Experience God Daily: How to Experience God in the Mundane
Life can feel routine. Get up, eat breakfast, go to work, come home, eat dinner, go to bed, repeat. That got me wondering how we can experience God in the midst of that routine, in our ordinary mundane daily life.
We can experience God in our daily life when we have a desire for God, a deep grasp of His word, and a fellowship with people who show us what God is like. These things help us to see glimpses of God’s attributes in ordinary circumstances. As a result, our relationship with God and others is more intimate and we live more spiritually attuned.
How to Experience God in the Mundane
In the busyness of life, it is easy to put God and our relationship with Him on the back burner. But what if there was a way that we could be continually reminded of the gospel? A way that we can experience God in the hustle and bustle? A way to see the glory in the mundane?
There are some things that will help us to experience God in our daily life.
A Desire for God
First, we can and should have a desire for God.
Have you ever watched TV and ignored the commercials? And then you are looking to buy a car and all the commercials are car commercials.
Why does that seem to be the case? Because you want a car and so you are thinking about cars more often, and when you see something about a car it grabs your attention.
The same is true in our relationship with God. If we want to experience God in our daily life, then we should have a desire for God.
A Deep Understanding of His Word
Second, if we want to experience God in the mundane, then we should have a deep understanding of His word. The Bible is full of motifs, patterns, and symbols that can help us experience God in the midst of our daily life.
The more time we spend in God’s Word, the more time we spend with God. Why? Because God can speak to us through His Word. Hebrews says,
For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
Hebrews 4:12
So, if we want to experience God daily, we should start by reading and studying His word daily.
If you are new to studying the Bible, then check out these great guides that will help you learn how to experience the Bible in a way that you encounter God. With these guides you can find a Bible Study method that works best for you and get started right away with a how-to and downloadable worksheets.
A Fellowship of People who Show us What God is Like
Lastly, if we want to experience God in our daily life, then we should have a fellowship of people who show us what He is like.
In other words, are there people in your life who reflect God’s attributes to you? We should have people in our lives who encourage us in our faith, and demonstrate God’s love and grace toward us.
For some, it may be a family member, a close friend, or a pastor at church. When we surround ourselves with people who love God that love will rub off and show up more and more in our lives.
So, now that we have a better understanding of some things that will help us experience God in our daily life, let’s look at how we can experience God’s attributes in the mundane.
Experiencing God’s Attributes in Daily Life
God has two different types of attributes.
- Incommunicable Attributes (Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent, Transcendent, etc).
- Communicable Attributes (Love, Justice, Mercy, Grace, etc.)
Incommunicable attributes are the attributes of God that possess that we cannot. These are attributes that make God unique and we can only have a limited understanding of them.
Communicable attributes, on the other hand, are attributes that God posses that we can share in and understand. For example, love. God is love, and we can love (though imperfectly).
It’s these communicable attributes of God that we can experience in our daily lives.
The smile of a loving grandparent displays God’s love.
The laughter of children playing displays God’s joy.
The guilty sentence of a murderer displays God’s justice.
The comfort of home displays God’s peace.
God is omnipresent. He is so big that He is everywhere. That means God is with us in the mundane routines of our daily life. We can find God’s provision for us, when preparing a meal. We can see God’s protection for us when we have shelter from a storm.
Glimpses of the Gospel in Everyday Things
The greatest story God wants to share with you is the gospel. So, we can see glimpses of the gospel in everyday things.
Psalm 19 says,
The heavens declare the glory of God;
Psalm 19:1-4
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
Nature reveals God’s nature.
Martin Luther once said, “God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.”
The arrival of spring every year brings with it the reminder of our resurrection and new life in Christ.
God’s story is all around us. Glimpses of the gospel can be found in the most mundane parts of our everyday life. I’ll give you an example: a shower.
The other day I was taking a shower and somehow ended up thinking about the motif of water in the Bible. Typical shower thoughts.
There’s baptism, Jesus as the Living Water, Jesus washing the disciples feet, purification rituals involving water, The Holy Spirit described as water throughout the Bible, etc.
I began to make connections between taking a shower and these water motifs. So, let’s take a look.
When we take a shower we do three things:
(1) Take off our clothes,
(2) Get under running water and get clean, and
(3) Dry off and put on new clothes.
That’s the gospel.
(1) We are to put to death, take off, the old things (Colossians 3:5);
(2) We are washed clean and purified by the Living Water Jesus (John 4:14, John 7:37-38, Jeremiah 17:13);
(3) We put on our new self and robes of Righteousness (Ephesians 4:22-14, Isaiah 61:10).
I know it was weird shower thoughts, but it resulted in me meditating on the gospel and Christ’s continual work in my life.
So, the more we read the Bible and spend time with God, the more we can see scriptural motifs and themes in our day to day life. We catch glimpses of the gospel in the mundane.
What Happens as a Result of Experiencing God Daily in the Mundane?
When we experience God in the mundane events of our every day life we become more spiritually attuned. Our relationship with God grows deeper and we become more intentional in relating to others.
Experiencing God in the day to day events of our everyday life brings hope, joy, excitement, and meaning to what we call ordinary. God is in the midst of everything we do.
It makes the ordinary, extraordinary. The secular, sacred. It makes changing a diaper an act of service and worship. It makes preparing a meal a divine display of God’s creative power.
Experiencing God in the mundane keeps God and His grace at the forefront of our minds. God is no longer on the back burner. We are aware of His continual presence and the power of the gospel at work in our lives. As such, we constantly grow in faith and love toward God.
Lastly, when we encounter God in the ordinary we become more intentional in relating to others. Because we are more spiritually attuned we more likely to see the needs of those around us and seek to meet those needs.
God is a God who loves loving you. He cares about your ordinary life. So, it’s often in those ordinary moments where we can encounter God. Often those moments have a greater spiritual impact on our lives than extraordinary encounters. It is a reminder that God is always God. Always loving. Always present. Always there for us.
