Where Do I Meet God?

In last week’s post I invited you to share your reflections on the phrase, “God meets you where you are.” I appreciate those of you who shared your thoughts, whether in writing or in person.

I recall hearing this said many times when I was in the Baptist church. I am willing to be wrong, but I believe that it was the ministers’ attempt to convey the message that regardless of how “bad” we are and no matter how awful our sins are, God will forgive us and save us if we ask. Of course, God “meeting you where you are” was also dependent upon knowing that God will do that for us only if we accepted that his only son, Jesus, paid the price for our sins on the cross.

I fully accepted and embraced that idea at a time in my life when I needed it. When I bought into the notions that I was born a “sinner,” separate from God, and in need of redemption through the blood sacrifice of Jesus, giving my life to Jesus and being “saved” brought a sense of comfort and peace. 

The New Thought teachings of Ernest Holmes, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, H. Emilie Cady, Thomas Troward, and many others, helped me to come to a different understanding of ‘God’ and embrace a metaphysical and metaphorical perspective on Jesus’ life and death. I celebrate and am eternally grateful for my learning and growth.

While I no longer need that ‘God,’ I understand that there are literally billions of people around the world who adhere to the concept of a God of reward and punishment and belief in Jesus as the pathway to the final reward of heaven. I mourn that so many have been taught to believe that they are innately unworthy and separate from God. However, as long as they hold those beliefs, they need that ‘God,’ and their ‘God’ meets them where they are in their consciousness. It has taken time and inner work, but I have learned to hold them with great love, honor and respect.

During my vacation last week in the mountains, I took time to do my own reflection on “God meets you where you are.” It may be in reaction to my earlier associations with the phrase, but I have chosen to revise it to, “I meet God where I am.” Saying it in that way is more empowering and invites me to acknowledge and accept my responsibility.

I understand ‘God’ as the eternal, unchanging Omniscience, Omnipresence, Omnipotence and Omni-action that is the All in and as all. God is the Presence that is everywhere present in the eternal now.

While God does not change, my conscious awareness of God does change. God as Infinite Intelligence, Divine Order, Unconditional Love, Indescribable Beauty, Immeasurable Abundance and Effervescent Life is the One in which and as which we “live and move and have our being.” It is also that which lives and moves and has Its being as each of us, as well as all that we can perceive and all that we have yet to perceive.  

God is where I am. God is what I am. God is who I am. God is the ‘I AM’ that I am.

The All-ness of God is available and accessible to me and to each of us in any moment that we open ourselves to It. We need only choose by aligning our thoughts, attuning the vibration of our feelings, and opening ourselves to the revelation of the Presence. In that way, we meet God right where we are. 

When I believed that I was an unworthy sinner, I met God from that consciousness, and God revealed Itself to me in the form of Jesus as savior.

Last week, while in the mountains, I had the opportunity to officiate a wedding at the top of a mountain in Keystone, CO. Getting to the wedding site required two gondola rides up to a height of 11,600 feet. The views were breathtaking. Since I did not stay for the party following the ceremony, I was alone in the gondola on the ride back down the mountain. In my solitude, I sat floating high above the trees surrounded by the majesty of the Rocky Mountains. In those moments, I met God from a consciousness of awe, appreciation and openness, and God revealed Itself to me through the beauty of nature in which I was enfolded.

I felt love, peace and joy so profound that words cannot begin to capture it. I met God where I was in body, mind and spirit. 

Where we are in consciousness determines our experience of God. The question we get to ask ourselves is “Where Do I Meet God?”

Join us on Sunday for our service at 10:00 as we explore this question further.