HOW TO EXPERIENCE GOD DAILY

Through His Word
2 Kings 22:1-23:27; Luke 8:4-15
Part 1 Sunday November 6, 2005

Intro: The “Circle Line” tour around NY Harbor in 1986, getting the statue of Liberty ready for the anniversary of the Constitution—scaffolding, welders and polishers and repairers and people maintaining her—a reminder that this great lady had no capacity to take care of herself. She had to live by the scaffolding—a hollow and lifeless monument

The Problem

• How many of us are like the Statue of Liberty—we’ve become accustomed to living by the scaffolding—propped up and maintained and polished by a book or a CD or a pastor or a message, leaning on all those externals for the vibrancy of your Christianity—but hollow and lifeless on the inside, and with no conversational connection with God.

• Something has happened to our hearts: We are not experiencing God daily We are captive to second hand experiences and being “propped up” and scaffolded like the statue of liberty

• We are living from Sunday to Sunday with not much in between

• Overcome by the urgent, God is lost in the million details of daily life

SO How can we change our experience of God and develop a conversational relationship with God

• What do we mean by a “conversational relationship”?

• The kind of relationship Jesus had with the Father daily—Where he would pull aside and listen before the day even began; where he would stop and receive the Father’s blessing, where he would look and listen for directions before he spoke and did, where he would bring the greatest needs—and his greatest pain—as if the Father and he were just talking face-to-face…

Purpose of this series is HOW to develop that kind of relationship…HOW to experience God daily

• Not WHY—we assume in this series that it is a good thing to have a conversational relationship with God…

• Other assumptions: gods is there and he is not silent, He wants to speak to you!

• Today and next two weeks: Practical ways to develop a conversational rel;ationship with God daily… and this morning

The Story of Josiah: The greatest King in the history of Israel next to david, because of the way he responded to God’s word, the Bible. But to fully appreciate Josiah, you and I need to understand His DYSFUNCTIONAL nuclear family of origin

• Josiah had come to the throne during one of the darkest periods in Judah’s history. His grandfather was Manasseh : How bad was Manasseh? He was a man who rejected God completely, and decided instead to worship a demonic being named BAAL. He built altars so that the Jews could worship Baal and other heathen Gods. He even brought idols into the temple in Jerusalem. He persecuted God’s prophets, He sacrificed one of his own sons on a fiery altar to Baal, and the worship of Jehovah was all but done away with in Judah. And this went on for over 50 years!

• When Manasseh died, his son Amon took over the throne. Amon was Josiah’s father: how bad was Amon? He simply continued Manasseh’s policies, continuing to serve and worship the heathen idols until he was assassinated two years into his reign. Assassinated in the palace—good chance Josiah witnessed this

• And yet Josiah…”In the 8^th year of his reign (@ age 16), while he was still young, he began to seek the God of his father David” 2 Chron 34: 3 WHY??? Given this incredibly occultic, satanic, addictive, messed up violent legacy of his family…odds were he would turn out as depraved as Manasseh and Amon, since that’s all he saw…

• Was it out of rebellion to his past? Was it out of desperation, loneliness, a genuine hunger for something more than what his grandpa and dad had experienced at the height of their power…whatever it was, God obviously was reaching out, using hole in Josiah’s heart, stirring up all his questions and longings for something more in life than the violence and spiritual degradation to which he had been exposed-- and Josiah responded.

• FIRST POINT: NO MATTER HOW BROKEN AND MESSED UP YOUR LIFE MAY BE, GOD WANTS TO SPEAK TO YOU! No matter how messed up your background, no matter how desperate or unworthy or uneducated in the scriptures, God is desperate to meet you through the pages of this Book!!!!

• By age 20 he was beginning to tear down the idols and altars to false Gods that his grandfather and father had established throughout the land (2 Chron 34:3-7) He didn’t have the Bible yet, so whatever hew was acting on in his knowledge about God was second hand and very incomplete.

• But Though his knowledge was incomplete, he acted on what he knew was right in the eyes of the Lord (2 Ki 22:2) Illustrn: Most of us have some knowledge of some things in the Bible—iut may be the Lord’s Prayer, or Psalm 23 “The Lord is my shepherd”, or Jesus teaching on “Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you”… Those are markers God has placed in our life, however incomplete, to help us know right from wrong, and to know what is likely to please him. Josiah seems to have had that kind of rudimentary knowledge… ASIDE: whatever he did know he learned from somebody else—maybe his mother? Moms and dads, do not underestimate the power of reading these Bible stories to your children and letting those words sink into their hearts, just like they sank in Josiah’s—so that when the time of testing comes, when they need to make decisions for themselves and others, like Josiah, they will do what is right in the eyes of the Lord.

