A God-Centered Church

Experiencing God Together

Henry T. Blackaby, Melvin D. Blackaby

• Publisher: B&H Books
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780805445510
• eBook ISBN: 9780805454673
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

An award-winning book from a multimillion selling author, now available in paperback for the first time!Henry Blackaby says, "As important as Experiencing God has been to many people, A God Centered Church is a necessary sequel. Christians must make the transition from knowing and doing the will of God as individuals to knowing and doing the will of God within a corporate body of believers."Indeed, there is a corporate nature to salvation. God saves individuals but places them in community with one another—a community of believers. God is creating for Himself a people through whom He can accomplish His purposes in our world. Experiencing God Together help churches experience the fullness of life as a congregation, a manifest presence of God in their midst, and a love that could only come from above.

SECTION ONE

GOD'S GREAT SALVATION

WHAT IS THE FULL MEASURE OF SALVATION?

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
For it is God who is working in you, enabling you
both to will and to act for His good purpose.

PHILIPPIANS 2:12–13

By obedience to the truth, having purified yourselves for sincere
love of the brothers, love one another earnestly from a pure heart,
since you have been born again—not of perishable seed but of
imperishable—through the living and enduring word of God.

1 PETER 1:22–23

ONE

THE FAMILY:
GOD HAS NO ORPHANS

Our world is full of hurt and pain. As a pastor, I saw more than my share of heart-wrenching situations as people struggled through the pressures of life. I recall a certain couple who had joined our church, and it wasn't long before we had the opportunity to minister to their family. The husband had been an alcoholic most of his adult life. Although he had become a Christian, he still struggled to stay away from drinking. I was glad that he had chosen to join our church, for I knew he would benefit from the genuine love in our fellowship.

One day, however, the man got word that both of his parents had suddenly died. He was devastated. Sadly, he was alone when he heard the news and turned to alcohol to hide his pain. While driving home, he hit another car, but he continued to drive on without stopping. Fortunately nobody was hurt, but a citizen's arrest was made, and he was taken to jail. Some of the men in our church were made aware of the situation, and a small group of deacons drove to the jail to minister to him. They were able to secure his release and offer help through a difficult time. I drove to his wife's workplace to tell her what had happened, encouraging her that several of our men were with her husband. She wept on my shoulder and began to tremble. I reassured her of the church's love for her family and that her Savior's love was ever present in times of need. We took her home, and a group of us prayed together. The Lord was gracious to redeem fully a good man and his wife. As far as I know, he never drank again. In fact, he later found a place of service as an usher in our church.

Years later a young man approached me and told me that he was the son of this couple we had helped. He recalled the pain he endured as a young boy living in the home of an alcoholic. Then he said: “You will never know what the love of your church did for my dad and mom. You will never know what your love did for me as their son. Because of the love I saw in your church, I responded to God's call into the ministry and am serving the Lord in my own church. Thank you! I have always wanted to tell you what your church meant to my family.”

God has no orphans—only family. He has provided for every child of His through the unlimited resources of heaven. No matter what mistakes we have made, God cares for those who have chosen to enter a love relationship with Him. Our world is full of hurting people who have no hope, but God made provision for their every need through Jesus Christ. He then made Christ the Head of the churches He has established, in order that He might bring healing through His people who have come to know His saving grace. That is the strategy of God's redemptive plan to touch a world.

Local churches, the gathered people of God, are crucial to God's eternal purpose in salvation and world redemption. If you are a member of a local church, by the direction and will of God, you are most fortunate. You are exactly where God wants you to be and where God will unfold to you the fullness of His salvation. And it is here that God will cause you to reach out to a lost world for His glory.

Placed into a Love Relationship

The deepest longing in a person's heart is to have a relationship with God. When we open the Scriptures, we are surprised to discover how much God desires for His people to have a love relationship with Him. In fact, the more we study the Scriptures, the more we are overwhelmed at the greatness of God's salvation and the love relationship He seeks to develop with us. God's salvation set in motion everything He intended to accomplish in us. If we do not understand the extent of God's accomplished work on our behalf, we will never experience abundant life, nor will we fulfill God's purpose for our lives. God is not primarily interested in making us successful; instead, His heart desires for us to experience the full measure of His great salvation.

