EXPERIENCING GOD

“Now this is eternal life: that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.”  (John 17:3 NIV)

When the spiritual dimension is strong in a church, members are able to experience God. They discover that God isn’t just “out there,” that God is “above all and through all and in all.” (Ephesians 4:6) As members become more open spiritually, they become more open to an intimate relationship with each person of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They have an intimate encounter with the Trinity, even if they don’t necessarily describe this encounter in Trinitarian terms. They come to know God more than speculate about God. As a result, they also grow in their ability to encounter and experience God in Scripture, others, their own hearts, and the events of life. 

-- Adapted from N. Graham Standish in “Becoming a Blessed Church: Forming a Church of Spiritual Purpose, Presence, and Power”

#5096

THE GOD WHO IS THERE

“For the LORD your God is God of gods and LORD of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes.”  (Deuteronomy 10:17 NIV)

In saying God is there, we are saying God exists, and not just talking about the word God, or the idea God. We are speaking of the proper relationship to the living God who exists.  In order to understand the problems of our generation, we should be very alive to this distinction.  Semantics (linguistic analysis) makes up the heart of modern philosophical study in the Anglo-Saxon world.  Though the Christian cannot accept this study as a total philosophy, there is no reason why he should not be glad for the concept that words need to be defined before they can be used in communication.  As Christians, we must understand that there is no word so meaningless as the word "god" until it is defined. No word has been used to reach absolutely opposite concepts as much as the word "god".  Consequently, let us not be confused. There is much "spirituality" about us today that would relate itself to the word god or to the idea god; but this is not what we are talking about.  Biblical truth and spirituality is not a relationship to the word god, or to the idea god.  It is a relationship to the One who is there, which is an entirely different concept.

-- Francis A. Schaeffer in “The God Who is There”


#4643

LEST WE FORGET

Rabbi Harold Kushner had a story I found thought provoking.  It is quoted in Thomas L. Friedman's book, “The Lexus and the Olive Tree”.  Since Friedman didn't reference it, I assume it can be shared.  At least, it's worth a try: There was a village where people were afflicted with strange plagues of forgetfulness, a kind of contagious amnesia.  Starting with the oldest inhabitants and working its way through the population, the plague causes people to forget the names of even the most common everyday objects.  One young man, still unaffected, tries to limit the damage by putting labels on everything.  "This is a table," "This is a window", "This is a cow; it has to be milked every morning".  And at the entrance to the town on the main road, he put up two large signs.  One reads, "The name of our village is Macondo," and the larger one reads, "God exists."

Friedman says, "The message is clear.   We can and probably will forget most of what we have learned in life -- the math, the history, the chemical formulas, the addresses and phone numbers of the first house we lived in when we got married -- and all that forgetting will do us no harm.  But if we forget that there is a God, something profoundly human in us will be lost."

--  U.M. Bishop William B. Oden in “The North Texas United Methodist Reporter”  November 3, 2000

#4252

RUNNING THE SHOW

There is a God.  It is not you.

This is the beginning of wisdom.  At first, it looks like bad news because I would like to run the world.  I would like to gratify my desires.  I would like to have my own way.  But once we think about it, this idea turns out to be very good news.

It means that someone far wiser and more competent is running the show.  It is His job to be God; it is my job to learn to let Him be who He is.  The Bible says, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” (Psalm 14:1)  I suppose the even bigger fool, looking in the mirror, has said, “There is a god!” for the oldest temptation is that we “will be like God.”  Real life, however, begins when I die to the false god that is me.

-- John Ortberg in “The Me I Want To Be” 

#4107

YOUR EXPECTATIONS

[My husband] said something… that's really stuck with me, "Joni, if I met all of your expectations, you wouldn't need God."


There's a lot of truth in that, isn't there?  If our spouses were all we expected them to be, we wouldn't feel much inclination to depend on the Lord.


The Bible talks about expectations in Micah 7: "Put no confidence in a friend.  Even with her who lies in your embrace… But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord." (vv.5, 7)


Elsewhere God's Word talks about not putting our trust in horses or chariots or princes. It's so easy to do that, to let expectations build.


But God doesn't want us to substitute anything or anybody for Him.  Not pastors or teachers, boyfriends or girlfriends, or even husbands or wives.


So if your expectations have been crushed recently, and you're disappointed, fearful that this person just isn't all you had hoped he or she would be, maybe it's just God's way of reminding you to put your confidence in the Holy One.


He is able to meet your expectations.  And unlike your husband, wife, or close friend… [God is] perfect.


-- Joni Earkeckson Tada in Glorious Intruder




#3769

ABOVE EVERYTHING ELSE

Millions call themselves by His name, it is true, and pay some token homage to Him, but a simple test will show how little He is really honored among them. Let the average man be put to the proof on the question of who or what is ABOVE, and his true position will be exposed. Let him be forced into making a choice between God and money, between God and men, between God and personal ambition, God and self, God and human love, and God will take second place every time. Those other things will be exalted above. However the man may protest, the proof is in the choice he makes day after day throughout his life.


-- A. W. Tozer




#3668

THE CLAIM OF JESUS TO BE GOD

Jesus said, "Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own; but the Father who dwells in Me does His works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me;…" (John 14:10-11a NRSV)

We may with complete detachment study and form a judgment upon a religion, but we cannot maintain our detachment if the subject of our inquiry proves to be God Himself.  This is, of course, why many otherwise honest intellectual people will construct a neat by-pass around the claim of Jesus to be God. Being people of insight and imagination, they know perfectly well that once to accept such a claim as fact would mean a readjustment of their own purposes and values and affections which they may have no wish to make.  To call Jesus the greatest Figure in History or the finest Moral Teacher the world has ever seen commits no one to anything.  But once to allow the startled mind to accept as fact that this man is really… God, may commit anyone to anything!  There is every excuse for blundering in the dark, but in the light there is no cover from reality.  It is because we strongly sense this, and not merely because we feel that the evidence is ancient and scanty, that we shrink from committing ourselves to such a far-reaching belief as that Jesus Christ was really God.

