Pastor Edgar Mayer;
For more sermons and other writings check out pastors homepage: http://www.lca.org.au/pastors/edgarmayer
Experience
His Words
Henry Blackaby writes in the
Experiencing God course: Years
ago I spoke to a group of young pastors. When I finished the first session, a
pastor took me aside and said, I vowed to God I would never, ever again listen
to a man like you. You talk as though God is personal and real and talks to
you. I just despise that. I asked him, Are you having difficulty having God
speak to you? He and I took time to talk. Before long, we were on our knees.
He was weeping and thanking God that God had spoken to him. Oh, dont let
anyone intimidate you about hearing from God
Does God really speak to his
people in our day? Will he reveal to you where he is working when he wants to
use you? Yes! God has not changed. He still speaks to his people. If you have
trouble hearing God speak, you are in trouble at the very heart of your
Christian experience.[1]
Do you and I hear from God? When you
heard the title of our study course Experiencing
God what went through your mind? I
first thought that the resource must pick up on experiences that are more
exceptional like what happened on the day of Pentecost when the disciples saw
what seemed to be tongues of fire descending on them a powerful presence
of the Spirit of God. There was a sound
like the blowing of a violent wind. Everyone heard it and people came for
everywhere to investigate. That was an experience which resulted in a sermon
preached with power and about three
thousand people coming to faith.
A few years ago I suggested that the
theme of one our Lutheran pastors conferences might be Experiencing God. We agreed to do the theme but one long-standing vice-president of
Another expectation which I had when I
reflected on the course title Experiencing
God was: This teaching must focus
more on the emotional aspects of our faith. I experience God when he touches my
emotions like it says in the Bible Romans 5:5:
God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has
given us. Or 1 Thessalonians 1:6
I again read from the Bible:
in spite of
severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy
Spirit. When supernatural love and
joy flood my heart zap me in wonder and excitement that is an experience.
But the course Experiencing God is not primarily about that. The core teaching is neither on signs,
wonders and miracles, nor on supernatural emotions. The core teaching is about
the even more important experience and even more important supernatural
encounter with God, that is: when God makes us hear and understand his Word.
Are we a little disappointed now? Do we
think: yeah, yeah, yeah and now we get to hear that the Bible is the Word of
God, we are to read the Bible and then we know the truth about God. The Experiencing God course is about reading and analyzing and interpreting the books of the
Bible an often dry and uninteresting mental exercise, only packaged with a
more interesting title. Wrong again.
In his course Henry Blackaby will give
the Bible a prominent place as the Word of God and rightly so. He will show how
God speaks through the Bible but the difference is that God not only teaches
general principles of truth. No! God uses the Bible, prayer,
circumstances and other Christians to speak directly and specifically into your
life and my life. There are no general platitudes but God becomes
concrete sharing a Word from his mouth which is about me, my hopes and fears,
my future, my purpose in this world, my struggles, my feelings of unworthiness,
my potential. Just imagine: God comes down and speaks to you words just meant
for you. Hear them and experience God.
Is that only for special Christians the mature ones, maybe the prophets among us, or
whatever? By no means! This is for
everyone. As Henry Blackaby writes in the course material and I quoted
the sentence before: If you have trouble hearing God speak, you are in
trouble at the very heart of your Christian experience. The normal Christians experience which God
wants you to have is to hear him speak to you. How else can Jesus say to Satan
in the midst of severe temptations Matthew 4:4: A person does not
live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God? Living on the word of God.
Likewise, how else can we know what to
do? The Bible says that God wants us to partner with him in works which Ephesians 2:10 I quote the Bible: he prepared
in advance for us to do. How can we
know about what God is up to and discern these pre-prepared works if he does
not talk to us about them? The normal Christian experience is that we
experience God speaking to you and me personally. And that feels great. One person in the Bible said as
we will be moved to say Psalm 119:103:
Lord, how sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
What exactly does God say? This is
frequently different for each one of us because our assignments are different:
one is to provide money for Gods kingdom, another is to tell children or youth
about Jesus, a third is to build houses (maybe
at the same time be salt and light on the building site among the swearing and
drinking witnessing to eternal life). When
God speaks his words they are meant for you no one else. Thats how special
we are to God and thus he can shape his words so that they apply only to us in
our circumstances which are different from others.
