5. I can experience God, (Father, Jesus and Spirit), in the pages of Scripture.

(Before looking at the questions below, take a few minutes to think about this statement. Invite Jesus to speak to you about what He would like you to notice.) 

Have there been times when, while reading Scripture, you felt that God was right beside you, almost speaking to you personally?

If so, what was it about your process of reading Scripture that may have contributed to this experience?

Think of other settings in which you sense God’s presence: creation, music, worship gatherings, when you are creating something, or while playing. What message from God may be contained in these situations and experiences? Can you find the same messages in Scripture?

It is one thing to accumulate information about God. It is quite another thing to experience what you have learned about God in your own life. Both can happen while reading Scripture, but they are very different. The Bible can be read for information by people who don’t even believe in God. Historians, archeologists, critics, and others do this regularly. 

But for the Bible to impact our life and connect with us in an experiential or “felt” manner, we need the Spirit. For example, Psalm 23 tells us that God is our Shepherd and “makes us lie down in green pastures,” that is, He gives us good things. We can read this information about God without experiencing it. But if we stop and ask “what are the good things that God has brought into my life?” we may find that the Spirit helps us remember and respond in a manner that confirms that this truth is also true in my own life. The Psalm continues, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death [the not-good things in my life}, you (God) are with me.” If we then stop and ask, “How have you (God) been with me in the dark times of my life?” the Spirit may help us recognize and even experience that God truly was with us in these times. The memory of those dark times changes from being alone to an experience of God’s presence. 

This is a simple practice of reading Scripture with a desire to experience, not just learn about, God. This is similar to a practice developed by Saint Ignatius of Loyola in the 1500s which he offered in his “Spiritual Exercises.” These are a series of meditations Ignatius wrote that invite a person to read the stories of Jesus and enter into them at a personal level. Ignatius creates four sections of the exercises that focus on our own sin and confession, our discipleship or following Jesus, our suffering with Jesus, and our resurrection with and service to Jesus in our world today. 

Ignatius guides us as we read the stories in the gospels to imagine that we are one of Jesus’ followers, that we are with Him, and that we are experiencing Him as his disciples did. Ignatius wants us not only to learn about the life of Jesus but that also to experience His life in our own lives. We find that experiencing God in Scripture changes us from being people who know about God to people who enjoy real, experiential relationships with God. Experiences can sometimes mislead us but when our experiences are connected to Scripture there is less chance that we will be deceived.