Because Laura asked me. She expected a coffee, not an essay, but give a girl a pen and an interesting question at your own risk.
Short answer: yes!
The big story of the Bible is about how God makes himself known among his people. Do be strapping yourselves in for the long answer.
God created humanity desiring relationship with them and he walked with them in the garden. This is God’s heart, purpose, his best for us. Sin separated us from the God who sought friendship with us. A holy God cannot allow the sin-drenched to stand in his presence. The wages of sin are death. The story of the Old Testament is how God chose and rescued a sinful people and gave them ways to live and sacrifices to make that would mean God could dwell with his people. The wages of sin are death.
The New Testament is the story of how God came among his people in the form of a human and healed the divide once and for all by dying. The wages of sin are death.
Then He sent his very Spirit to not only dwell amongst his people, but in them, making each of them and them collectively a temple where God chose to dwell.
The point being, if God’s desire has always been to dwell with his people, that hasn’t changed. It is still God’s desire to dwell with us. There are many ways that God allows us to know him. I think it is completely okay and biblical to expect one of those ways to be experientially.
Before delving into why we can expect to tangibly experience God’s presence with us, I think we must broaden our knowledge of what that means. I grew up in a charismatic family of churches called New Frontiers where there was both lots of very physical experiences (trembling, falling over, laughing, crying and speaking in tongues) of the presence of God as well as lots of good teaching to help us understand this and not idolise ‘the experience’ in and of itself. We seek God, not the gifts, shaking, miracles or feelings that sometimes go along with encountering him. We were reminded regularly that it was good to want powerful encounters with our saviour, but not to chase some ‘spiritual high.’ I think there is a temptation to view ‘a tangible experience of God’ as purely these things, and more generally ‘the feeling’ that God is with us.
When Moses asked to see God’s glory, God caused his goodness to pass before him. Paul talks a lot about the peace of God. The Psalms are full of God’s comfort. We are only able to cry ‘Abba Father’ (Romans 8v15) because of the Spirit at work within us – a tangible reminder of his presence. It isn’t hard to think of Bible stories where God was with a person/people and they were full of confidence and boldness. Other times we see people full of awe, compassion, love, kindness, strength to endure. If you’ve ever been praying or reading the word and felt comforted, full of compassion, peace or confidence you’ve experienced the presence of God. If you’ve been in a hard situation and known great strength to endure with patience and kindness (that seemed unexpected and not from yourself) I’d argue you’ve met with the Holy spirit. If you’ve encountered a small blessing on your walk to work and been struck by the goodness of God you’ve been walking with your Lord on the way to work.
I don’t mean to undermine the idea that we can and should expect ‘powerful’ encounters of God. I believe that when God shows up (and he is always with us through his Spirit if we’ve given our lives to Christ) things happen! We can and should expect and have great faith for miracles and the dramatic things of God, but I don’t think these are more valuable or more of an evidence of God’s tangible presence that the undramatic things above.
Now some promises. My student leader and friend Tuuli says we must find verses to ‘hang our hats on.’ My Elder, Stef talks about finding promises in the word to ‘lean our weight on.’ In effect, to find words of the Bible that say something true so that whether we feel it is true or not, be can be certain of it. In Joel 2 v 28 it is promised that God will send the Holy Spirit on all people and work wonders. We see this at Pentecost in the beginning of Acts. I don’t think anyone would argue that we can know the tangible presence of God in terms of peace and joy that goes beyond understanding or many of the other things I listed above. But I proceed, with full knowledge of being controversial outside my own circle of churches when I argue that we can also count ourselves under the promise made in Joel. We can know the great encouragement of prophecy, visions and signs and wonders. These are encouragement because when something impossible occurs, you can’t talk yourself out of it being God.
Here’s why I believe this is a promise for us:
Ephesians 4 lists gifts Christ gives to his church – 4v11. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. I think we’d all agree the final 3 are still gifts God gives his church. There is some dispute as to whether the first two were specifically for the time of the early church. Verse 13 tells us however that the giving of these gifts will continue until three things are achieved. 1 unity in our faith, 2. Knowledge of God’s son (1 and 2 leading to maturity in the Lord), 3. that we would measure up to the full and complete standard of Christ. This is not the world I see around me.
I don’t see why this can’t be the measure by which we expect the other gifts of the Spirit also, not just apostleship and prophecy.
Finally, regardless of where you fall on the gifts of the spirit, the Bible says His sheep know his voice. If you are saved and therefore know God as your shepherd you can hear God’s voice. I think conversation with God is a pretty tangible experience to expect of him.
Why would it be useful to have a tangible experience of God? And to have this as a regular part of life.
The Ephesians 4 passage goes on (in verse 14-16) to state that the gifts God gives us in these people enable us to not be tossed around. To be resistant to doubts. To stand firm against false teaching. To grow to maturity. This is talking about people in church all bringing their different gifts and growing to maturity as a body. The picture this gives me is that God gives us lots of ways of growing and growing as a community and my take is that we should make use of all of them. Asking God for more tangible experience of him is a good thing as it leads to us becoming more firmly built on the rock and more full of faith in the hope we affirm. It isn’t and shouldn’t be the only thing that gets us there.
I know my family love me because it’s true. They’ve told me so. I choose to believe them when it feels true and when it doesn’t (an imperfect metaphor, of course, because human love fails and God’s doesn’t. A human love might be doubted more genuinely because it might falter whereas doubting God’s love has no possibility of truth). But that also doesn’t stop me from asking them to remind me, to give me a hug, to enjoy experiencing the truth as well as just knowing it as a fact. It doesn’t invalidate my trust in their statement that I also find the practical proof and emotional experience useful.