About

This was never meant to become a website.

A year ago, I wasn’t looking for a website. I was trying to find my way back to God.

For most of my life, one thing had carried me through some of the hardest seasons I had ever faced: I felt deeply connected to God.

And then, after a season that wounded me profoundly, that connection seemed to disappear.

I knew that faith could not be built on emotion. I knew that God had not ceased to be God simply because I could no longer feel His nearness. But the connection I had known with Him had carried me through the worst moments of my life, and suddenly I didn’t know how to do life without it.

My heart felt like hardened ground. After what had happened in my life, something in me had simply stopped believing in love. For a long time I would say that there were only two kinds of love I still trusted: God’s love and the love I had for my children.

And then even my sense of God’s love seemed to grow quiet.

That frightened me more than I knew how to explain. Because the One relationship I had always believed could carry me through anything suddenly felt beyond my reach. I knew in my head that God was still there. But my heart had become so guarded, so tired of being hurt, that eventually it seemed easier not to feel very much at all.

Nothing penetrated deeply anymore.

I couldn’t go back to who I was before.

During that time, I spoke to a pastor about how disconnected from God I felt. I told him that the sense of God’s presence had carried me through some of the worst times of my life, and I was frightened because I didn’t know how I would do life without that connection.

He reminded me of something I desperately needed to hear: after everything I had been through, I could not expect to go back to the Teresa I had been before.

I wasn’t that person anymore.

Perhaps my relationship with God would look different too. Different did not have to mean less real, less valuable or less meaningful. It could become something new.

I don’t think I understood then how important those words would become.

God did not take me backwards.

He began meeting me where I was.

Slowly, the ground began to soften.

There came a place in my life where I could simply be.

I didn’t have to have all the answers. I didn’t have to pretend that I was fine. I didn’t have to force myself to feel something that wasn’t there. I could simply arrive as I was.

And slowly, I began to feel again.

I began opening Scripture differently too. Instead of reading because I thought I should, I began to sit with it. I asked questions. I wrestled with things I didn’t understand. I followed words and themes through the Bible. I allowed myself to say, “Lord, I don’t understand this,” and then kept looking.

More and more, one question began to sit underneath everything I was studying:

What does this show me about the heart of God?

Sometimes the answer came through careful study. Sometimes through an ordinary moment in my life. Sometimes through a prayer. Sometimes through music.

And sometimes it came through tears.

Looking back now, I realise that God wasn’t simply restoring something I had lost.

He was teaching me to encounter Him again — differently, perhaps, but deeply and honestly.

Where I saw His heart most clearly

There is one moment with my daughter, Dominique, that I never want to forget.

She was hurting. I was hurting. And there was nothing I could do to make what was happening okay.

I had no answers for her. Nothing I could fix. No words that could take the pain away.

So I held her.

And I cried with her.

Somewhere in that moment, as I sat holding my hurting child, I became overwhelmingly aware of the heart of God.

I could almost see Him gathering both of us onto His lap — holding us, loving us, and simply staying with us while the storm passed.

And I understood something I don’t think I could have learned in quite the same way anywhere else.

In one of the deepest places of my pain, I saw the heart of God most clearly.

He didn’t make everything disappear. He didn’t suddenly give me an explanation that made it all make sense.

He was there.

And sometimes grace is not the storm disappearing.

Sometimes grace is discovering that you are not alone in the storm.

If you are in the storm

Perhaps you have found your way here while carrying something that hurts.

Perhaps you have prayed and nothing seems to have changed. Perhaps you are disappointed with God, angry, exhausted, confused, or simply too tired to find the words anymore.

I understand now how pain can make us withdraw — even from God. Sometimes the very moment when we most need to come close to Him is the moment when we feel least able to.

But you do not have to make yourself okay before you come.

Bring the questions. Bring the disappointment. Bring the anger, the fear, the numbness and the tears. And if all you can manage is, “Lord, I am here,” bring that.

I cannot promise that He will immediately change the circumstances that brought you there. That has not always been my experience.

But I have learned that He will meet us in places we thought were too broken for anything beautiful to happen.

You may walk away with the same unanswered question. The thing that hurts may still hurt. The road ahead may still be difficult.

But an encounter with the heart of God can change us in the middle of it.

And sometimes, when we finally allow Him into the place we have guarded most fiercely, we discover that He has been there all along.

So why Grace Encounters?

Somewhere along this journey, my quiet time with God began leaving a trail.

I would open Scripture intending simply to spend time with Him, and something would capture my attention. A question would lead to another passage. A passage would lead to deeper study. Sometimes something I discovered would meet something happening in my own life so directly that it became a reflection.

Sometimes the only response I had was prayer.

And sometimes ordinary words were no longer enough, and the encounter became a song.

None of those things began as content for a website.

The encounter came first.

Grace Encounters has simply become a place to preserve what has grown from those moments.

The Bible studies are the places where I have searched Scripture more deeply.

The reflections are where Scripture and real life have met.

The prayers are often my response when something in God’s Word has reached my heart.

The music carries some of those encounters in a different language — because sometimes something needs to be sung rather than explained.

And the resources are the places where a journey of study has grown into something larger that can be shared with someone else.

Sometimes these belong together. A Bible study becomes a reflection. A reflection becomes a prayer. A prayer may become a song.

I don’t want to manufacture those connections.

Looking back, perhaps Grace Encounters is also part of my thank-you to God — for walking with me, for meeting me differently, and above all, for preserving my heart.

A little about me

My name is Teresa Oelofse.

I am a mother, a musician, a student of Scripture, and someone who is still learning what it means to walk with God one day at a time.

I love digging deeply into the Bible. I am fascinated by the connections between its stories, history, prophecy and themes, but increasingly I find myself returning to one question: What does this reveal about the character of God?

Music has always been part of the way I experience and express faith. Sometimes I can study something for hours and still find that a song says what my heart was trying to say more completely than another page of words ever could.

I am also a mother, and some of the deepest things I have learned about love, vulnerability, faith and the heart of God have come through that part of my life.

I don’t write here as someone who has Christianity neatly figured out. I still have questions. I wrestle with Scripture. I have days of extraordinary faith and days when I need to remind myself of things I already know.

But perhaps that is exactly why Grace Encounters exists.

I am not looking for a perfect faith.

I am learning to know a faithful God.

And the more I come to know Him, the more I understand that Christianity is not primarily about mastering a list of things I must do.

It is about knowing Him.

Because when we begin to see His heart, something happens to ours.

What does faith look like?

Perhaps that is the question underneath much of this journey.

I used to think faith should look certain. Strong. Unwavering.

I am learning that sometimes faith looks very different.

Sometimes faith is opening the Bible when you feel nothing.

Sometimes it is asking the question you are frightened to ask.

Sometimes it is crying while you hold your child because you have no answers.

Sometimes it is whispering, “Lord, I am here,” when that is all you have left.

Sometimes it is allowing God to meet you as the person you are now, rather than spending your life trying to become the person you were before.

And sometimes faith is simply turning toward Him again.

This song grew from that journey.

I don’t know where you are in your own journey.

But if you have found your way here carrying questions, hope, hurt, faith, doubt, gratitude — or perhaps just a heart that is tired — you are welcome here.

Search the Scriptures. Ask the questions. Listen. Pray. Wrestle. Take your time.

You don’t have to arrive with everything figured out.

Just come.

Perhaps somewhere along the way, you will encounter the same thing I keep discovering:

Grace was already there.

Come. Seek. Listen. Encounter.