Experiencing God

We are in the middle of the first session of our Experiencing God study tonight. We have run out of books twice and have well over one hundred people participating in this study. We have teenagers as well as adults studying together seated around round tables in the fellowship hall. It is an amazing sight watching the Lord work in our midst. There are sounds of laughter mixed with honest and frank conversation.

I just asked the single most impacting question of the study for me this far. “What are you attempting in your personal life and in the life of your church that cannot be accomplished unless God intervenes?” This is where God wants us to live. He wants us to listen to Him and hear Him clearly calling us to do the impossible. He wants us to simply be available to Him. Now, here is another question, do you and I believe that God can work through us no matter how ordinary we feel? The truth is absolutely yes.

I have been through studies and I know studies do not change your life but God does. God uses ordinary people like you and me to do extraordinary things. [I Cor 1:26-28]. O how the world needs to see that. They need to see God working through us doing impossible things and see churches who are not daunted by the challenges of a post modern culture and closed countries to missions endeavors. God can do anything. He can open any door, use any person, move any mountain, and most of all glorify His name. If we trust and obey we could experience God doing what only God can do. This is where our faith meets the reality of our circumstances.

God delights in using ordinary people to do amazing things for Him. Let me tell you about Christi. She is the wife of a football coach and the mother of two blond headed boys filled with vigor for life. A few years ago, despite being painfully shy, she said yes to God and went on her first mission trip. I will never forget seeing her in the middle of the street witnessing to an intoxicated man named Walter. She has maintained contact with Walter and continued to point him toward Jesus.

This past year the Lord began putting a new call on her life. He began calling her to Africa. She has already made plans for the trip but she is facing the reality of the dangers she could potentially face there. As she seeks the Lord for direction and counsel the Lord continues to move her to step out of her comfort zone and to follow Him to Africa. Christi does not know how powerfully the Lord is using her in the lives of others. Each time she gives God her “yes” she inspires others to follow God as well.

Christi is attempting to take the gospel to the other side of the world and she knows apart from God providing and apart from God enabling her this cannot be done. What impossible thing is God asking you to believe Him for and to attempt for Him? When you obey in faith you too will experience Him and come to know Him in exciting and new ways.