This is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and the One You have sent—Jesus Christ. JOHN 17:3

When God saved us, what was on His heart? What did He do to accomplish it? How does He implement His purposes in our lives? To answer these questions is to unfold the heart of God's message in the Bible, for the Scriptures reveal God, His purposes, and His ways so that we do not miss His activity in our lives. To experience God in our lives as He intended, we must have a thorough understanding of the greatness of salvation from God's perspective.

The writer of Hebrews urged the struggling believers of his day, “We must therefore pay even more attention to what we have heard, so that we will not drift away. For if the message spoken through angels was legally binding, and every transgression and disobedience received a just punishment, how will we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?” (Heb. 2:1–3). It behooves us to respond to this challenge today. It would be tragic for people to receive the riches of the gospel and then live as spiritual paupers, to accept such great love from Christ and then resent what He asks in return. Have we neglected God's great salvation and lived our lives far below what God purposed when He chose to save us?

The greatness of God's salvation is seen most dramatically in its far-reaching and comprehensive influence. Tragically, many Christians have never been taught the all-encompassing nature of their salvation. Consequently, they are neglecting major dimensions of the Christian life and are not experiencing the incredible relationship with God that is found in His salvation. It is like living one's life in black and white without seeing the full spectrum of colors in all their beauty. Many accept the gift of salvation because they want to go to heaven when they die, but they do not understand God's total plan and purpose in salvation and the unparalleled cost to God to grant it.

I was speaking in a conference in southern California when I encountered a man who stood before me in tears. He and his wife had driven almost six hundred miles simply to say, “Thank you.” They had studied one of my previous books, Experiencing God: Knowing and Doing the Will of God, when suddenly they were overwhelmed at the greatness of God's salvation. The fullness of life that God promised to them was suddenly opened in a way they had never known. As tears ran down this man's face, he explained that he had taught theology in a well-known Bible college his entire career, but he had never understood what it meant to walk with God in real and practical ways. He also expressed the need to ask God's forgiveness for having taught many young students about God without helping them know how to walk with God. He and his wife now had meaning and purpose beyond anything they had dreamed. Now in their late sixties, they had a renewed joy and excitement concerning their relationship to God and an enthusiasm to serve Him with all their hearts. I have heard stories similar to this far too often—of individuals who were content to gather information about God and to feel secure in their eternal reward but who missed out on God's great salvation as He intended.

Salvation is always granted on God's terms, and it reflects the nature of God Himself. The most identifiable characteristic of salvation is the quality of our love, first toward God and then toward His people. Without a love relationship on both levels, vertically and horizontally, we have not experienced God's salvation. If we get this basic truth wrong, we are in desperate trouble. God's strategy to touch a world is vitally linked with these two basic relationships. When Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment, He said “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the great and most important commandment. The second is like it, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commandments” (Matt. 22:37–40).

This book will take us back into the heart of God and His purpose for our lives. I hear non-Christians say, “I feel as though there is something more to life than I am currently experiencing.” What they are missing is God's great salvation. But I also hear Christians say, “I feel as though there is something more to the Christian life than I am currently experiencing.” They, too, are missing God's great salvation! They have not understood what God accomplished on their behalf. Their hearts have never been opened to understand what motivated God when He chose to save them from their sins and cause them to be born again into the family of God.

One of the first great truths concerning God's salvation is found in John 6:44. Jesus said, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.” Jesus knew that God the Father must be active in drawing persons to Himself before they would ever know the joy of salvation. Have you understood how significant this statement is concerning your life? God has called you into a love relationship with Himself through Jesus Christ. In other words, you are special. You are the object of God's calling. You did not choose Him; He chose you. You can count on it; your salvation began in the heart of God, and the love relationship that He initiated is life-transforming and all-consuming.

