The new Methodist President used her debut speech to talk about the God who continually reaches out to people wherever they are.  

The Reverend Ruth Gee said it was easy to forget how amazing it is that God knows each one of us by name and that it is possible for us to know him in return.

She said it was in God's nature to reach out because he is "relational".

With this in mind, she said people could wait expectantly "for glimpses of glory".

"If it is true that God is with us and reaching out to us in love, wherever we are and whatever we are going through in our lives - then we should expect to glimpse the glory of God at any time and in any place," she said.

"It is not just that we will be surprised by God, though in my experience this does happen, It is that we should expect to glimpse the glory of God, we should be an expectant people."

Gee gave a reminder of the scene in the Bible where Jesus walks out to the disciples in their boat in the midst of a storm.

She encouraged Christians not to give up expecting to see God in the difficult places.

"I think the real danger for those friends of Jesus was not that they would be overcome by the storm. The real danger was that they would fail to recognise God with them, they would fail to glimpse the glory of God. And I suspect that is a real danger for us too.

"I think that many of us have lost the expectation that we will glimpse the glory of God, we are no longer confident that God is with us and we don't always recognise God in unexpected and difficult places."

Seeing God in the "mundane and the ordinary" and helping others to find him there too is part of what it means to be followers of Christ, she continued.

She concluded: "God reaches unceasingly into the depths and there is nowhere we cannot glimpse glory.

"We are called to be a people who wait expectantly for glimpses of God's glory.

"My prayer is that we will seek to grow in our knowledge of God so that we can recognise the glory of God passing by.

"My prayer is that we will be an hopeful people, a people who wait expectantly for glimpses of glory.

"My prayer is that we will respond to this calling and will grow in confidence to recognise God, present among us and to share the love and knowledge of Jesus."