How does our experience of God equate to Jesus Christ?

It doesn’t, at least not at first. They are two separate, yet related experiences. The knowledge of God can come about without Scripture; the knowledge of Christ cannot. At the same time, they are not in completely different realms. The link between the two is the Holy Spirit, who is a Person in the Trinity, and who speaks to us of God’s existence in our experience. Through Scripture, he speaks to us of Christ. If you read the gospel of John, and/or the letter to the Romans, the link between your experience of God and the reality of Christ is made manifest through listening to the Holy Spirit. After that, the reality of Christ begins to be proven to you through your experience of Him, just as the reality of the Father was proven to you through your experience. But experiencing Christ is somewhat different. You are made aware that God is personable, not merely an overwhelming force. You can speak with God; this is the beginning of prayer. You can speak with God and are not blown away (like Job was) because Christ is no less human than we. In Christ, God shares in our experience, and invites us to share in His. It becomes a relationship, not just an experience. To make the jump is not easy, and it is counter-intuitive. It is done through meditating on Scripture, listening to it, letting it permeate your mind – this is reading with the help of the Spirit. When you do this Christ permeates through your mind and the linkage between him and God starts to make sense. Then, if through prayer you experience him even more deeply, it makes even more sense; eventually it becomes a near certainty. This is an act of faith done in you by the Holy Spirit. I have to admit, just thinking about it won’t get you there. Reading Scripture in this way will take you to a place where you have to confront the claims of Christ with your mind, and that will lead either into His arms, or away from him entirely. This is your turning. If it is away, then you start explaining away what was revealed to you and you don’t think about it any more. If it is towards, then Christ and God become irreversibly associated in your mind. This is not comfortable, and it feels like confrontation. This is why we don’t do it naturally. Believing in God seems like the most natural thing; believing in Christ seems un-natural. That is when you realize that merely fulfilling natural wishes is not what we’re supposed to be about. We have a super-natural destiny that calls to us. If you affirm, honestly, “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth,” you’re half-way there. That’s the fundamental tenet. If thinking about God as Father, almighty, and/or creator doesn’t quite make sense on the face of it, that’s all right; no one thought of God this way before God revealed it to them. This marks the distinction between what theologians call “general revelation” and “special revelation.” General revelation is what we’ve been talking about – God reveals that He exists, and in a pretty overwhelming way. But to know about Him – who he is, what he wants, what he does, how he thinks – this is understood using Scripture. This is special revelation. In the Law, what we call the Old Testament, God reveals Himself to be almighty, and creator of heaven and earth. That’s summarizing a lot, too. In the Gospel, what we call the New Testament, God reveals himself to have a Son, whom He sent into the world, so that the world would not perish but have eternal life. That might make sense on the face of it, that Christ is the embodiment of this God-hauntedness we’ve been feeling, but it might not make a lot of sense until it is understood that God is Father, almighty, and creator of heaven and earth. That’s when you really come full circle. To try this without Scripture will really take you nowhere fast. That’s how I got there. I got there, too, because I wasn’t satisfied with the vague longing that I had already. You have to want answers badly enough to seek. That’s enough to start thinking about – I’ll blog about the “hidden church” in my next post.