6 Encounter Types Every Believer Should Know & Expect—Have You Experienced #3?

A culture of encounters is profoundly biblical.

Cultures tell stories and our Bible is one great story. A story of encounters. A story permeated with the expectation that God is going to come, to show up, to intervene, and of course He ultimately did in Jesus and many other accounts throughout the Bible.

The power of culture has become much more evident in the past fifty years or so as organizations have begun to understand how it brings change and supports new approaches, developments, products, and services. As Christians we have a wonderful advantage. Peter writes: “We have become partakers of the divine nature” (see 2 Peter 1:4). The divine nature is the way heaven does things, the ways of God, the culture of God and heaven, and we are partakers, sharers, fellow participants of this nature. We also have the privilege of bringing it to earth.

For Christianity to maintain its vibrancy, life, and growth it requires a culture of encounters. We simply cannot rely only on what has happened before us; we must live expecting it to happen to us and to those who follow us. That is the language of the Bible: greater works, glory to glory, greater revelation, and the increase of His government. None of it was intended to stop.

Our culture starts with what we believe—He is alive and present, is in us, the hope of glory, we have the mind of Christ, and we are filled with the spirit. Then, our lives must be lived accordingly. It is lived-out behavior founded on the beliefs and values we carry. A belief without behavior will easily become religion—form without power—but a belief that is lived out will create a culture, the fertile ground in which others can grow their encounter history with God.

His culture will always include a value and awareness of the unseen (Matthew 11:15); the telling of stories of past and present encounters and how they transformed people and situations; encouragement for all to pursue encounters, however dramatic or simple; and a continual opportunity to desire and pursue more of God. These will be supported by accountability, discernment, the knowledge of the word and truth, and character growth and development.

I greatly enjoy the study, teaching, and coaching of culture in our lives and organizations. In particular, I see culture as a way of drawing people in to be more Christlike without always creating doctrinal statements that seem unobtainable or cause division.

For instance, if I make a statement of doctrine and expect people to agree or disagree, to attain to it or not, I have created division. (Please note that I am talking about believers, I am not talking about diluting our Christian culture to accommodate the ways of an unbelieving world.) On the other hand, if in a group of believers I say that Jesus is in the center of the room, that He is healer, and that all of us are on a journey to be like Him, then I create a culture in which everyone can find their unique place as they seek to have faith for and demonstrate healing en route to becoming Christlike.

A culture of encounters fits this beautifully. On earth, we saw Jesus constantly in contact with His Father. In the descriptions of heaven, we see that everything revolves and exists around the presence of the heavenly Royal Family. It is the culture, the way of heaven and the trinity. Each of us can be in the vicinity of heaven’s Royal Family, communicate with them, and experience them in different ways.

Creating a culture of encounters is, therefore, very appropriate. A culture invites everyone to encounter Him for themselves, rather than make specific encounters seem like the goal or the standard. Our encounters were never meant to be reduced to words alone, nor were they meant to be limited to a singular understanding of what it looks like (or feels like) to experience God’s presence. The ways we encounter God are unique and diverse.

Types of Encounters

What follows is a collection of common types of encounters as seen throughout the Bible and throughout our collective history. I intend this to be your invitation, your validation, and your expectation. You may have more or different encounters in your personal library, but as we have seen, most important is the culture that values encounters and encourages us to see God encountering us in ways we may not expect.

Unusual Circumstances and Divine Coincidences

I will never forget the weekend that began my personal understanding of this type of encounter. My first was about ministering to children born with Down syndrome. The three similar and related circumstances of my life from 16 years of age until my mid-40s gave me a confidence that I would otherwise not have had. My first patient when I began my nurse training had Down syndrome, the first guest at the healing rooms that I had started had Down syndrome, and the first creative miracle that I witnessed had Down syndrome. I have seen breakthrough in a number of symptoms associated with this condition, and it has become enough to remind me not to stop. I accepted an assignment because of this sense of God speaking to me through divine coincidences.

