Teaching this Quarter

For the third lesson of my four this quarter I will be drawing info from Blackaby's Experiencing God. This book was very important to the healing process in the last church I pastored. Here are the basic themes:

SEVEN REALITIES OF EXPERIENCING GODFrom Experiencing GodBy Henry T. Blackaby and Claude V. King
1. God is always at work around you.
2. God pursues a continuing love relationship with you that is real and personal.
3. God invites you to become involved with Him in His work.
4. God speaks by the Holy Spirit through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church to reveal Himself, His purposes, and His ways.
5. God’s invitation for you to work with Him always leads you to a crisis of belief that requires faith and action.
6. You must make major adjustments in your life to join God in what He is doing.
7. You come to know God by experience as you obey Him and He accomplishes His work through you.

This week I looked at (from Buchanan's book "Your God is Too Safe") moving from "borderland" (the place of comfort, familiar, and complacency) to the "holy wild." The key or answer being surrender.

In my next lesson I'm going to focus on how we are or aren't using the gifts God has given us. My key verse is 1 Corinthians 12:18 and the idea that God has put us right were he wants us and our gifts and the mix of the gifts around us are all on purpose.

Then looking at Blackaby's seven themes we're going to discuss that realm of holy wild and living and experiencing God.

Finally, my last lesson will tie the OT and NT together by looking at how well we "wait on God." I will look at a passage in Habakuk 2 and tie that into the rich but often ignored tradition of Advent.

I'm so excited about this.