Knowing God

Chip Ingram writes in God As He Longs for You to See Him:

In his classic Knowing God, J. I. Packer uses a study in Daniel to identify four measurements that help determine whether we actually know God (see appendix). These by-products of godly vision can be measured on four scales:

Amount of energy for God. Those who really know God have great energy for him. How much energy do you have for him?

Greatness of thoughts about God. Those who really know God have great thoughts about him. What are our thoughts about God like?

Degree of boldness for God. Those who really know God demonstrate boldness for him. How bold are you?

Level of contentment in God. Those who really know God find great contentment in him. How content does your relationship with God make you?

He'll Calm You and Delight You

Jerusalem will be told:
"Don't be afraid.
Dear Zion,
don't despair.
Your God is present among you,
a strong Warrior there to save you.
Happy to have you back, he'll calm you with his love
and delight you with his songs.

Zephaniah 3: 16-17 (The Message)

More and more abandoning themselves to God

Psalm 40: 1-3

I waited patiently for the LORD;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.
He drew me up from the pit of destruction,
out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock,
making my steps secure.
He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear,
and put their trust in the LORD.

[ESV]


I waited and waited and waited for God. At last he looked; finally he listened.
He lifted me out of the ditch,
pulled me from deep mud.
He stood me up on a solid rock
to make sure I wouldn't slip.
He taught me how to sing the latest God-song,
a praise-song to our God.
More and more people are seeing this:
they enter the mystery,
abandoning themselves to God.

[The Message]

His Vision

Perry Noble post on Jesus Is A Micromanager

Guess what–Jesus is a micromanager…and I AM SO THANKFUL!!!

Contrary to the belief of some people…Jesus didn’t come to “unleash” us to live the life we’ve always wanted (SERIOUSLY…that would get bad VERY quick!) But rather He came and gave His life that we might LIVE for Him daily…and…

He knew we would completely screw this up…so…He sent us His Holy Spirit to fill us, to remind us, to guide us and to teach us HIS truth!

He didn’t leave us alone…and He didn’t tell us, “get a vision and go fulfill it”…He said, “I am ALMIGHTY GOD, I don’t need to hear your vision, you need to hear mine…it is good, pleasing and perfect (Romans 12:2) and I am going to equip and empower you to fulfill what I have called you to do!”

Jesus didn’t give us His Holy Spirit so that we can manage Him…but rather so He can manage us!!!

I am so glad I am not alone!!! John 16:12-14

Thinking

"What comes to our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us."

A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

A Diet Suggestion

Excerpts from Mark Batterson's interview in Catalyst: The Best Decision I Made This Year

If you asked me: what is the best decision you made this year? The answer is easy. The hands-down best decision was the decision to read through a one-year Bible.

Let me come clean. I didn’t read the Bible nearly as much as I could have or should have last year. This is embarrassing to admit, but Bible reading had become synonymous with sermon prep. I was reading it professionally instead of devotionally. I was reading it for what God wanted to say through me instead of reading it for what God wanted to say to me. And it took its toll.

Then at the end of last year I stumbled across an interview with J.I. Packer, the renowned author and theologian. He said, “Any Christian worth his salt ought to read the Bible from cover-to-cover every year.” It stung at first. But it made sense, so much sense that I decided to do it. And it has proved to be the best decision I made this year. Long story short, I’ve fallen in love with the Bible all over again.

If you want to grow spiritually, you need a consistent diet of Scripture. In fact, you will never outgrow your consumption of Scripture. There is no substitute. There is no supplement. The poet, T.S. Eliot, once observed: “Everything we eat has some effect upon us. It affects us during the process of assimilation and digestion; and I believe exactly the same is true of anything we read.” In other words, you are what you read.

I have a saying that I repeat to our congregation frequently: reading without meditating is like eating without digesting. If you want to absorb the nutrients, you can’t just read it. You’ve got to chew on it. You’ve got to digest it. Meditation is the way we metabolize Scripture.

...

One of the common complaints people make when leaving a church is this: I’m not being fed. As a preacher, my goal is to nourish our congregation via a well-rounded diet of sermons. And I try to preach every sermon like it’s my last, but let me push back. My kids learned to feed themselves when they were toddlers. If you’re not being fed, that’s your fault. I’m afraid we’ve unintentionally fostered a subtle form of spiritual codependency in our churches. It is so easy to let others take responsibility for what should be our responsibility. So we let our pastors study the Bible for us. Here’s a news flash: the Bible was unchained from the pulpit nearly five hundred years ago during an era of history called the Middle Ages.

If you are relying on a preacher to be fed, I fear for you. Listening to a sermon is second-hand knowledge. It is learning based on someone else’s words or experiences. A sermon is no replacement for first-hand knowledge. You’ve got to see it and hear it and experience it for yourself. It’s not enough to hear the truth. You have to own it. Or more accurately, it has to own you. Honestly, I’d rather have people hear one word from the Lord than a thousand of my sermons. And that happens when you open your Bible and start reading.