As I write this in 2024, I once again find myself in the middle of personal unusual circumstances around the number 22. It was September 15, 2023 when, in the natural, a difficult situation came to an end. That day was the 22nd anniversary of our most epic season change of moving to Redding, California, in 2001. But it didn’t stop there. It happened to be Rosh Hashanah, with many websites calling it the year of the open door. I had already got to Isaiah 22:22 and was encouraged that a new season was beginning and it was related to open doors. I could add much more to this, but needless to say, I love these scenarios. It is not always obvious what God is drawing my attention to, but He certainly gets my attention.

I begin with this example because I believe that studying encounters will possibly start a new season for you. Maybe encounters is a theme that you are beginning to see and hear in your life. I dare to believe that this book may be a source or inspiration for encounters and that it may illuminate even the seemingly mundane occurrences into ways in which God is speaking and encountering you.

Dreams

Recent years and profound teaching, explanation, and interpretation by men such as John Paul Jackson have changed our perception and understanding of dreams and their power and purpose. We all have different experiences of dreams: some rarely wake with the memory of a dream, others fail to capture the fleeting details as they wake, while others seem to have a new dream every day that has incredible application.

I tend to fall into the middle category, being often aware of a dream but quickly losing the memory of it. My value for dreams is, however, extremely high. I wrote in my book Kisses from a Good God about a dream the late Beni Johnson had about me. That dream, subsequently, was a major factor in saving my life in the middle of the night in a hospital. That and other experiences cause me to pay particular attention even when someone else has a dream that involves me.

Dreams carry the potential for encounters that encourage, direct, and inspire us. They, of course, also carry the potential for unwelcome influences in our lives, but that applies in so many areas. The advice of not worshiping dreams but not ignoring them, either, is an important perspective.

Dreams are thoroughly biblical and were a source of guidance for Joseph, the “guardian” of Jesus, to go home via Egypt for the safety of the newborn King. In the Old Testament, we read of another Joseph interpreting dreams that ultimately led to his release from prison and subsequent promotion. His own youthful dream, however, was part of the reason he found himself in prison, yet it was his value for dreams or encounters that carried him through every season of his life.

Where dreams lead us to breakthrough, freedom, or safety, it should not be difficult to see them as encounters. Dreams are mysterious, yet commonplace. In Psalm 16:7, we read that our minds instruct us in the night season, whereas in Psalm 13:2 we read that our soul’s thoughts during the day are not good counsel. It seems that our nocturnal dreams can correct the potential of our waking thoughts taking us on journeys into darkness. We continue to learn more and more about how our minds work, yet the psalmist—before brain scans and studies of neuroplasticity—knew that while we sleep, there is an access point for God to speak to man and even renew his mind.

I particularly enjoy the way that the interpretation of dreams can be multi-layered with fresh understanding in different seasons, giving us opportunity to be nourished by them as we journey through life. I have one such dream. I received it in September 2001. At the time it seemed very simple, very linear. What has amazed me is that in different seasons there has been a new layer added. Even this past April of 2023, I was given a prophetic word that gave me another layer of understanding to a nearly twenty-two-year-old dream. It was an encounter just when I needed it, and it is the gift that keeps on giving.

Prophecies

Our heavenly Father dwells outside of time—a truth that means all prophetic words are encounters with a God who knows our future. Saul himself received a prophetic word within his encounter. It was a major indication of what the rest of his life would contain. He was told that he was a chosen instrument, a messenger of the gospel to the Gentiles, and that he would suffer much for the name of Jesus.

