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Posts Tagged with Behold Your God

The Manifest Presence of God

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A few guys over at SBCVoices.com are discussing the topic of the manifest presence of God.

This is of great interest to me:

One of the most helpful things on this topic for me is two fold:

1) Psalm 139, 1 Kings 8:27, Jeremiah 23:24, Proverbs 15:3
2) Where there is no mistaking that the bible clearly shows us that there is nowhere God is not and that there is nothing that can singularly contain Him; there is no place that God is not already there. “Manifest presence” of God are those special moments where God’s presence is unmistakably present.

If God is everywhere, and I believe He is, then we must agree that he is equally present at a Mormon temple, a Muslim mosque, a kingdom hall gathering, a Masonic lodge, a Planned Parenthood clinic, a Satanic event, and a Baptist church service. He’s not being worshiped in these places just because they are places where He is.

Is it possible that God’s presence is manifestly different in places and times of His choosing where His people humble themselves? Yes.

O may He manifestly visit His church again.

Behold Your God

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This past Sunday evening I finished a 12 week bible study with several people at Eastside Baptist Church. I want to take just a moment and give a short review of the study for consideration for others, Behold Your God

Let me start with what I didn’t like about Behold Your God. This won’t take long… If there is a critique I could give from a participants point of view after finishing the study it is that I would liked to have heard more from Richard Owen Roberts. That’s about all the negative criticism I can give, and understand that the negative criticism is based on a bias for appreciation for brother Roberts and the impact his preaching has had on my life over these past several years.

This was actually the second time I had done the study. Renee and I did this together just before walking through this with several in our church. I was encouraged to see attendance remained strong throughout the course of time with only a few not finishing.

Twelve weeks sounds like a long time, but it actually went by very fast.

The Workbook:

  • The workbook followed a similar pattern that church goers are likely familiar with. It’s really designed to be a devotional workbook.
  • The workbook is designed to be completed the week before the weekly session and divided into 5 days per week.
  • The time it took to complete each day varied from 20 to 40 minutes.
  • The strength of the workbook was really in the weightiness of reading Scripture. This was less a study of reading man’s opinion on social matters and a quest for “rethinking God biblically.”
  • If you’re  not in the habit or practice of writing thoughts or expressing your thoughts then you may find the workbook invasive, but this practice is beneficial.

The Video Sessions:

  • All 12 of the video session include three parts…
    • biographical sketches of past saints such as; Charles Spurgeon, A.W. Tozer, George Muller, Amy Carmichael, Jonathon Edwards and others
    • Teaching from pastor/author John Snyder
    • interview clips from modern men like Paul Washer, Richard Owen Roberts, Conrad Mbewe, Eifion Evans, Jordan Thomas and others.
  • The video sessions are about an hour long.
  • The strength of the videos are the teaching with John Snyder. His teaching is biblical, and because it’s biblical, it’s relevant.

It was my experience that the study was rich with biblical truth, helpful to cause healthy examination, leading unto repentance, encouraging to press into the character and attributes of God.

I recommend  the Behold Your God without reservation.

Two early outcomes in my life personally are:

  • I cannot afford to know God better without the lamp of Scripture. If Scripture is not showing me who God is then I’m depending on the experiences of others and at risk of creating a god for myself.
  • A.W. Tozer was right when he said “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”

“The highest priority of the day must be a full return to the God of the entire Bible.” Richard Owen Roberts

From the Author of Behold Your God, John Snyder

 

What Would Happen If Your Church Did This?

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I’m starting week 10 of a 12 week bible study entitled “Behold Your God” (I recommend it to all of you).

The teaching has been challenging and convicting in many respects. Likely the most sobering moment, a reality check if you will, came in the day 5 portion of week 9. The author John Snyder, was explaining that Jesus was submissive to the Father in all he said and did. Meaning the way He did things was as important as what he had to say.

on page 187, Snyder hit the nail with accuracy as he spoke about John 10:37; “If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me..”

He expressed it like this for the pastor.

“This is certainly not a popular pattern today. Just imagine for a moment a church that prints a great banner and hangs it over the pulpit. It reads: “If our pastor does not do the kinds of things that are in harmony with our God, then he is a liar and you are not to listen to him.”

I think I would preach with much more fear and trembling. I would preach with more grace, I would prepare sermons with more tears, I would preach with more urgency. But more so, I would live my life with more grace, I would shed more tears, I would live with greater purpose and urgency, I would be more careful with how I live.

I told my church last night that I would be alright if they put this kind of banner behind our pulpit. Not because I don’t fear the implications, but because I want this kind of accountability.

What would happen if your church did this?

 

the Claptrap

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My Twitter account had some activity this past week from a church consulting group. (In most of the Twitter world activity is no big deal, but for a guy like me this was huge.) After having a sermon ‘favorited’ by someone/group that I don’t know anything about I decided to investigate why they would even ‘favorite’ a sermon of mine.

