Does God Really Want us to Experience His Love?

As we begin, this journey for the next couple of months of exploring the idea of one truly experiencing God, we have to answer the question, Is this what God wants?  When we begin to look at the idea of experiencing God we have to define what that is.  What does it mean to experience God, what does it mean experience anything?  When we begin to think about it we have thousands of experiences in a week, some we remember for a lifetime others we easily forget.  One of the places that Autumn and I enjoy going to is Cedar Point, we try to go each summer we love the thrill of the roller coasters.  It is an experience that we just do not forget.  As you sit in your seat listening to the clinking of the chain pulling you up, you know that there is no turning back, you know that at any minuet the cars are going over the hill and you are flying at sixty miles an hours.   There is nothing like it, what if I told you I believe that this is what God wants you to experience with Him.  He doesn’t want to be the normal everyday experience he wants us to want to come to Him daily,  anxiously awaiting to spend time with Him.  But too many of us have either never truly known God or have come compliance.  In his book A.W. Tozor  wrote, “Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.”

How do we know this? I believe that it is all throughout the bible, let us just look at  how God has come to people.  In the middle of the dessert He appeared to Moses in a burning bush, “One day Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he went deep into the wilderness near Sinai,^* the mountain of God. Suddenly, the angel of the Lord appeared to him as a blazing fire in a bush. Moses was amazed because the bush was engulfed in flames, but it didn’t burn up. “Amazing!” Moses said to himself. “Why isn’t that bush burning up? I must go over to see this.” When the Lord saw that he had caught Moses’ attention, God called to him from the bush, “Moses! Moses!”(Exodus 3:1-4)  Not only that, but have you noticed how many people changed their name after either experiencing God in the old testament, or after having Christ come to them in the new testament? It is God’s desire that we come to not only know him but really go away changed for life, let’s  take a look at  just two people today.  The First I want to take a quick look is Peter.  Let’s look at Peter before experiencing God, I mean truly experiencing the forgiveness and power of Christ, He was afraid to even let people know that He knew Christ.   Peter I believe truly experience Christ on the beach after the resurrection which we read about in John 21:15-19.   I believe that it was after that conversation that Peter realized that Gods love can overcome any sin, and found out who God wanted him to be. 

Next we look at Paul, when we first meet Paul we see him taking care of the coats of those stoning Stephen, the first Christian murdered.  Then we see that he got special permission to go and hunt down Christians and murder them.  But on the road Paul had an experience with God we read about in Act 9:1-17.  It was through this experience that changed Paul forever, he would go on to preach and teach the gospel all over Greece, Asia Minor and Rome.  He was killed by the Roman government for the very thing he was killing and putting people in prison, for following God.   What if I told you God wants you to come and know him in the same way Moses, Peter, Paul or any other great Christian leader you can think of.  God may not come you through a burning bush, or on a beach, or while you walking down the road.  This is why Christ came to earth was so that we may come and have a personal experience with God.  He came and died on the cross so that we may come to have a personal relationship with the living God.  It is up to us accept the invitation to except the love God has for us.         

Tozer, A.W.; Tozer, Aidan; Tozer, Aidan Wilson (2011-01-31). The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer (p. 18). Christian Miracle Foundation Press. Kindle Edition

Is prayer really that Important?

I think that many of us underestimate the power of prayer, we think of it being important to a point.  We think I get saved from praying, but I don’t think we realize the power of prayer.  No other time seems to point that out to me then during lent, we have forgotten what lent is all about.  People in the Church say things like I am giving up sugar, or caffeine for lent.  But Lent is not about giving up a certain type of food, it is more about giving something up for God.  We should be saying I will give up my lunch and spend that time with God, above and beyond the time I already spend with God.  But many may ask why spend more time in prayer, more time with God?  Let us not forget how much God has done for us, He has given us a chance to come and to have a personal relationship with Him.  Ephesians   1:3-5 tells us, “How we praise God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we belong to Christ.  Long ago, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.  His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave him great pleasure.”