This is the nature of the prophetic: Jesus speaking outside of time, from the future, into a life sometimes so totally resistant, giving instruction and destiny. We must never limit prophecy to believing that we must deserve it, that our lives must already be in order, that we are already heading where the word will take us. Prophetic encounters tell someone—who doesn’t want to change, doesn’t believe in themselves, has no validating behavior to deserve it, doesn’t know where they are going—a future version of themselves, their purpose, character, and destiny. But those words must land in a culture that values the unseen, encourages the recipient, and brings strength to the journey of pursuing the outcome. Saul’s encounter cut through the seen, was partnered with Ananias’s encounter, led Saul to Barnabas the great encourager, and strengthened him through future encounters and relationships.

My life has been guided by the prophetic for the past twenty years. Especially in the last ten, prophecy has been one of the mainstays of our personal decisions and direction in life. Each of us has the potential to encounter God through prophetic words. It may seem that being in a large prophetic church is the only way, but Saul was not in a large church. Saul shows us that the culture of encounter we all need must start with us. I encourage you to remove the limits from your thinking and see for yourself, even within the pages of scripture, the prophetic words and advice for how to create your own internal prophetic environment of comfort, encouragement, and building up.

Prophecies are encounters and they are available to us all. Paul himself wrote, “Desire earnestly to prophesy.” Perhaps he was encouraging us all to be our own prophets first. He certainly understood the power of undeserved and unexpected prophetic encounters.

Beauty

You may not immediately think of beauty as an encounter, but the psalmist introduces us to this possibility especially in Psalm 27, but also in Psalm 96. Psalm 27 gives us a progression. It starts with a desire to dwell in the house of the Lord, or as might be appropriate, to live in the constant awareness of His presence and there behold His beauty. The psalmist doesn’t stop there though, going on to desire to meditate on Him as a result of seeing His beauty.

This progression continues in Psalm 96:9 (KJV) with the verse made popular by the great hymn: “O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.” This phrase combines two words that need definition rather than introduction—beauty and holiness. They are also written in the context of another wonderful word: worship.

My favorite definition of the word translated as “worship” is “to lean toward as if to kiss,” taken from the Greek word proskuneo. Beauty has so much rich meaning in our world as well as it being perverted—Earth’s definition of beauty is so often shallow, easily connected to the temporary, the external, and the sexual. Heaven’s beauty, however, is eternal, spanning from the past and on and on through all eternity. It is anything but shallow and its object is the Son of God. Beauty is essentially the result of our creator God expressing Himself to us, in us, around us, and through us. Holiness is so often misunderstood and linked to an impossible standard of compliance with rules. However, it is best described by these five meanings for the word kodesh, which is often translated as “holy” in scripture: separate, distinct, unique, cut off from, totally different. The holiness of God is the total otherness of God. God is the totally, the wholly, the completely “Other.” Yet in His beauty, He reaches down in love through Jesus to those He created and reveals Himself.

Adding these together creates a picture of an encounter: We lean in through worship in a desire of intimacy with God, His beauty, and His otherness, and the greatest portrayal of His otherness is His Son. Jesus, fully God and totally other, stepped down and became one of us. It is the absolute definition of an invitation to encounter.

An encounter of beauty can also be an encounter with God’s created beauty. Creation is so rich and so full and I have no doubt that many encounter Him in nature. The sights, the sounds, the touch, the smell, and the taste all contain invitations to enjoy, to marvel, to be lost in wonder, love, and praise. Beauty and nature offer us all an invitation to step in to an encounter. To wonder, to marvel, and to inquire.

Paul wrote in Romans 1:20 (NASB95): “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.”

Beauty is accessible to us all. I invite you to take advantage of it. The beauty of us all being created differently, yet all in the image of God means that we approach, see, and meditate differently. One of my favorite activities is to be in South Africa’s Kruger National Park with my wife and closest friends and my camera. The wonder of creation, the absence of distraction, and the shared awe and wonder creates an encounter that refreshes my soul.

The Greeks have a definition of beauty derived from their word hora, from which the English language gets the division of time—an hour. Their definition of beauty is to be in one’s finest hour. I love this. It places Jesus at the very center of beauty. He is the finest one, and His hours on the cross were, while horrific and bloody, His finest hour. The summing up of this makes Jesus the finest one, in His finest hour, and therefore, the most beautiful one of all time and creation. May you continually encounter His beauty, encounter natural beauty, and encounter Him through beauty.

