James Goll: Are You Hungry for a Visitation From God?

There is nothing more important than an encounter with our supernatural God. One God-encounter changes everything in our lives. Our priorities shift. Our perspective shifts. Things that used to seem important take a back seat, and our world suddenly turns from gray to technicolor.

Are you hungry for a visitation from God? Do you want him to come and invade your life? I’ll never forget when God encountered my wife back in 1992. She was never the same again.

Though cancer took Michal Ann’s body back in 2008, she is now living in the vibrant presence of the God who encountered her. Sometimes a testimony of the fruit of someone else’s encounter is all it takes to shake the dust off your heart and ignite fresh hunger to pursue Him. Let these words from Michal Ann stir the fire in you to meet face to face with our living God.

Michal Ann Goll—A Testimony of the Power of Encounter

I will never forget that night in November 1992 when Jim looked at me from the other side of our kitchen and said, “I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know who you’re becoming.” My answer came rather quickly, “Well, Jim, I don’t know who I am, and I don’t know who I’m becoming either.” That may sound like a strange conversation for two people who had lived together as a married couple for what was then 16 years and had brought four children into the world. What triggered such an exchange?…I was being dramatically changed by visitations in the night.

Throughout history, the lives of ordinary people have been forever changed by times of supernatural visitation. By “visitation encounters,” I mean those times when the “the manifested presence of God comes into our time-space world and invades our unholy comfort zones. He comes to reveal aspects of His personality, His character, His power and His loveliness, or simply to reveal Himself.” Whether these visitations happen to individuals or large numbers of people in a generation or nation, they always bring about times of an awakened awareness to our supernatural God.

Several people remarked that I looked different after God began visiting me in the night. We had a family portrait taken during that season of visitations. Many firmly believe that those pictures reveal a new intensity, or even an “ethereal” quality, which was absent prior to these encounters with God’s fire. In hindsight, I can tell you that my entire life was forever changed by those times of divine intimacy. God wants to visit His church in the same way. He wants to visibly demonstrate His jealousy for His Bride and release His people—great and small, loud and quiet, bold and meek—into supernatural ministry rooted in intimacy with Him. We need to commit to this journey into intimacy with God and “take the intimacy plunge.”

The Lord has given us invitation after invitation to come into a place of intimacy with Him. This is a place where you must press in for Him. You do so because He is pressing in toward you at the same time. The mystery of the gospel is the mystery of a divine, eternal love story—it is all about capturing our hearts and wooing us into the place where nothing matters except being in unbroken fellowship with God. Walking in the Spirit has less to do with only head knowledge; it has everything to do with a heart response of knowing that your Bridegroom is calling. God is calling for His bride, and He is fighting for His bride. He ardently loves His bride, and He is asking us to be mirrors of His perfect image, which is Himself. He longs for us to be valiant warriors for His sake, and be people so in love with Him that no cost is too great!

Now is the time for us to pursue the God of our visitation and for His latter rain to water the earth. When you really love someone and your heart for them is sold out 100 percent, then there is nothing you wouldn’t do for your beloved. No task is too difficult. Knowing Him is the ultimate goal of all God encounters.

Catch God’s gaze and give His love away! The more you receive the more you have to give away! It is time for us to give our all for Him who gave His all for us. Let us pursue the God of visitations and may close encounters with a supernatural God be yours! You too can be changed by the prophetic power of the supernatural!

I hope this testimony has lit a fire in you that now just be quenched. We must pursue this God of encounters. If you want to read more about the details of Michal Ann’s visitation and continue to stir your heart toward the Lord, I encourage you to get a copy of our book, God Encounters Today.