-- J. B. Phillips, in Your God is Too Small


#3398

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

If the universe is a machine, a giant accident, a blind, pitiless indifference, where did we get the idea that there is a way that things are supposed to be!

This is a very simple picture. It is not philosophically profound, but it helps me to think about it in a simple way: A woman I know named Sheryl went to a salon to have her nails manicured. As the beautician began to work, they began to have a good conversation about many subjects. When they eventually touched on God, the beautician said, "I don't believe God exists."

"Why do you say that?" asked Sheryl, who has MS.

"Well, you just have to go out on the street to realize God doesn't exist. Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people? Would there be abandoned children? If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain. I can't imagine loving a God who could allow all these things."

Sheryl thought for a moment. She didn't respond because she didn't want to start an argument. The beautician finished her job, and Sheryl left the shop.

Just after she left the beauty shop, she saw a woman in the street with long, stringy, dirty hair. She looked filthy and unkempt. Sheryl turned, entered the beauty shop again, and said to the beautician, "You know what? Beauticians do not exist."

"How can you say that?" asked the surprised beautician. "I am here. I just worked on you. I exist."

"No," Sheryl exclaimed, "beauticians do not exist, because if they did, there would be no people with dirty, long hair and appearing very unkempt like that woman outside!"

"Ah, but beauticians do exist," she answered. "The problem is, people do not come to me."

Exactly.

-- John Ortberg in Faith & Doubt


#3268

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Sometimes the existence of God would turn out to be -- borrowing a phrase from former U.S. Vice President Al Gore  -- "an inconvenient truth." I liked Denny, but I couldn't figure out why he kept wanting to meet. He was a large man, a construction guy, and I was a little intimidated. He wanted to talk about God, so we did, and he asked one difficult question after another about faith -- one tough intellectual issue after another. We would talk each one through to as much resolution as we could get, and he would always bring up another one. Finally, I asked him, "If all of these issues were settled, if every intellectual barrier you raised were dismantled, is there anything else besides all this intellectual stuff that would hold you back from following Jesus?"

There was a long silence. Denny did not like the question. It turned out that he was involved in sexual behavior that he knew was not honoring to God and that, if he were to become a follower of Jesus, would have to change. He didn't want to change. His mind caused him to find all kinds of objections, but the reality was that he did not want it to be true. He was afraid of what he would have to do if it were.

-- John Ortberg in Faith & Doubt


#3070

THE GOD WHO IS THERE

In saying God is there, we are saying God exists, and not just talking about the word God, or the idea God. We are speaking of the proper relationship to the living God who exists.  In order to understand the problems of our generation, we should be very alive to this distinction.  Semantics (linguistic analysis) makes up the heart of modern philosophical study in the Anglo-Saxon world.  Though the Christian cannot accept this study as a total philosophy, there is no reason why he should not be glad for the concept that words need to be defined before they can be used in communication.  As Christians, we must understand that there is no word so meaningless as the word "god" until it is defined. No word has been used to reach absolutely opposite concepts as much as the word "god".  Consequently, let us not be confused. There is much "spirituality" about us today that would relate itself to the word god or to the idea god; but this is not what we are talking about.  Biblical truth and spirituality is not a relationship to the word god, or to the idea god.  It is a relationship to the One who is there, which is an entirely different concept.

-- Francis A. Schaeffer in The God Who is There


#3036

CREATING SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING

Deeper questions are at play. Oxford theologian Richard Swinbourne writes, "It is extraordinary that there should exist anything at all. Surely the most natural state of affairs is simply nothing; no universe, no God, nothing. But there is something." Notions like the mechanism of change might take place, but they do not explain how existence springs from nothing. The old man in Marilynne Robinson's wonderful novel Gilead muses, "Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined."

The real trick isn't changing one thing into another thing. The real trick is creating something out of absolutely nothing.

A group of scientists decided that human beings had come a long way and no longer needed God. They picked one scientist to go and tell God that they did not need Him anymore. The scientist went to Him and said, "God, we can make it on our own. We know how life started. We know the secret. We know how to clone it. We know how to duplicate it. We can do it without You."

God listened patiently and said, "All right. What do you say we have a man-making contest?"

The scientist said, "Okay, great. We'll do it."

God said, "Now we're going to do it just the way I did back in the old days with Adam."

The scientist said, "Sure, no problem." He reached down and grabbed a handful of dirt, and God said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt."

-- John Ortberg in Faith & Doubt

#2970

THE FRESH BREAD OF HEAVEN

There is more of God available than we have ever known or imagined, but we have become so satisfied with where we are and what we have that we don't press in for God's best. Yes, God is moving among us and working in our lives, but we have been content to comb the carpet for crumbs as opposed to having the abundant loaves of hot bread God has prepared for us in the ovens of heaven! He has prepared a great table of His presence in this day, and He is calling to the Church, "Come and dine."

-- Tommy Tenney in The Heart of A God Chaser


#2838

AWE AND WONDER

The psalmists approached their friendship with God with... awe and wonder, and often turned their words into insistent witness. The sense of wonder is always there for the psalmist. He may complain about his life and even about the way he thinks God is treating him, yet the sense of wonder is never lost. I know of no literature that so recklessly brings together the immanence of God and the transcendence of God. The psalmist feels God is so approachable that he dares to raise questions about God's very character; then, suddenly, God is so eternal that the poet struggles for words to express his awe.

-- J. Ellsworth Kalas in Longing to Pray: How the Psalms Teach Us to Talk with God


#2837