Healing Encounters

A supernatural healing is nothing less than an encounter with Jesus the healer. The woman who touched the hem of Jesus’s garment received her healing by bravely pressing through the cultural expectations and rules to encounter the Healer. She models the pursuit of the presence en route to our healing.

Healing is in the encounter, the healing is an encounter, and the one we encounter is the healer. Jesus was often either leaving a healing, at a healing, or on His way to a healing. He was incidentally also often on His way to a meal, at a meal, or leaving a meal. In other words, His life revolved around encountering others. Those who met Him, touched Him, heard Him, and those who needed healing were healed. The cry of blind Bartimaeus recorded in Mark’s gospel is a wonderful example. I imagine Bartimaeus thinking of the stories he heard of people being healed when they met or encountered Jesus. That motivated him to cry out, “Have mercy on me!” Jesus stopped in His tracks and instructed His disciples to bring Bartimaeus to Him, where he would be healed. Bartimaeus’s awareness of the power of encountering the Son of David caused him to know that he was just one encounter away from his breakthrough.

My wife and I had a healing encounter many years ago. It was a healing that ended our season of infertility and gave us our second son. That healing was at a point when Sue’s faith was, in her words, as low as it could possibly be. It was as if God met her at that point for a reason. If faith plays a role in healing, then Sue’s healing was totally undeserved. From that encounter came our testimony of healed infertility, and for over fifteen years that testimony has been a prophecy we use as a weapon of encouragement as we pray for healing of infertility wherever we travel and minister.

In a different way, when I was healed of prostate cancer at the hands of a surgeon, I declared that surgery is not a second-class healing. My encounters, which are written about in Kisses from a Good God, included a surgeon’s skill, a dream, and advice from the Bible, which all added up to a series of encounters that became a testimony and a prophecy now given as a weapon to health care professionals to be encouraged by my simple statement—that surgery is not a second-class healing.

I have no doubt that God’s desire is for us to be healthy and healed. Sometimes that is a journey, even a long one. I remember a conversation about process versus instant healings and breakthroughs. The conclusion reached was that our first way of thinking must be miracles, backed up by process. If we only focus on process first, we are likely to not pursue miracles. If we believe for miracles, however, not only will we see more but we will see the miracles in the process as I did.

I encourage you to cry out for your healing encounter. You are one encounter away from your breakthrough.

Physical Manifestation

For countless Christians the phrase “slain in the spirit” has become a lived-out experience in these past thirty-plus years. Yet the physical effect on our bodies when touched by the power of God is by no means new and we must never take it for granted. It is a wonderful experience and opportunity for an encounter.

It is challenging to not let physical manifestations create unnecessary and incorrect interpretations of spirituality, especially depending on someone’s ability to receive (or not). But to ignore or dismiss them is equally unhelpful. Revival history is full of manifestations as is our Holy Bible.

The Quakers are named because of their shaking under the power of God. Additionally, some of the most dramatic accounts of revival meetings were accompanied by physical manifestations in meetings led by Whitfield, Wesley, Edwards, and Spurgeon.

At times we may become concerned about exposing non-Christians to meetings where physical manifestations occur, but it may be that unbelievers would expect that if there is a God, and He is the all-powerful Creator, there would be an effect on us if He were present or touched us.

These times of physical impact vary from person to person. Our friends Leif Hetland and Heidi Baker both had extraordinary life-defining experiences at the Toronto Vineyard outpouring, which began in 1994. Many others had similar encounters; still others went and felt nothing and yet were changed. Both Leif and Heidi have gone on to live differently as a result of their physical encounters. They are, in many ways, a beautiful modern-day example of what happened to Saul.

To be aware of a physical touch by God is an extraordinary encounter that will change us if we value it.