• maybe it was an almost forgotten psalm of David about going into the temple of the Lord and worshipping God… So by age 26 he was repairing the temple of the LORD (2 Ki 22:3-7)

• Josiah’s folks didn’t just happen upon the Book of the Law in the street somewhere. They were in God’s house doing housecleaning. They were positioned to find that book because Josiah had looked at the Lord’s house and said it was a disgrace, He’d decided that it was time to do some repairs. He was seeking to honor God by repairing the temple.

• SECOND POINT: YOU CAN POSITION YOURSELF TO ENCOUNTER GOD DAILY IN HIS WORD BY “CLEANING HOUSE”

• Notice the order in which Josiah was following what he knew of God’s word—AT age 2O he was TEARING DOWN/CLEARING OUT… and BY age 26 he was BUILDING UP/ESTABLISHING A PLACE OF WORSHIP….and isn’t that the same process we follow in developing a conversational relationship with God—We clean house first by tearing down and clearing away all the altars to false Gods and places of bondage, THEN we move into a place of worship and repair…

• You know, all of us have altars—places where we give our time, energy and passion. It may be the altar of work, or the altar of financial gain, or the altar of success, or the altar of recreation and sports. So let me ask you this question: What are the altars in your life? And more importantly, are trhey leading you to a daily encounter with the living God, or to the worship of some other God? Are they leading you to devote your passion tim e and energy to building a conversational relationship with God, or are they leading you to a place of bondage to overwork, overspending, and overachieveing?

• Take a lesson from the life of Josiah: Position yourself to encounter God daily by doing a little housecleaning of your own heart. Go back to those Bible verses that you do know and, like Josiah, ask Zgod to show you what you should do about the truths in those verses…eg “Give us this day our daily bread” As we too begin to build a daily relationship with God, like Josiah, God’s word will lead us to tear down the idols and places of bondage, to clear out, to build up and repair and THEN establish a place of worship where God dwells with you… That’s the process! It’s the process of softening and renovating our ruined hearts

• THIRD POINT/MILESTONE: RESPONDING He listened to the word of God with a heart that was humble and responsive (2 Ki 22:11, 19) So humble and responsive that he took it personally and applied it to himself as he tore his own robes and mourned (2 Ki. 22:11) He grieved because the people had not been living faithfully to God’s word. He grieved because he had been ignorant and uninformed, living without a whole piece of his identity, his faith, without a whole piece of his relationship with God.

• You know, Josiah didn’t have the Bible as you and I do! His people only discovered the first five books of the Bible, the Book of the Law—But even those first five books were enough to change his life! The Book of the Law (Gen-Deut) contained the basics in moral instruction handed down from God to the leader of the Israelites, Moses, while the people had been nomads wandering homeless in the desert. It told the story of how they had been people who were oppressed and slaves in Egypt. It told how God had delivered the people from their oppressors and how the people were to remember this event in worship - remembering God’s grace and favor, remembering God’s faithful presence.
  The book told of how the people of Israel had been blessed with a home and land to settle in. And it told how to live a faithful life, providing guidelines. God’s instruction through these words, was that to follow these guidelines and to strive to lead a faithful life was to live a life of peace and harmony.

• Jesus put it this way in the parable of the sower and the soils in Luke 8: The person who with a noble and good heart hears the word of God, and retains it and perseveres in following God’s word will produce a good crop (Lk 8:15)

• And that’s exactly the kind of soil that was in Josiah’s heart!OK— He heard the word of God and applied it to himself and his people. He wanted his people to know not only the difference between right and wrong, but the high hopes and blessings God had for them from the very beginning! He wanted the dry and the thirsty to receive a drenching from the Lord He wanted to see a restoration of a deep sense of God’s near presence and holiness. He wanted to please the Lord and avoid the Judgment of God upon his nation. He wanted a new beginning He wanted what God wanted for his people
  And he got it Because his heart was responsive to the word of God
  And responsive to the Holy Spirit How is your heart this morning?
  Are you thirst Do you want more than anything to please the Lord?

• GET PRACTICAL: How I prepare my heart in the morning to receive God’s Word: Confession, worship and Psalm…so that I can and will receive it as God’s word for me—and not just a telegram or an admonition—but as a love letter!