I was in Tampa, Florida, when I received a call from my third son, Mel. He and his wife had just received news that their seven-month-old daughter had cerebral palsy. Mel is probably the most sensitive of my five children, and I knew he was hurting. The news had caught him by surprise. He sensed something was wrong, but he had no idea what the doctor would say, and he began to weep as we spoke.

After we had talked and I hung up the phone, I felt myself in an experience that I had not been in before. I turned to the only place I knew to go. I went into the presence of the One who created that little girl. Does God know my granddaughter? He does! Does God know my son? He does indeed! As I went through that experience, I came to know the tender love of God in a way I could have never known before.

My granddaughter will never know how I have prayed for her and how special she has become to the rest of the family and me. I remember being in their home about two years later. That child has sort of taken to her grandpa. She ran to me with a slight limp in her walk, put her arms around my leg, and hung on as though her life depended on it. Everywhere I went she wanted to follow me. She would look up with a big smile and say, “I love you, Grandpa!”

Do you know why I think she has taken to her grandpa? Because her grandpa has taken to her. Do you know why we love our Lord? Because He first loved us. In fact, while we were yet sinners, God loved us enough to send His only Son to die for our sin and set us free to know and experience Him. You can count on it; when we are born into the family of God, our heavenly Father loves us dearly. In fact, the more we experience the love of God, the more we are drawn into His presence.

Placed into a Spiritual Family

According to God's divine and eternal plan of salvation, those who enter a relationship with God through Jesus Christ are automatically born into the family of God. God has no orphans! Believers now enjoy an intimate love relationship with the heavenly Father and the rest of His children. Just as God designed for a baby to be born into a family to receive love and care, so He designed for those who are “born again” to enter a spiritual family that will love and care for them. There is a corporate dimension to the nature of God's great salvation that is at the heart of God's purpose for each individual Christian. Without a thorough understanding of our place in the family of God, we will experience a dysfunctional Christian life.

Unfortunately, when people are challenged to become involved with the family of God and walk with a particular church in serving the Lord, some refuse and keep their distance. I have talked with many people over the years about their relationship with God and occasionally hear the response, “My relationship with God is private.” The only problem with that statement is that, though it may accurately reflect their experience, it is not biblical. Our relationship with God is personal, but it was never meant to be private. There is a clear difference between personal and private. Some, however, live as though they are the same. Salvation is intensely personal, but God never planned for our salvation to be private.

Everything in the Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, bears witness to the corporate life of God's children; this is by God's eternal design and purpose. “New birth” places a person automatically into a spiritual family with other believers. Here, in a local church, they are to be nourished, fed, protected, and guided toward spiritual maturity. Just as a child, when born into a physical family, has family, friends, and neighbors who rejoice in the birth, so it is the same when a person is “born again.” He or she is born into a spiritual family who has prayed for this moment, and they celebrate this person's entrance into the family of God.

But to all who did receive Him, He gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God. JOHN 1:12–13

We should not equate spiritual with invisible and private, for the Spirit-filled life is obvious to all who see it. The Bible describes Christians as the salt of the earth that makes a recognizable difference, a candle that gives light in a dark world, and a city set on a hill that all can see. Jesus did not say that we have salt or light. Jesus said that we are salt and light and will by our very nature impact everybody we encounter. The influence we exert is always the influence of what we are. Jesus challenges every believer to confess Him as Lord publicly and to live for Christ openly for all to see. Our faith is personal but never private. We cannot live our faith in isolation; that would run contrary to the purpose of God's salvation. This was true in Jesus' life and His relationship to the Father. No one in the Bible had a relationship to God in private. Rather, each had a significant involvement with God's people, for that is where God's heart is found.

_________________________________________________________

Our relationship with God is personal,
but it is never meant to be private.

_______________...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Section 1
• Section 2
• Section 3
• Section 4
• Conclusion
• About the Authors