A personal experience with God makes a difference

Hosea 4:1-2 HEAR THE word of the Lord, you children of Israel, for the Lord has a controversy (a pleading contention) with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no faithfulness, love, pity and mercy, or knowledge of God [from personal experience with Him] in the land.  There is nothing but [false] swearing and breaking faith and killing and stealing and committing adultery; they break out [into violence], one [deed of] bloodshed following close on another. AMP

Hosea 4:1-3 Attention all Israelites! God's Message! God indicts the whole population:"No one is faithful. No one loves. No one knows the first thing about God. 2 All this cussing and lying and killing, theft and loose sex, sheer anarchy, one murder after another!  {Message version} 

"The more we love God the more we will obey. The more we obey the more we will be aware of the reality of Christ in our lives. The more we are aware of Christ in our lives, the more victory we will experience. The more victory we experience, the less difficult the choices are and the less conflict we have within ourselves." ~ Norma Becker

Tough scripture, if you read on in that chapter it gets even tougher.    In the scripture it uses the phrase “personal experience with him. “ That jumps out at me.  I think if we read between the lines we can see that if we have a personal experience e with God it brings a great change.  Notice it is not a religious experience or emotional experience you have once a week in a church service.  I am overwhelmed at times of people who pray, come to church and are never changed.   I am not talking about perfection but a consistent forward motion of change in their life. Are we so content as not to have a desire to get to know God more?  We put so much energy into our job, family activities and “things.” I wonder if we put energy into knowing God reading his word, prayer and gathering with his people as the greatest priority of our lives. What would happen?  I know you are shaking your head in an agreement with me. But will you go away unchanged like the rich young ruler.  He agreed obedience was important, except when it got too personal and demanded an intimate experience. When he was confronted with giving his all to Christ he could not. Luke 18:23, “And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful: for he was very rich.”

Luke 21:34-36  "Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap. For it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth.  Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man."

Let me overstate the obvious. In Hosea it says because God’s people did not have a personal experience with him they were bereft of faithfulness, love, pity, mercy, and a proper knowledge God.  As a result they cursed, could not keep their promises, were violent and committed adultery.

So, if we look at this in the positive way to really please God is to be close to him. Then we will not commit these kinds of actions.  You see if we draw close to God we become like him. When we draw away from him we are prone to sin. 

When we are exposed to God’s love, pity, mercy and faithfulness we will in kind be transformed. Scripture teaches when we are in God’s presence and have personal relationship with him we are changed and become like him.  When we take off the masks and shed our selves of hypocrisy something happens. It says in 2 Co 3:18, “… our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him. “ {Message Version}

Who has ever left God’s presence unchanged?  People like Abraham, Moses, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Mary, Elizabeth, Peter and Paul did not remain untouched but were impacted for eternity by an encounter with God.

1 Jn 2:13; 15-17…dear children: You know the Father from personal experience…. Don't love the world's ways. Don't love the world's goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father.  Practically everything that goes on in the world — wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important — has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out — but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.

Let’s get to know Christ and let our lives show the difference.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.

Pastor Mike