I was thinking one night of the idea of experiencing God. How do we know that we have experienced God? with the trend in churches of energetic music and large showmanship, how do we know that we are not being manipulated?
For me, the way to hear the true voice of God is in silence. Stripping away all of the noise around me, I am free to listen. Competing influences seem more distant. No exterior influence is driving me. I am not reacting to some environmental stimulus.
the other night, I awoke with a start. I felt the presence of God in a new way. I can’t explain it, but it was intense, comforting and frightening. At one point I was afraid that I would die if I stayed in that place too long. I returned to my sleep.
Was that a true experience of God? Sometimes I wonder. I suppose that the true test is if it left me changed for the better somehow.
So, I still wrestle with the question of the authenticity of my experiences of God. In many ways, we live in a synthetic world. It is not a true world, but a world of our re-imagining. This makes finding authenticity challenging.
