The God-Centered Life

Experiencing God Personally

Today we are beginning a journey that will take us 8 week to complete, but one that I believe could be life altering for all of us if we are willing to lean in. (for some here today or that might come the next 8 weeks, it could alter their eternity).

Many people have grown up attending church and hearing about God all their lives… most of us in this room...

But do they/we have a personal, dynamic, growing relationship with God?

Over the next 8 weeks, we will be exploring the ways that God can be known and experienced in our lives as we dive into the 7 Realities of Experiencing God.

1. God is always at work around you. 2. God pursues you in a real and personal way. 3. God invites you to become involved in His work. 4. God speaks to you. 5. We all face a crisis of belief that requires faith and action. 6. We must make a shift in our lives to join God’s work. 7. We experience God when we obey Him.

What are we really seeking when we seek to EXPERIENCE God personally?

Knowing Vs. Experiencing

We found out in 2010 that we were expecting our first child.

We were of course nervous, but we were excited and ready to be parents.

At 12 weeks, we went in for our very first check up, expecting to hear about our baby and begin to figure out what the months to come would look like.

Not long into the appointment the Doctor started to show signs of concern.

She eventually told us that she was not able to find a heartbeat and was concerned the baby might not have a one.

After an ultrasound, it was confirmed that the baby had stopped growing around 8 weeks and did not have a heartbeat.

I can honestly say I did not walk into that office with that possibility even remotely on my mind.

I vividly remember driving out of the hospital parking lot that day and, through tears, saying “This is when what we believe about God matters most.”

I knew that God was good, that He was faithful, that He was powerful, and that He was in all things even when I couldn’t see Him, but I knew those things intellectually.

In that moment and in that season, we were able to know those things about God personally and experientially.

I experienced His goodness and faithfulness as we were loved so well by the people He had brought into our lives through our church, and how He continually comforted us through His Word.

We experienced His power and sovereignty in just a year later allowing us to get pregnant again and have Hannah within days of the due date we had for the first baby.

Though it was one of the most difficult things to happen to me, it gave me the opportunity to experience God in a real and personal way.

It is one thing to know God intellectually, to know things about God.

But it really is altogether different to know God PERSONALLY and EXPERIENTIALLY.

Heres the questions I want confront us all with this morning:

What does it look like to Experience God PERSONALLY and do we really WANT to?

In order to answer the first part of that question, we are going to look at the life of Abraham, particularly Genesis 17.

Abraham Experienced God

Genesis 17 is the really the culmination a long journey for Abraham (whose name at the time is Abram).

We find out at the beginning of the chapter that he is 99 years old. Which was quite old, even for people who lived to be much older than we do today.

24 years before this chapter, God had come to Abram and told him to pack up his family and leave the land his family for a place God would show him along the way.

One thing about the story of Abraham is that many of in the room today know enough about his story that we know how it ends and so it is difficult for us to put ourselves into Abram’s shoes in parts like this one.

God was calling Abram to leave a place that was familiar, safe, and comfortable for him and his family.

And not only that, He was calling him to leave without really know where he would go and who he would meet along the way.

When you think of it like that, we begin to draw the first conclusion about what it means to experience God.

1) It requires us to TRUST God UNQUESTIONABLY.

Genesis 12:4 CSB

4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran.

God called Abraham to leave what was comfortable and safe and move toward a promise.

God promised to make him the father of a great nation, but to be a father he had to have kids.

His wife was baron and yet the promise called him to leave and to trust.

Experiencing God requires that we believe God has a plan even when it doesn't make sense to us.

As you read the accounts in Scripture of those who experienced God personally and powerfully, in every case it require them to trust God and believe He had a plan that was better than any of their plans.

Moses, Joshua, Gideon, David, the disciples, Paul, those in church history who were martyred for the faith.

It is much more comfortable and safe to stay where we are doing what we know, but what are we missing?!

It is easy and safe to keep God at arms-length. We aren't denying His existence or even His power in our lives, but to give Him control, to trust Him, to lean into His plans and purposes...

To trust him with our families, with our finances, with our jobs, with our careers, with our time...

As we look at the example of Abraham, there was a faith in him that gave him the confidence, assurance, and the trust in God to take a step in the direction of God’s promise even if he didn’t see it clearly ahead of him.

He was putting himself in path of a personal experience with a mighty God and that required an unquestioning trust.

If you really want to, are you willing to take that step?

Second Conclusion

As we learned in our series on the life of David, there isn’t a figure in all of the bible who is with out major flaws and horrible mistakes (except for Jesus of course).

And it doesn’t take long for Abram to make a huge mistake along his journey.

In Genesis 15, God again comes to Abraham who is now somewhere around 85 years old.

He still doesn’t have any children, and it seems he is getting a bit impatient.

God again declares to Abram to promise that one day he will be the father of a great nation, that God will bless his family, and that Abrams name will be great among the nations.