God’s plan was to bring us into His family, to save us from our sins so that He could become our Heavenly Father.  He desires for us to come to Him in prayer and get to know Him, talk to Him tell Him what is on our minds.  In our time of need we should go to God in prayer and ask Him for his help.  We read the story of King Hezekiah in 2^nd Kings chapter 19, He was a godly King who loved God and followed God’s commandments.  We see in this chapter that the Assyrian Army was camped outside of Jerusalem, their General was breathing down threats on Hezekiah, telling him that he was going to conquer him, that he had already defeated all the other nations and their gods.  He told the people to give up to turn on Hezekiah, so what did Hezekiah do?  We read in Chapter 19:14-19, “ After Hezekiah received the letter and read it, he went up to the Lord’s Temple and spread it out before the Lord.  And Hezekiah prayed this prayer before the Lord: “O Lord, God of Israel, you are enthroned between the mighty cherubim! You alone are God of all the kingdoms of the earth. You alone created the heavens and the earth.  Listen to me, O Lord, and hear! Open your eyes, O Lord, and see! Listen to Sennacherib’s words of defiance against the living God. 1“It is true, Lord, that the kings of Assyria have destroyed all these nations, just as the message says.  And they have thrown the gods of these nations into the fire and burned them. But of course the Assyrians could destroy them! They were not gods at all—only idols of wood and stone shaped by human hands.  Now, O Lord our God, rescue us from his power; then all the kingdoms of the earth will know that you alone, O Lord, are God.”

God did not let Hezekiah down He went and defeated Hezekiah’s enemies.  Let us think about this for just one minute back then Christ had not come, the Holy Spirit was not yet living in people, and God still delivered them victories.  We have the Holy Spirit living in us, the Living God living inside of us to guide and direct us, so why should we not be going to prayer first.  Why are we so reluctant to come daily to give up our time to go and pray to the God that has given us life.  I believe it is because we do not want to humble ourselves before God to give God the glory He deserves.  You see when Hezekiah Came to God in prayer He came and humbled Himself before God, He knew that he could not defeat the Assyrians, but He also knew that God could.  We need to humble ourselves before God, come to Him in prayer and give Him our battles that we cannot defeat.  I would recommend that starting this week to give up part of your time you decide how long and give it to God, come to Him in prayer, praise His name and know He is going to fight for you.

Are we really to Hate Sin?

As we look into the cost of following Christ we have to talk about how following Christ means we are to become Holy.  But what does that mean to become Holy, we love to say it but do we really look into what it means.  Are we ready to really put aside our wants and desires for the desires of God?  If we are honest with ourselves, are we really ready to say to others I now follow  God and no longer do that?  Sin is what separates us from God, it is our sin that keeps us from a relationship with A loving God.  Why did God send His son to Earth?  John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”  God loved us so He sends His Son, to die on a cross so we can everlasting life!  Many take this and say this is great it means that we are saved, saved from what though?  We are saved from our sins, which means if we are saved from something then that something should no longer be a part of our lives. 

Many say it doesn’t matter how you live your life God loves us so much that He is not sending anyone to Hell.  But if that was the case then the cross would be all that was needed, Christ could have come to earth never started a ministry go and tell those around that they needed to turn to God.  There would be no need for the great commission.  But that is not the case, Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:1-7, “Once you were dead, doomed forever because of your many sins.  You used to live just like the rest of the world, full of sin, obeying Satan, the mighty prince of the power of the air. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God.  All of us used to live that way, following the passions and desires of our evil nature. We were born with an evil nature, and we were under God’s anger just like everyone else.   But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so very much, that even while we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s special favor that you have been saved!)  For he raised us from the dead along with Christ, and we are seated with him in the heavenly realms—all because we are one with Christ Jesus.  And so God can always point to us as examples of the incredible wealth of his favor and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us through Christ Jesus.”  Notice Paul says we were dead because of our sins.  It is our sins that keep us from God, we must come to Christ and allow the Holy Spirit to come into us and cleanse us of our sins.  We no longer are to live for this world but Live for God.

          Many forget that we serve a God that hates sin, Psalm 5:4-6; “O God, you take no pleasure in wickedness; you cannot tolerate the slightest sin. Therefore, the proud will not be allowed to stand in your presence, for you hate all who do evil. You will destroy those who tell lies. The Lord detests murderers and deceivers.” we are to become more like God as we grow in our relationship with God.  In 1^st John 1:5-2:6 we read, “ This is the message he has given us to announce to you: God is light and there is no darkness in him at all.  So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness. We are not living in the truth.  But if we are living in the light of God’s presence, just as Christ is, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from every sin.  If we say we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and refusing to accept the truth.  But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong.  If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts. My dear children, I am writing this to you so that you will not sin. But if you do sin, there is someone to plead for you before the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the one who pleases God completely.  He is the sacrifice for our sins. He takes away not only our sins but the sins of all the world.  And how can we be sure that we belong to him? By obeying his commandments.  If someone says, “I belong to God,” but doesn’t obey God’s commandments, that person is a liar and does not live in the truth.  But those who obey God’s word really do love him. That is the way to know whether or not we live in him.  Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Christ did.”  We are to let go of our sinful nature and put on the nature of God, we can come to Christ and ask for forgiveness but we must also realize we are to live a new kind of life.  We no longer live for us but we live for God.