A Jesus Encounter
Hey Awake, have you ever had an encounter with Jesus?
It’s holy week and while reading about Jesus entrance to Jerusalem, I noticed the language In Matthew 21:5, ‘see your king comes to you gentle, riding on the colt of a donkey.’ My first encounter with Jesus happened when I was 18. HE CAME TO ME. AND I will tell you I did not know WHO I WAS ENCOUNTERING because it was such a powerful dream, a different perspective on God from anything I had ever heard.
I’ll skip all the details leading up to the point where Jesus enters, though it’s good, full of angels and battles, and a good deal of struggle and war. I’d love to tell you sometime. Basically by God’s help I made it, and threw the door open and as I walked into this room, the focal point was a beautiful historical Bible laying open on a raised pulpit. I placed my hands under the weight of the book feeling it’s significance and on the left and on the right pages (representing the two covenants) was a picture of Jesus wearing a red cloak and on the other page was a picture of HIM with a white cloak. Now everything I knew from gospel my grandmother would share with me when I was younger was that Jesus wore the white and the red together, the righteousness and the blood, the holiness and the grace, and so I put the images together by closing the book and suddenly in this dream the heavens tore open with super, authoritative, absolute, power and dominion as I saw the return of Jesus fill the entire sky.
Now mind you I’m much older now, and this happened when I was 18 and I have still been living after and hungering after Jesus because of this powerful encounter with HIS personhood, with his deity, with his GOD-NESS, yet because he was so glorious and so full of authority I did not know who he was. I had no grid for the reality I was experiencing. HE IS, (in this dream and as promised when he left) just coming in the clouds, and I am instantly on my knees because there’s no other response.
He is fully gazing at me and he is more like the description where he has like white hair, you can read it in Revelation, although I hadn’t read it at the time. I was still new to God. I was like who are you? That question similar to all those in Jerusalem when Jesus entered so many years ago. Matt 21:10-11, all the city was saying, ‘WHO IS THIS?’
Often those who have a “Jesus encounter” like this, may think we know, and we might be in religion, but when we encounter the real JESUS, we ask a deeper question. The question is authentic, who really are you?
I asked that question and Jesus responded with a locked gaze, his eyes on me with love seeing everything I’ve ever done everything I would ever do and he did not turn away from me. He just stayed there looking at me with love till I could get it, grasp it, figure out who he was. I was trying to see, through experience and observation, who are you? I studied him, and for a crown he had a LAMB’S head, and then like a light turned on, I was like oh your Jesus, the LAMB OF GOD. Jesus had a lamb skin for the upper part of his robe, now mind you he is surrounded by a host an incredible HEAVENLY ARMY and yet in this moment I just feel like it’s him and it’s me. He comes close and takes this lamb skin off and he parades it, lays this heavy covering over me. What happened next shocked me.
The love that he looked at me with, ahh how do I describe it, became me. Do you know the word of God says we are the temple of God? And the whole purpose of the temple is for GOD to fill it. This God of love filled my soul, my entire being. It was extraordinary. You need to know I had been in sin and I had tasted the love this world had to offer and it was nothing. NOTHING compared to the reality of encountering the love of Jesus. It was real, you know the way a dream takes on fear so real you wake, this is the complete opposite, BUT IT JOLTED ME AWAKE. The very next thing I know is, I am gasping for God like the way you do for air when getting out of the pool, or coming up from under the water like you’ve been holding your breath and you draw in the air of being alive.
The very first waking thought I have is, don’t ever leave, I can’t live without YOU, AND the next reality is HE IS there, a ray of early morning light comes through window totally landing on me, and I’m full of the presence of Jesus right there and I know that he’s never left and he’ll never leave. You should know he didn’t share this to me or give me this encounter with him so that I could feel special (which is great byproduct). You cannot help but feel extremely valued when you are with HIM. He gave it to me so that I can tell you with authority and with experience, the love of God cannot be over exaggerated what the LAMB has done for you, is real. AND NOW I pray you fully realize the magnitude, the value, the tremendous totality of what God has done for you, as you celebrate this holy week.
Love, Char
HERE IS THE IGTV LINK if you want to hear it instead of read it.
The following hymn says it too well.
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Save me from its guilt and power.
Not the labor of my hands
Can fulfill Thy law’s demands;
Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow,
All could never sin erase,
Thou must save, and save by grace.
Nothing in my hands I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to Thee for dress,
Helpless, look to Thee for grace:
Foul, I to the fountain fly,
Wash me, Savior, or I die.
While I draw this fleeting breath,
When mine eyes shall close in death,
When I soar to worlds unknown,
See Thee on Thy judgment throne,
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.
OUR GOD IS A GOD WHO SAVES; FROM THE SOVEREIGN LORD COMES ESCAPE FROM DEATH. Psalm 68:20
