Obedience and Experience
If you have been paying close attention to the past several newsletter articles, perhaps you have noticed an ongoing theme. The previous six articles have focused on six different realities for us to experience God: God’s is a work around us, God’s love relationship with us, God’s invitation to us to join him in his work, God speaks to us, we encounter a crisis of belief (What do we truly believe about God), and making major adjustments joining God in his work. Each of these six realities have been a stepping stone leading us to our final reality-obedience and experience.
According to Henry and Richard Blackaby in Experiencing God, you come to know God by experience. As you obey God, you experience God and he then accomplishes his work through you. [1] In other words, we will come to know God more and more as we obey his commands and experience him working in and through our lives to accomplish his will.
Obedience is an essential part of knowing and experiencing God. In fact, James in his letter commands us to be more than hearers of the word; we are to be doers of the word no matter how impossible or confusing his commands might seem. God will carry out his purpose for our lives. He will give us all that we need to accomplish said purpose.
Moses came to know God by experience as he obeyed God. As Moses obeyed, God accomplished through Moses what he could not have accomplished on his own-God brought the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. Every step of obedience brought Moses and the people of Israel to a greater and more intimate knowledge of God.
Ultimately, God is reconciling a world to himself. He is pursuing a love relationship with us. Like Moses, God invites us to become involved with him in his work of reconciliation. And thus, if our desire is to experience God’s powerful presence working in and through us, we must walk by faith, make the major adjustments necessary, and obey whatever God commands us to do.
You come to know God by experience as you obey him, and he accomplishes his will through you-Experiencing God
In Christ,
[1] Blackaby, Richard and Blackaby, Henry and King, Claude. “Experiencing God: Knowing and Doing the Will of God.” (Nashville. Group Ministry Publishing 2007)