Landscape You WIth the Word

In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.

James 1:21 (The Message)

How Good God Is

I bless God every chance I get; my lungs expand with his praise. I live and breathe God; if things aren't going well, hear this and be happy: Join me in spreading the news; together let's get the word out. God met me more than halfway, he freed me from my anxious fears. Look at him; give him your warmest smile. Never hide your feelings from him. When I was desperate, I called out, and God got me out of a tight spot. God's angel sets up a circle of protection around us while we pray. Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see— how good God is. Blessed are you who run to him.

Psalm 34: 1-8 (The Message)

Always and All the Time

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. [ESV]

Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live. [The Message]

1 Thessalonians 5: 16-18

Wonderful What Happens

Don't fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.

Philippians 4: 6-7 (The Message)

Focus

Neil Anderson Daily in Christ

THE SOURCE OF ALL HOPE

Psalm 43:5
Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him, the help of my countenance, and my God

Sometimes the depression resulting from a seemingly impossible situation is related to a wrong concept of God. David wrote: "How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? . . . How long will my enemy triumph over me?" (Psalm 13:1, 2 NIV). Had God really forgotten David? Was He actually hiding from David? Of course not. David had a wrong concept of God, feeling that He had abandoned him to the enemy. David believed a lie about God, and consequently he lost his focus. His situation seemed hopeless, and hopelessness is the basis for all depression.

But the remarkable thing about David is that he didn't stay in the dumps. He evaluated his situation and realized, "Hey, I'm a child of God. I'm going to focus on what I know about Him, not on my negative feelings." From the pit of his depression, he wrote: "I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation" (Psalm 13:5 NIV). Then he decided to make a positive expression of his will: "I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me" (verse 6). He willfully moved away from his wrong concept and its accompanying depression and returned to the source of his hope.

If Satan can destroy your belief in God, you will lose your source of hope. But with God, all things are possible. He is the source of all hope. You need to learn to respond to hopeless-appearing situations as David did: "Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him, the help of my countenance, and my God" (Psalm 43:5).

If Satan can't destroy your concept of God, then he will seek to destroy your concept of who you are as a child of God. He can't do anything about your position in Christ, but if he can get you to believe it's not true, you will live as if it's not, even though it is. The two most important beliefs you possess are who God is and who you are as His child.

Prayer:

Above all, Father, help me focus continually on who You are and who I am in Christ, and to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

Be - And Experience - A Blessing

Then he turned to the host. "The next time you put on a dinner, don't just invite your friends and family and rich neighbors, the kind of people who will return the favor. Invite some people who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the tracks. You'll be—and experience—a blessing. They won't be able to return the favor, but the favor will be returned—oh, how it will be returned!—at the resurrection of God's people."

Luke 14: 12-14 (The Messsage)

Knowing

Larry Crabb quote

I know you well enough to know that you are all I have, but not well enough to know that you are all that I need.

Community

Excerpts from Modeling Community: An Interview with Mark Batterson | Neue Ministry

In your latest book, Wild Goose Chase, you hold the view that our lives with God should be an adventure. What part does community within the Body play in this adventure?

Well, I think life by yourself isn’t much of an adventure. I’m going to preface this by saying this: I would like to think that when I pronounce the Benediction at the end of our services, I am sending dangerous people back into their natural habitats to wreak havoc on the enemy. That really is the DNA of the book—that we’re about being on mission, and that’s part of the adventure of living for Christ. To me, the greatest adventure is God inviting us into this thing called the Great Commission—how He didn’t call us to do something on our own. God loves the adventure of doing things together, and in the same sense, the greatest joys in life are things that bring us closer together with one another. For example, I’ve got 100 life goals, and a lot of those goals involve other people. I want to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, but I don’t want to do it by myself; I want to do it with one of my kids. Or, I want to run a triathlon with one of my kids—there’s something about doing something together that synergizes the entire experience and makes it more adventurous.

...

Can you talk a little bit about the idea behind your unconventional church locations?

I went into church planting with a traditional mindset: meet and rent a facility so we can buy or build a church building. And then we started meeting in Union Station and realized that you can’t build a Union Station. I mean, 25 million people pass through Union Station every year; it’s the most visited destination in D.C. We have food-court restaurants, great movie theater screens—and not too many churches have their own subway system. It is the perfect set-up. At some point, doing church in the marketplace became part of our DNA, so movie theaters are not short-term rental options for us. They’re our long-term strategy. Our vision is to meet in movie theaters and Metro stops around the D.C. area. That’s kind of the theater side. We also own and operate the largest coffeehouse in Capitol Hill, and we get asked a lot, “Why would a church build a coffeehouse?” The reason behind it is that Jesus didn’t just hang out at the synagogue; Jesus hung out at wells. Wells were not just a place to draw water; they were natural gathering places in ancient culture. Coffeehouses are our postmodern wells.