• FOURTH MILESTONE in developing a conversational relationship with God: It’[s all about SEEKING: Josiah dug deeper and asked the Lord to show him how this word applied… to himself, to his family, to the people he governed… (Read slide 2 Ki 22:13) He was in effect asking the Lord to show him the full implications of what His word meant to them, what it would look like for them to accept his promises, to forsake the sins, to obey his commands, to worship in the Temple the way God wanted them asking the Lord for a searching application to the whole of his life, commitments, callings, relationshipos etc

• Well practically, what does that look like?? It looks like what one of our Anglican prayers says we should do when we open the Bible: LORD, help us to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest your words” Illustr: from Malcolm Smith’s book on meditating on God’s Word: image of the cow chewing its cud.. How I do this in my own life as I read God’s word: Observation (what does it actually say) Interpretation (What does it actually mean? And how do I figure that out…) and application (What if I took this seriously—what if I tried to actually do what these words invite me to do…what would change in my life?)

• FIFTH POINT/NEXT MILESTONE in developing a conversational relationship with God: SHARE AND STUDY GOD’S WORD WITH OTHERS (read slide 2 Ki 23:2) Josiah didn’t just keep the word to himself: he shared God’s word with others. He read it publicly to the whole people… He invited them to study God’s word with him and to see for themselves how it applied…and then TOGETHER they made a covenant, the Bible calls it, a promise TOGETHER to to follow God’s word and encourage each other along the way, with all their hearts and with all their souls.

• OK—so what does this look like?—a. A good place to start: sharing with your spouse; b. sharing in a home group.

• FINAL POINT/MILESTONE: He did everything the Lord told him to do! He tore down the altars, removed idols—Josiah removed every obstacle that would interfere with a life with God. He removed all forms of idols and other places that were distracting and that had come first in the lives of the people before God had. “Even the altar at Bethel”—what did that represent for him in re family ties that bind?? 2 Ki 23:15

• Josiah made A thoroughgoing application of everything God told him to do—and he did it in a calm, methodical, step-by-step way (2 Ki 23:4-14, 19-20-24) Why this sequence? Was God speaking to him and instructing him step by step? Look at how thorough he was in doing everything God told him to do… (Read slide #7 2 Ki 23:24-25)

• Jesus promised put it this way: "Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. [27] The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell -- and great was its fall" (Matt. 7:26-27). But to the person, like Josiah, who hears God’s words AND puts them into practice, this is what Jesus promises: “You will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.” (Matt 7:24-25)

RESULT: REVIVAL!

• In the same year that he was beginning to repair the temple, listening to God’s word for himself, taking it seriously and applying it thoroughly to his own life and the people around him-- God visited his people at Passover as they celebrated that 18^th year of his reign a Passover that was like nothing they had ever celebrated before “Not since the days of the judges, nor throughout the kinds…was a Passover celebrated like this!” 2 Ki 23:21-23 ALL because one man encountered the living word of God and followed it!

• Josiah became a King like no other King in the history of Israel: He set an Olympic record in intimacy with God, and favor, and conversational relationship that was never broken. Bible puts it this way: “Neither before n or after Josiah was there a King like hi who turned to the Lord as he did—with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength in accordance with the Law of Moses.” 2 Ki 23:25

• And isn’t this exactly what Jesus affirmed when he was asked what it means to develop a conversational relationship with God? One day Jesus was asked to boil it all down to the bottom line: Anmd Jesus said this is what it all boils down to-- “Love the LORD your God with all your heart…” ( )

• That’s Josiah! He wasn’t that way at age 8…and he wasn’t quite that way at age 16 or 20, though he was searching for God and doing what he knew was right…But at age 26 he heard the word of God for himself, and as a result he turned to the lord with his whole heart, he fell in love with God, and doing right was simply the overflow of a daily, conversational experience with God..

• Josiah positioned himself to have a daily, conversational relationship with God because he was devoted to God’s Word, he listened to it with a humble and responsive heart, he dug deeper ny asking God to show him how that word applied to his life/relationships/commitments/work, and then he listened and did whatever the LORD told him to do—and that was what made him the kind of King who stood head and shoulders above everyone else, because through God’s word he experienced God daily

YOU AND I CAN HAVE THAT KIND OF RELATIONSHIP TOO! We too can leave the kind of legacy that Josiah left… All we have to do is discover this Book, read it and listen for God’s voice speaking to us through these very words, and with a humble and responsive heart dig deep and ask God to show us what he wants us to do—that’s the beginning of a conversational relationship with God!

Is the Bible lost in your house today? If it is, or if you’ve misplaced it, you can recover it just like Josiah did! You can make it the book around which YOU and your whole family can hear and experience God together, and daily!

That’s why Carin and Christopher are here this morning to present Julia for baptism… They understand they are making a decision for Julkia, and for themselves, to develop a conversational relationship with God so that… And reading the Bible is going to be at the heart of what they do in developing that relationship…