Behold Your God: Rethinking God Biblically.

Why

Many of you know that in December-ish I opened up to you that I was spiritually numb; that I reached a dry place in my faith and that I was struggling to even care about why I was even here. I asked you to pray for me and some of you would affirm me almost daily that you were praying for me and I was so encouraged by that. At the same time I was asking God where I went wrong and how could I have gotten here. He opened my eyes to see that He had become small in my heart and I had become big.

With that knowledge I began to ask Him how can we fix it. I knew that being more faithful in prayer and creating a habit of reading Scripture would help and I did. I committed to reading through the Bible in one year and made prayer a priority. One morning early this year as I was reading the Bible I noticed this workbook under our coffee table. It wasn’t the first time I’ve seen it. The thing had probably been there for almost a year. I just felt compelled this time to look at it closer. When I started to read it a little, I discovered that the author, John Snyder, not to be confused with John Schneider who played Bo Duke on Dukes of Hazard, I discovered that this author was a pastor that had become spiritually tired and disillusioned with “church.” I felt quite encouraged except that this pastor resigned his pastorate because of it. Fortunately, he did not walk away from his faith. He actually resigned so that he could go back to school to pursue a PhD so that he could become a seminary professor instead of a pastor. Throughout his study for his PhD that he had the opportunity to reacquaint himself with the God of the Bible.

He said this, I gained a real sense of what a church might be when God is the great and only attraction.

Let me read that again.

I gained a real sense of what a church might be when God is the great and only attraction.

As we endeavor to plant a church one day, it is important that we make sure that we have Unity, which is why we have been talking much about Unity these last several weeks, and that we have a deep understanding of the God of the Bible.

I had to repent of that and ask God to show me himself. Show me in a way that I can’t even take it all in

This is the reason why we decided to make this the theme of what we’ll talk about over the next several weeks.

Because as Snyder says, There is no way to adequately deal with the problems in our own lives and our churches without a deep and thorough rethinking of God.

Do not take this study as us teaching at you. You must see this study as a learning with you. The study is not designed to equip anyone with spiritual weapons. It is designed for all of us to have a better awareness of who our God is and to worship Him together in Awe of Him. What does that look like?

Psalm 113:1–6 NASB95

1 Praise the Lord! Praise, O servants of the Lord, Praise the name of the Lord. 2 Blessed be the name of the Lord From this time forth and forever. 3 From the rising of the sun to its setting The name of the Lord is to be praised. 4 The Lord is high above all nations; His glory is above the heavens. 5 Who is like the Lord our God, Who is enthroned on high, 6 Who humbles Himself to behold The things that are in heaven and in the earth?

Psalm 113 NASB95

1 Praise the Lord! Praise, O servants of the Lord, Praise the name of the Lord. 2 Blessed be the name of the Lord From this time forth and forever. 3 From the rising of the sun to its setting The name of the Lord is to be praised. 4 The Lord is high above all nations; His glory is above the heavens. 5 Who is like the Lord our God, Who is enthroned on high, 6 Who humbles Himself to behold The things that are in heaven and in the earth? 7 He raises the poor from the dust And lifts the needy from the ash heap, 8 To make them sit with princes, With the princes of His people. 9 He makes the barren woman abide in the house As a joyful mother of children. Praise the Lord!

***This study will be about him, NOT US. We will have to examine ourselves and our responses to what we learn about God, but He will be the ultimate object of our attention.

This study is not ultimately aimed at our good. Sure, we’ll benefit by the time we devote to pursue knowing God and the transformation that comes with that pursuit, but we should not use this knowledge of the Lord for some greater end. The goal of the study is not to relieve us of our emptiness, fix our families, grow our church or even to find our significance and sense of purpose in Him. The goal is to see God’s name lifted high above all else. Therefore our desire is not to use God fo our advancement, but rather to forget ourselves as we worship Him.

R. C. Sproul writes in The Holiness of God, “Men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance, until they have contrasted themselves with the majesty of God.”

***PRAY????****

***Are you willing to adjust your life to whatever God reveals of Himself in this study?***

Chan, Francis. The Francis Chan Collection: Crazy Love, Forgotten God, Erasing Hell, and Multiply (Kindle Locations 153-155). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition.

***Start with Day 1***.