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4 Ways God Designed Us To Experience Him

In the message on Sunday I covered the first stage of our spiritual growth process. Since everyone's spiritual journey begins with a personal experience with Jesus Christ, we identified our Sunday morning gathering as our primary environment to help people experience God.

I also shared 4 ways that God designed for us to experience him. These I will reproduce here:

1. God designed us to experience him in corporate worship
2 Chronicles 5:11-14
Acts 2:1-4
Challenge: Commit to weekly church attendance. Prepare your heart before coming to church. Come with a hungry and expectant heart. His Word says that those who hunger and thirst after righteousness will be filled and that he rewards those who diligently seek him. Come expecting to meet with God.

2. God designed us to experience him through the preaching of his Word
Acts 10:44
Challenge: Come to every sermon with a humble and expectant heart hungry to receive the word of God. God desires to speak to you. Be prayerful during the sermon asking God to speak to your heart.

3. God designed us to experience him through personal prayer
Mark 1:35
Exodus 33:9-11
Challenge: Develop a habit of personal prayer alone with God. Expect to interact with him in a personal way. Find someone who can hold you accountable for your prayer time. Nothing can substitute for your personal time with God.

4. God designed us to experience him through the reading of Scripture
Hebrews 4:12
Challenge: Develop a habit of disciplined reading of Scripture. Utilize a Bible reading plan if it will help you. Come to the Scriptures prayerfully, asking God to speak to your heart through what you read.

Intentional Mission Strategy

We had a great service this past Sunday. It was the kick-off of our E3 series. This series is all about revealing our intentional strategy for making disciples.

Just as spiritual growth does not happen by accident, so a church does not accomplish its mission by accident. A church will only accomplish its mission if it does so on purpose. Sunday we defined our mission like this:

Our mission at ACC is to lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ by helping them to experience God, excel in spiritual growth, and express his love to the world.

Our intentional strategy is thus summed up in these 3 words (each of these links to previous posts I have written about them):

Experience

Excel

Express

This series will be about expounding on each of these.

New Series: E3

This Sunday we will be starting a new 3-part message series called "E3: Making Disciples In 2008." In this series we will be diving into the heart of our mission as a church and our direction for '08. What does E3 stand for? Come Sunday and find out! You won't want to miss this important series.

Pray Global Prayers

Check out this interesting post on prayer from John Piper.

Goals For 2008

On Sunday I challenged everyone to set aside some time to take some personal inventory and set some personal development goals for the new year. I specifically challenged everybody to set spiritual goals and physical goals.

The old saying rings true that if you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there. As each of us gains greater clarity into the person that God is calling us to become, we will be able to pursue growth to that end in practical and intentional ways.

We must be both practical and intentional because spiritual growth does not happen by accident. We are only kidding ourselves if we think we can get somewhere we've never gone by doing what we've always done. In order for us to grow spiritually we must pursue it intentionally and proactively.

In addition to setting spiritual and physical goals, I'd like to encourage everybody to set some goals in a few other areas. Growth in these areas will help us in our effectiveness for God's kingdom:

1. Mental development goals
Find some new ways to stretch yourself mentally this year. Set some goals for reading and reflection. I am always reading books that help me grow in areas of spirituality, Scripture, leadership, and communication.

2. Dietary goals
Decide in advance what types of foods you need to decrease or cut from your diet. Sometimes we can short-circuit our productivity for God's kingdom by poor eating habits.

3. Friendship goals
Take some steps toward developing new friendships and strengthening old ones this year. Maybe more tv nights could be turned into dinner or coffee with friends. Since we were created for relationships, we must continually guard against the danger of isolating ourselves.