We can understand the doubt right.

Sure it’s a lack of faith, but who could blame him.

I don’t know of anyone at the age of 85 who wouldn’t struggle believing that he and his 75 year old wife would be having a child any time soon.

And though God reiterates the promises (even doubling down on it), there is still a tinge of doubt in Abram that comes to fruition in chapter 16.

See Sarah had a servant named Hagar and Hagar seemed like the perfect candidate to get the ball rolling on this “great nation” thing.

So Sarah sets up a conjugal meeting between Hagar and Abram, where Hagar becomes pregnant with with Abraham’s first child.

Abram and Sarah had become impatient with God’s plan and began to doubt that it would ever happen unless they took matters into their own hands.

They seemed to be pursuing the same thing God had promised, right?

This leads us to our second conclusion

Experiencing God...

2) It requires that we WAR against IMPATIENCE and SELF-RELIANCE.

We as humans live in a perpetual state of impatience.

Our culture trains us to expect instant gratification rather than having to wait for things.

We can stream shows without ever having to watch a commercial.

We can get the answer to basically any question simply by asking our smart phone.

We can get a hold of basically anyone we want in the matter of seconds with the click of a button. We used to have to wait until they got home to call them.

Abram waited 10 years, and we struggle to wait 10 minutes.

Abram and Sarah had convinced themselves in their impatience, that it was up to them to accomplish the thing they both desired most.

Though they believed God to be good and powerful, they had come to a place where they doubted whether He was actually going to do anything without them stepping in.

I talked about this just a few Sundays ago, but they began to believe the slogan “God helps those who help themselves.”

What keeps us from experience God in a real and personal way is that we either become impatient waiting on God or we simply push God out of the drivers seat of our lives and decide our way is really the best.

The journey of faith we are on is not a simple, straightforward one.

It is riddled with bumps, road blocks, and detours that require us to wait, trust, and stay on the path, TRUSTING that at the end we will meet the one guiding and directing it for us.

The final conclusion we can draw about what it means to experience God comes in Genesis 17—

Genesis 17:1–8 CSB

1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him, saying, “I am God Almighty. Live in my presence and be blameless. 2 I will set up my covenant between me and you, and I will multiply you greatly.” 3 Then Abram fell facedown and God spoke with him: 4 “As for me, here is my covenant with you: You will become the father of many nations. 5 Your name will no longer be Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I will make you the father of many nations. 6 I will make you extremely fruitful and will make nations and kings come from you. 7 I will confirm my covenant that is between me and you and your future offspring throughout their generations. It is a permanent covenant to be your God and the God of your offspring after you. 8 And to you and your future offspring I will give the land where you are residing—all the land of Canaan—as a permanent possession, and I will be their God.”

To Experience God...

3) It requires us to SURRENDER our IDENTITIES to a God we have SEEN.

Who was Abram?

He was a 99 year old man with no son and a post-menopausal who had never been able to have children.

He was a man who had now lived the last 24 year of his life with hope in a promise that had never come to fruition and he had given up.

He was a man who had gotten impatient, who had doubted, and had messed up likely beyond repair.

If we had asked Abram and the beginning of chapter 17, this would have been his likely response.

But the God enters again, but He leads off with something different.

He announces Himself to Abram with a name we had not yet heard used of him before. El Shaddai, God Almighty, all-powerful, and all-sufficient.

And in that name He is communicating to Abram that He is one to be trusted, one able to accomplish whatever He chooses to accomplish.

And then, as Abram is on his face before God Almighty, he is given a new name.

Genesis 17:5 ESV

5 No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.

The ESV captures this verse better than other translations.

God changes Abram’s name because He is giving him a new identity.

Abraham means “Father of nations” and God is saying “You need a name to fit your identity, because I HAVE MADE YOU the father of a multitude of nations.”

He isn’t going to become the father of nations, he IS the father of nations.

There is something important and powerful about a new name in the Bible.

Abraham got a new name when he met El Shaddai

Jacob got a new name when he met God in a wrestling match.

Peter got a new name after he met the one who had the Words of Life.

And Paul got a new name when He met the one who he had refused to follow face to face.

Who are you?

Sure you mom or dad to some, husband and wife to another, but is that really who you are?

Of course you have a job, a title, and a salary. You have an address and drive around in a certain kind of car, but is that really who you are?

Yes, you have a body shape, a hair color, a clothing size and style, but is that really who you are?

We can get so wrapped up in what we perceive to be the most defining aspects of our identities that we struggle to see how we could ever be someone else, do anything else, or experience anything outside of what we believe to be possible.

But then their is God in all his glory, power, wonder, and might.

Calling us to trust Him, to lean into Him, to surrender ourselves to Him and to meet Him in ways we hadn’t experienced before.

That really is the journey we are on in this series, to experience God in ways that reveal more clearly who He is that we may know Him more deeply and more personally and be transformed as we see Him for who He is.