"It's possible to be right next to God and not know it! I often see this truth played out in life. It never ceases to amaze me that in the same meeting one person can be experiencing a powerful touch from the Lord, and at the same moment the person next to him is wondering when the meeting will be over so he can go to lunch.
There are two things that we should learn from this fact. The first thing to realize is that it is possible to position ourselves to encounter God by learning to recognize the signs of His presence, not only as we experience them but also as others experience them. My hunting dog is trained to 'honor the point' of the other dogs he is hunting with. That means that he 'points,' even when he has not yet picked up a scent of his prey. He assumes the same posture to give me a signal that he has found something. He takes the same posture that the other dogs have. As a result, he eventually picks up the same scent that they have picked up. Likewise, when we recognize that others around us are connecting with the presence of God, even when we are not yet aware of Him ourselves, we set ourselves up to become aware of Him by acknowledging His presence on the basis of others' experience.
The disciples learned a challenging lesson in Mark 16:14 in this regard. Jesus rebuked them because 'they had not believed those who had seen Him after He had risen.' Learning to believe God through another person's experience is one of the most difficult yet important, lessons in life. Because the Holy Spirit lives within us, we are required to recognize when someone is telling us the truth even when we don't understand.
The second thing to realize is that when God does lift the veil of our senses to perceive what is going on in the spiritual realm, we are not spectators who have stumbled upon something that has nothing to do with us. God is communicating with us and allowing us to see what He sees in order to invite us to know Him and partner with what He is doing.
It is a mistake to think that only certain people with unique gifts can hear and see God. If I think that it's only for others, then I will disqualify myself because I know I'm nothing special. In doing so I remove myself from active faith. One of the essential gestures of faith is to live with the expectation that the God who said that His sheep hear His voice and who gave His live to restore relationship with each of us would like to communicate with us. This faith leads us to lean into His voice--to learn as the prophet Samuel did to say, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening." Significantly, it was as soon as he learned to take this posture that he gained access to the greater revelation that God had been inviting him into."
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