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.
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