However, frequently the words which God
speak to us are not new and many of us
in fact all of us hear many of the
same words. Nevertheless, unless we hear these words in a personal way from God
encountering and experiencing God for ourselves we will not take them in, not believe or trust them, not be touched by
them.
For example, the most common universal word
of God to you and me is: I love you. The Bible teaches John 3:16-18: For God so loved the world
that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not
perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to
condemn the world but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is
not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he
has not believed in the name of Gods one and only Son.
Again: God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. Right but have we heard? We may know in our
head that God sent Jesus to suffer and die for the sins of humanity and on some
level we may appreciate that this is also to make a difference to you and I.
Love made Jesus volunteer his life as a sacrifice for an unclean human race but
has it really sunk in that Jesus also meant you when he saved the world. With
his arms stretched out wide on the cross, pierced with nails and a crown of
thorns, he spoke words of love meaning also you Luke 23:34:
Father, forgive them, for they do not know what
they are doing. Again have you
looked at the Jesus on the cross and then heard the words experienced the
words from God spoken to you
personally: Father, forgive now
insert your name. I love him. Name,
I died for you and your sins. Believe in me and you will be made clean. I
forgive you.
Life is not a picnic, therefore we
become hardened and may query with unbelief: How can these words be true among the daily struggles and daily
failures? With so much betrayal and cynicism around do these words still have
meaning: I love you?
As we said before: In this case the word
from God is the same for each one of us but God needs to make it personal
nevertheless. God has to give each person the supernatural experience of
speaking one to one God and you,
God and me making
us hear the words as they are spoken by God into our souls: I, God,
love you.
Even Jesus needed God the Father telling
him how much he loved him on more than one occasion. When Jesus was baptized,
the voice of God was heard from heaven and he said to Jesus Luke 3:22: You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well
pleased. How precious were these
words to Jesus with all the temptations and heartache that were to follow. In the same way when Jesus was later on the Mount of
Transfiguration God the Father said from a cloud Matthew 17:5: This
is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased
Oh, that we hear the same words. I mean
hear them in an experience of God. A pastor of the persecuted
church in
I dont know how this man heard the
words I know maybe a Bible
passage came alive for him at that moment or it was a strong impression or an
audible voice or he simply heard it in his head I do not know how it happened but God spoke and it was an experience
and needed to be a supernatural experience because how else can you believe
that God knows you and knows what you are going through and loves you still
despite letting you be stung with an electric baton and be thrown backwards
with excruciating pain.
I always thought that one verse in the
Bible was a little underachieving 1
Corinthians 14:3 I read: But
everyone who prophesies speaks to people for their strengthening, encouragement
and comfort. I always thought:
Come on. The gift of prophecy can do more than just encourage and comfort.
What about sharing more task-orientated words of strategic planning and mission
action? However, in the light of
what we said before maybe we do need to hear first and foremost about the love
of God for us have any other prophetic word of God boxed up in his
fundamental word of grace before we
can do anything much at all.
There are prophetic people among us and
they do get pictures like God the Father taking us by the hand and putting his
arms around us or similar visions and these prophetic people dont share them
with anyone at least not yet because they think that they are not
important enough. What great insight is that: God loves you? This is in the
Bible everywhere. Yet, we may wish that they speak up more often because again
and again God wants us to experience him as we hear him speak to us: I
love you.
everyone who prophesies speaks
to people for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort.
I repeat the words of Henry Blackaby: If you have trouble hearing God speak, you are
in trouble at the very heart of your Christian experience. The good news is that we dont have to be
in trouble. God wants to speak and he does speak to us. Over the next few
months together as a congregation we go on this exciting journey of learning
from the Experiencing God course.
Our daily devotions, small group meetings and Sunday sermons will unfold the
very heart of our Christian experience which is to hear from God his love for
us, what he is doing in our midst, his will for us, and so on.
In closing maybe a word of warning: When you experience God, it will
change your life. He is our God but I encourage all of us: He is worth it and
he loves us. Invest in getting as much out of the course as you can. Amen.
[1] Blackaby, Henry & King, Claude:
Knowing And Doing The Will Of God,