The investigation was both humorous and disheartening.

I appreciate that there are people interested in helping the Lord’s church but I fear it appears more like they are preying on the Lord’s desperate people. There is a lot of clatter about ‘growing’ churches; how they are growing and how your church can grow too…

I’ve known of church consulting groups for a long time. LifeWay Christian Resources even has their own church consulting groups from within the publishing house arena and independent groups.

What must Christ think of our business like approach? Are we really this lost? Has God left without knowledge and understanding on how to be the church?

“What good is our busy religion if we have lost majesty, reverence, worship – and awareness of the divine?” A.W. Tozer

“Entertainment, that ancient and time-honored counterfeit of worship, is neither God-centered nor a byproduct of being God-centered. It must not be employed as a tool for drawing people to worship the God of the Bible.” John Snyder

—
This is the kind of claptrap going on around Christendom:  Innovative Church and Worship Consulting: Coaching pastors, worship leaders and praise teams to total church health, experience, knowledge, Jesus. This is how InnovativeCWC introduces themselves.

 “Does your worship team need a worship consultant?”
1 Day on-site: $950.00
2 Day on site:$1,650.00

The best consultation a church can get is to open that Bible and see what God wants from her. Unless that church is more interested in what others are wanting from her. If that is the case then perhaps this offer from InnovativeCWC is worth doing.

Then again, if a church does not worship God, it’s really only become a social club – and a social club is powerless to help the lost.

I don’t want to appear arrogant or selfish in thinking that I or this church can’t benefit from others input. But this looks like an appeal to the innovative lie that has been hounding the Lord’s church from the beginning.

Are these offers for consultation like the advice from Job’s friends who he calls “worthless physicians”?

I would prefer to speak to the Almighty. (Job 13:3)

 

Behold

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We strain the eyes to behold the things we cherish.

This is why eye contact with a loved one is important. When I participate in wedding ceremonies my favorite thing to do while the bride is walking in is to get a good look and the groom… that man’s eyes are always fixed on his bride while she’s entering and walking toward him.

Who do Christians behold? Who does your church behold?

I’m in the seventh week of a bible study with several folks in my church called “Behold Your God“. My take-away from last night’s discussion and last week’s bible study has me considering what this church beholds; what would others think we consider the most cherished person we behold?

Think about it with me…

Christians and churches know that we would answer the question of who we behold to be God Himself. (Yes, the “Sunday School” answer is correct.) But is this who we really behold?

If only we would do an honest evaluation of ourselves, this would reveal who/what we really behold. The way we talk about what we really behold reveals that we may likely be cherishing any one but God.

We may be showing other people that we don’t cherish God at all. We may only be using a form of religion to promote what we really cherish.

  • Behold our theme: Think about how we love our themes; as good as it is to have a theme for the year, a theme for a conference, a theme for Vacation Bible School, a theme for today, etc, notice what happens to us once we commit to a theme, we become promoters of our theme.
  • Behold our creativity: Go to a conference on church growth some time. Listen on purpose. Do be wooed by the creative presenter who talks about creativity and how many people his creative ways and thinking attract so many people. That idol of creativity offers no spiritually dead soul any real hope.
  • Behold our method/program: Methods come and go. A survey will be conducted soon. Thousands of dollars will be spent by churches to hire consultants to come in and show them how most everything they are doing is unattractive to the unconverted. The program 20 years ago that gathered new families then will be outdated and replaced with a new one that will offer temporary promises if you employ the strategy rightly you will get the calculated results that the marketing research shows.
  • Behold our ministry: This gets messy here, because now we’re talking about things we really love. Christians love to talk about our “ministries”. This is close to home for me as I consider how we talk about New Horizon Home. But listen, our love for our “ministries” divide churches and Christians more than the color of carpet ever will. Christians will overcome the matter of carpet color far more than the opinion of what ministry is more or most important.
  • Behold our morality: This gets even more messy. Morality is close to holiness (but not necessarily the same thing). When we are more known for our morality than our God, we may be cherishing an idol that again has the appearance of Christianity, but more represents an idol that only enslaves the covert to legalism.

What if the church cherished God?

What if the community knew nothing more about us than the fact that we cherish God? May this be such a church.

Rethinking God Biblically

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Behold Your God – Sunday night, March 1, 2015 at 6:30 p.m.

Join me and others at Eastside Baptist Church in Twin Falls (204 Eastland Drive North) for a 12 week study on the God of the Bible. In “Behold Your God” we will learn of historical figures in church history and hear from modern day preachers, evangelist and missionaries as they reveal the God of the bible from Scripture.

Introduction: Welcome to “Behold Your God” from Media Gratiae on Vimeo.

Our God, Our Help In Ages Past by Jon Yerby (Behold Your God Original Soundtrack) from Media Gratiae on Vimeo.

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