Nebuchadnezzar
What kind of God do you worship? What kind of God do you know? I serve and worship an experiential God. A God who can be related to based on the experiences and realities you will have had with Him.
God does not need you to help Him look good and able. He does not need the romance of your words. He does not need you to deceive yourself with eulogies and sermons that are not practical in your personal life.
Most preachers nowadays feel like they need to patronise God. They have never experienced God according to what they have read in the Bible nor do they try to push into that realm of experiences in God. They are afraid to ask questions, the questions they have long been harboring in their hearts.
Perhaps, they were taught by their religious leaders to be content with a theoretical version of God. We all know the great things that God did in the Bible times. Of a truth, such things are no longer common today because people feel that they should be content with praising God, worshipping God and reading the Bible but still do not have a personal encounter with God in their private lives.
I am not talking about feel-good shivers you get when you pray or praise or worship, I am talking about miracles, signs and wonders that will happen before your very eyes and convince you beyond all reasonable doubts that God is real.
No one has been bold enough to speak out their doubts about God and God does not like fake people. He wants you to face Him. If you doubt Him , come clear about it. If you have questions, ask Him with all respect and regard because some have incurred curses for themselves through their uncurbed rashness.
God does not need customers. He is God. He is sufficient, all sufficient. Every single word of the Bible was not written for literary entertainment or pleasure. Men of God wrote and sang based on what they have experienced. These experiences, they did not assist in any way. God showed Himself and His mighty arm to them.
Moses after tasting and experiencing God sang, " He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he".
If you study this man's tone and choice of words, you will notice that his heart was full. He was overwhelmed. He had seen so much that he could not keep it to himself anymore. He was not saying it for you to hear and believe, he was saying it because he could not keep quiet about it anymore. Moses ' song arose from a state of ecstasy. He was ecstatic and elated. The same thing happened to David.
David knew what he saw in God and with God. He could not help but sing. He sang songs. He wrote many songs because his heart was full and he was overwhelmed. He had seen so much of God that he could not keep it to himself anymore. He had to announce what he had experienced with God. Moses and David testify that God is a rock because they had seen this characteristic of a rock in Him, being expressed practically to both of them. David never met Moses, neither did Moses, so they were not making up stories. They were telling the truth about what they have experienced with God. After God delivered David from the hand of all his enemies and out of the hand of Saul, He sang because words had welled up like water in his heart and spilled over from his mouth in the form of songs. He sang," The God of my rock; in him will I trust: he is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my saviour, thou savest me from violence".
He was speaking from experience.
Who else spoke from His experience of God? Nebuchadnezzar. We all know how arrogant, disrespectful and disregarding of God Nebuchadnezzar was before God cursed him into becoming an animal man. After a year of receiving the interpretation of his dream from Daniel, he felt that God had forgotten and said to himself when he entered his palace one time, " Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty?
He glorified himself and God drove him from men, made him to eat grass like cattle. His body was always wet with rain and dew. His hairs grew all over his body like eagle's feathers and his nails like bird's claws. All these are not stories to entertain you. They actually happened. After being an animal for 7 whole years, this is what a once arrogant and proud King of Babylon had to say," I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me and I blessed the most High, and I praised and honored him that liveth for ever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation.
He also had this to say: "Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase". He was speaking entirely from experience.
What is your experience with God like? Is it all stories and no reality to you? You might want to press in and ask God to give you experiences for your life. Experiences that will change your life, touch your heart and make you sing for joy. Experiences that will take over your whole body and overwhelm your spirit. Experiences that will make you esctatic and joyful. The only experiences that can have this level of effect on any of us are such that touch the most important areas of our lives. Burdens we might have been bearing for so long, curses, spells, sicknesses, bondages, trials, troubles, issues...name it.
I have experienced Him. He is not a fictional character I learned about in church or Sunday school. I have seen His hand and I have tasted His might. Based on my experiences with Him and the wondrous things He has done in my life, I call Him a miracle worker, a master planner, the One who turns things around, makes all things new and uses negative circumstances as stepping stones to glory. When I think of Him, I cry sometimes because He has touched me in a way no one else has and no one else ever will. When I say that I love Him and that I adore Him, I mean these words with every breath that I take and with every drop of my blood.
Push in to God. Press in. There is more. So much more. It is not all about stories. He is real , so kind, so true, so faithful and so powerful. Moses saw Him, David saw Him, Nebuchadnezzar saw Him and I from the 21 century, have also seen Him.
Do you want to know why? Because He is the ancient of days, the rock of ages. From generation to generation, from everlasting to everlasting, He remains the same. He does not change. Same God yesterday, today and forever. We are blessed to have access to a God like this. There is no other God like Him. No other . When you taste Him like we have and see Him like we have, you will sing too.
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