her medically educated mind thought it was either a pinched nerve in her spine as she bent over the crib which would cause her mind to play a trick on her; or it was God showing up in person. She stowed this away in the same "well, that was something" box, but was left unsure.

The Third Night

On the third night, she and I sought for Him again, attempting to pray and humble ourselves (as He would like us to do...

Remember that a relationship is fully successful if there is complete give and take. We know from scripture that He delights in a humble heart, so we attempted to humble ourselves according to what He would like).

We opened our hearts to His arrival. We were not sure what to ask or do, so we simply asked for what we wanted; "Show up and tell us who you are." After this quick prayer, I decided to look back at recorded instances of when we believed God spoke to us miraculously.

One instance is when God asked us to leave a good (but tumultuous) job in favor of raising our new family around our extended family. Click on the photo below to read that story.

After recollecting this event from our past, I said to my wife, "If He enjoys talking to us in that specific way, let's do something like this again..." Because we had a deep desire for God to introduce Himself to us and tell us exactly who He is, our question was "Who are you?"

Let me preface this question with a key insight into our state of mind. We were not asking Jesus who Jesus was. We were asking this loving God who seems to be directing us in specific ways who He was. We have much evidence to believe in Him because of many events from our past. But who was this invisible person we catch undoubtable glimpses of? We wanted to meet the reason for the effects, the cause in a "cause-and- effect" relationship. We wanted to meet what came first (...was it the chicken or the egg?)

We were open to whatever He wanted to tell us - even if it was something entirely unexpected such as, "I am Allah, you fool!" We were even open to Him not telling us anything. It would be difficult for us to become atheists since we are so limited in our understanding as humans. However, we are sure that if there is a God, He would be fully capable of meeting us where we are - if we let Him.

Upon asking, Candice did what we did in the past, except this time she was not led to specific scripture. She placed the Bible on its spine and let it open - to alleviate all potential preconceived input on our end. The book opened and she began to read. She looked puzzled and I asked her what she was reading. She said, "It is just a list of names..." She appeared disheartened by it. I was not looking over her shoulder during this process, since I also did not want any input into this method to which God has spoken to us before. However, looking from the side, I noticed she was near the New Testament. I had to ask where she was reading from. She told me, "Luke 3". I was stunned! I told her, "That's the lineage of Jesus!!!"

Suddenly she realized the significance. That lineage was placed in that book for the specific purpose of proving to the disbelieving Jew that Jesus is the Son of David, who was the Son of Adam, who was the Son of God. The prophets in the Old Testament spoke that the savior of the world would come through the line of David!

That was Jesus' Birth Certificate, so-to-speak. We asked Him who He was, and He showed us He is Jesus, the Son of God!

* The painting above is not what He looks like... but it comes quite close based on the extremely brief glimpse I got of Him in my dream. I could not make out details, but I remember a long and skinny face and dark-ish hair. In my dream, he had on a Jewish headdress and robe that was like ancient Egyptian royal garments, but with a Jewish twist. The clothing was white with thin blue horizontal stripes grouped in random amounts (for example, three equally spaced stripes, a gap, then seven more... etc. It was like a Jewish Prayer Shawl but within an Egyptian headdress.)

Details of His appearance are fuzzy... I was not able to lift my head or do anything other than be on my knees when in His presence. Exclaiming "Oh! My Lord Jesus!" was also involuntary...This experience reminds me of Romans 14:11 "Every knee will bow, and every tongue will declare allegiance to God"...)

I then said, "Ok, I hate to be the doubting Thomas here, and this is undoubtedly deeply significant, but I want to ask for confirmation of this again... let's do this again..." Except, before we did, Candice added to the question: "...and where do we go from here?" (as in, "what do we do now that we know You?")

She did the same thing, kind of just opened the Bible to allow the Lord to physically show us what He wants us to know...

(BTW, we do not recommend doing this sort of thing unless you are led to do so by the Holy Spirit... Seriously... The Bible is not a magic 8-ball...)

She landed on Psalms 13 & 14. Go and read it!

Psalm 13 exclaimed similar feelings we were having. We believe this was God saying to us, "I know how you are struggling."

Psalm 14 says; 'Only fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.”

And it talked more about belief in God. It was Him saying, "Now, believe! It is indeed I!"

In Conclusion...

I know skeptics will want to say, "Maybe Candice had subconsciously turned to those specific passages" To which I will reply that at this time in history, she is not that acutely aware of what is in the Bible. She knows a lot, but not so much that she can easily turn to specific scripture with specific answers to our questions in an instant - of which this process we adopted resulted in instantaneous answers.

We did not need another form of confirmation. We were happily satisfied and loved the conversation we had with the Lord. We are immensely thankful to Him for using a concrete tool (the Bible) to answer our questions directly - alleviating room for misinterpreting His works. And quite honestly, when we look back at the many moments, He has proven His presence to us, we feel a bit foolish having ever wondered who He is.

P.S.

I can recall one instance of being acutely aware of His presence. This story seems like an odd coincidence, but nothing like it had ever happened before or has ever happened since, and the timing seemed non-coincidental... Click the image below to read more.