Encounter: “God is Desperate for Us’’

We give our children everything, only hoping they will love us back — Our Heavenly Father loves us in the exact same way

“The Christian heart never settles,’’ Father Brian Gross says. We hope for more because our hearts are born restless, longing for whatever we lack. God is everything: love and truth itself.

“We are here because we want more of what God has to give us,’’ Gross says. “Something that we forget: God is desperate for us. He doesn’t want to hide Himself and then make us try to convince Him to show Himself…

The Christian reality, reality itself, is God is desperate and if we give Him the smallest amount of time, He will respond in greater abundance than we could ever possibly imagine.’’

Gross is from northwest North Dakota, one of those tiny towns that exploded when the oil boom hit. One day, he got an email he hadn’t requested. Something (that Voice) told him to open the message.

That one click, a willingness to be open to something new, took him to a video and to a conference. Eventually, he drove 19 hours to start a three-month sabbatical in tiny Brighton, Michigan, the home of Encounter Ministries.

Little Brighton (for decades a bedroom community for bigger cities) is now a destination for 300 Encounter students.

“We live in a culture where we are surrounded by the walking wounded,’’ says Dr. Mary Healy, a theologian and co-author of The Spiritual Gifts Handbook. “We are surrounded by people who desperately need the touch of the Lord.’’

Much of the world looks inward, Father Mathias Thelen, Encounter’s president, teaches. Instead, Thelen says, we are called to encounter God, to accept His gifts, to heal and love one another and to tell Jesus “No matter what happens, I’m all in.’’

Encounter means “the Lord touching another person through you”

When Gross returned to Bismark, N.D., he told a University of Mary student about his sabatical.

The student said “I want that’’ so Gross asked him to pull over so they could “pray that Jesus gives you what you desire.’’

“Three months ago, I would have said the favored statement of the Catholic, ‘I’ll pray for you later’ … at some secret location where no one knows I’m praying,’’ Gross said.

Instead, Gross and student Jake, 25, prayed aloud together.

Gross asked Jesus to give Jake what he wants right now.

And Jake instantly responded, saying “God’s filling my heart up with His love. I feel Him… This is working!’’

Father told Jake to spend the next 20 minutes praying “Lord, give me more.’’

Jake pulled over, crying, overwhelmed by the sense of God’s joy and love. He felt his life was now different.

“For a man of prayer is, in the final analysis, the man who is able to recognize in others the face of the Messiah and make visible what was hidden, make touchable what was unreachable,” Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer.

What it’s like to be in love

“What happens when we are in love with someone?’’ Gross asks. “The fear is not that we pull back and hide. What we are afraid of when we love someone is that we will overwhelm them, give too much, that we maybe have to pull back. Even more so, this is the case with God.’’

The worst thing “is to sit here and be indifferent. We are here because we want more of what God has to give.’’

Helping with an Encounter healing school and healing service in South Bend, Indiana, Gross saw a pregnant mother in her third trimester come for prayer after feeling no movement from her baby for two weeks.

After the prayer team prayed with her, she felt the baby (who had water on the heart and a spot on the brain) moving again.

Doctors later were “mystified,’’ Gross said, to find the spot on the brain and water on the heart gone, the baby looking exactly as she should.

“This is people like you and people like me who have a certain level of faith, a certain level of courage to reach out and say ‘I actually believe that Jesus is going to do what He says He’s going to do.’’’

In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells us we will do miracles, that we will see things of greater magnitude than the things He performed in His life, Gross notes.

“Eye has not seen, ear has not heard nor has it even entered into the mind and the heart of a person what God has prepared for those who love Him’’ (1 Corinthians 2:9, New American Standard Bible).

St. Paul teaches us that we are not even able to conceive of what it is that Jesus desires for us, what He’s going to give us in this Kingdom we live in where He is the King, Gross adds.

When our hearts move from compromising to “a sense of awe and wonder’’ we become open to God’s gifts, including the Gifts of the Spirit.

Gross asks us to pray a very simple prayer:

“Jesus, I want more.’’