We wanted to create a place where church and community could cross paths. If we would have built a church, I don’t know how many people in our neighborhood would have gotten excited. When we said we were going to build a coffeehouse, we became heroes in our neighborhood. We have free Wi-Fi; we have a place where people can hang out, have a conversation and get a great cup of coffee. And, hopefully, they’ll land at one of our Saturday night services or one of our events, and we’re finding that that’s exactly what’s happening. It is really cool being in the marketplace and feeling like the message is getting out because we’re rubbing shoulders with people every day.

...

Anything More?

Post from Perry Noble: 10 Questions Church Leaders Should Ask Themselves

#1 - Am I loving “social networking” more than Jesus?

#2 - Am I loving my particular brand of theology more than Jesus?

#3 - Am I loving my particular worship style more than Jesus?

#4 - Am I loving my platform more than Jesus?

#5 - Am I loving attention more than Jesus?

#6 - Am I loving facilities more than Jesus?

#7 - Am I loving opportunities more than Jesus?

#8 - Am I loving ritual more than Jesus?

#9 - Am I loving success more than Jesus?

#10 - Am I loving the ministry more than Jesus?

Basically…am I loving ANYONE or ANYTHING more than Jesus!

Prayer

David Jeremiah: The Warrior's Prayer (based on Ephesians 6)

The Warrior's Prayer

Heavenly Father
Your Warrior prepares for battle!
Today I claim victory over Satan by putting on
The Whole Armor of God!

I put on the girdle of Truth!
May I stand firm in the truth of Your WORD.
So I will not be a victim of Satan's lies.

I put on the Breastplate of Righteousness!
May it guard my heart from evil
So I will remain pure and holy.
Protected under the Blood of Jesus Christ.

I put on the shoes of peace!
May I stand firm in the Good News of the Gospel
so Your peace will shine through me
And be a light to all I encounter.

I take the shield of Faith!
May I be ready for Satan's fiery darts of
doubt, denial and deceit
So I will not be vulnerable to spiritual defeat.

I put on the Helmet of Salvation!
May I keep my mind focused on You
so Satan will not have a stronghold on my throughts.

I take the Sword of the Spirit!
May the two-edged sword of Your WORD
be ready in my hands so I can expose
the temtping world of Satan.

By faith your warrior has put on the
Whole Armor of God!

I am prepared to live this day in
SPIRITUAL VICTORY!

Amen!

Provide a Glimpse

What I'm getting at, friends, is that you should simply keep on doing what you've done from the beginning. When I was living among you, you lived in responsive obedience. Now that I'm separated from you, keep it up. Better yet, redouble your efforts. Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God. That energy is God's energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure.

Do everything readily and cheerfully—no bickering, no second-guessing allowed! Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night so I'll have good cause to be proud of you on the day that Christ returns. You'll be living proof that I didn't go to all this work for nothing.

Even if I am executed here and now, I'll rejoice in being an element in the offering of your faith that you make on Christ's altar, a part of your rejoicing. But turnabout's fair play—you must join me in my rejoicing. Whatever you do, don't feel sorry for me.

Philippians 2: 12-18 (The Message)

Life of Jesus

More from ReThink

Rethink Monthly: What topics/scripture has God been speaking to you, causing you to rethink lately?

Margaret Feinberg: On a recent trip to Israel, we visited the Garden where Jesus’ resurrection may have taken place. As I walked inside the tomb, I was once again reminded of the resurrecting power of Jesus, just the fact that our God is a God of life, who gives life; who brings back to life. Sometimes it’s easy to fall into the trap of sorting through culture wars, keeping a list of do’s and don’ts, or even who’s stacking up the best ammo when it comes to arguing a hot topic of faith. But when Jesus boldly proclaimed, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” He didn’t just say those words, He lived them. The word “life” was never meant to be interpreted as number 3 on the list…something we’ll get to. Life flowed out of Jesus everywhere He went—healing, giving hope, challenging, and even resurrecting. All of this has made me question how much of the life of Jesus I really have. How much do I give that life to others? This thinking and rethinking makes me want to experience more of the life of Christ, and allow it to flow out of me like living waters.

Will Be Exalted!

Come, behold the works of the LORD,
how he has brought desolations on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
he burns the chariots with fire.
"Be still, and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!"
The LORD of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Selah

Psalm 46: 8-11

A Very Present Help

Sometimes, especially in these troubling times, I need to be reminded that I will not fear even if the earth gives way because God is with me.

Psalm 46: 1-3

God is a safe place to hide, ready to help when we need him.
We stand fearless at the cliff-edge of doom,
courageous in seastorm and earthquake,
Before the rush and roar of oceans,
the tremors that shift mountains.

Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,
God-of-Angel-Armies protects us.

[The Message]

God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling.
Selah

[ESV]