God Works Through His Servants, Part 1

Monday, September 19, 2011

God Works Through His Servants, Part 1:

When God is about to do something through me, He has to get me from where I am to where He is, so He tells me what He is doing.  When I know what God is doing, then I know what I need to do: I need to join Him.  The moment I know God is doing something where I am, my life and its activity will be thrown in contrast to God and His activity.  I cannot stay the way I am and go with God.

Seven Realities of Experiencing God

1. God is always at work around me.
2. God pursues a continuing love relationship with me that is real and personal.
3. God invites me 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 me to work with Him always leads me to a crisis of belief that requires faith and action.
6. I must make major adjustments in my life to join God in what He is doing.
7. I come to know God by experience as I obey Him, and He accomplishes His work through me.

Key words or phrases:

1. God is always at work around me.
2. God pursues a continuing love relationship with me that is real and personal.
3. God invites me 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 me to work with Him always leads me to a crisis of belief that requires faith and action.
6. I must make major adjustments in my life to join God in what He is doing.
7. I come to know God by experience as I obey Him, and He accomplishes His work through me.

Three similarities in the lives of Bible characters through whom God worked are:

1.    When God spoke, they knew it was God.

2.   They knew what God was saying.

3.   They knew what they were to do in response.

I would love for my walk with God to be such that He worked through me that way!  He wants to move me into that kind of relationship.  And I can’t wait!

Moses’ call and ministry are good examples of the way God worked with people in the Bible.  Using the seven realities let’s look at his story.

        Reality 1: God was already at work around Moses’

Exodus 2:23-25: 23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. 24 God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. 25 So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.

        Reality 2: God pursued a continuing love relationship with Moses that was real and personal.  God took the imitative to come to Moses and initiate a love relationship with him at the burning bush.  God told Moses He would go with him into Egypt.

Exodus 24:12, 15-16, 18: 12 The LORD said to Moses, "Come up to me on the mountain and stay here, and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and commands I have written for their instruction."  15 When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, 16 and the glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the LORD called to Moses from within the cloud.  18 Then Moses entered the cloud as he went on up the mountain. And he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights.

Reality 3: God invited Moses to become involved with Him in His work.

Exodus 3:8, 10: 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey--the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.  10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt."

1. When God was about to deliver the children of Israel, the important factor was not God’s will for Moses.  The critical truth was God’s will for Israel.
2. God’s purpose was to deliver the children of Israel. Moses was the one through whom God wanted to work to accomplish His purposes.
3. Time and again God invited Moses to talk with Him and to be with Him.  God initiated and maintained a growing relationship with Moses.  This relationship was based on love, and God daily fulfilled His purposes through His friend Moses.

I want that same kind of relationship with God, my Father!

God accomplishes His work through His people.  This is the way God will work with me.  The Bible is designed to help me understand God’s ways.  Then when God starts to act in that manner in my life, I will recognize that it is He who is working.

I believe this is true in my life, but how do I explain what God has done through me without taking credit for the works accomplished?

What was the most meaningful statement or Scripture I read today?:

He accomplishes His work through me.

My Prayer is:

Daddy, I realize that You are the one who does every good work through my life, and I am thankful.  But how do I explain the work done through me without taking the credit for it.  Please teach me dear Lord, in Your Son’s name, I pray, Amen.

What does God want me to do in response to today’s study?

I believe God wants me to trust Him for an answer to my questions

The Memory verse for this unit is:

I am the vine and you are the branches.  If a man remains in me and I in Him he will bear much fruit.  Apart from Me he can do nothing.  Matthew 15:5