We are at the beginning of a new year, what are your expectations for this New Year the Lord has placed before you?
Did you know your expectation and faith in God are what will lead you to experience more of God in this new year?
How many of you want to experience God’s power and miracles this year?
If we want to experience more of God, we need to consecrate ourselves!
Our messages since the beginning of the Year have been leading up to our Annual Fasting which will be from the 31st of January to the 20th of February.
We want to challenge everyone to fast for these 21 days!
The challenge for these 21 days is to give up some meals two or three times a week (skip lunch or dinner for example) and only eat vegetables, fruits and drink water. (I will give all the details of our Fast on the following weeks).
God is calling us to fast and pray! When you have a prayer and fasting life you will have experiences with God!
It is the presence of God in our lives that produces miracles.
For these last few days, God has been moving me to share this message I’m going to preach today!
This word is very important and I assure you: If you commit to putting this word into practice – your life with God will be transformed!
Why am I preaching this word?
Because we have lived through difficult days, we have faced so many struggles and I see many people whose faith has been discouraged and many Christians inside the church who have no experiences with God.
“Christianity is the fruit of an experience with God that begins with the New Birth experience”
I would like to ask you:
What experiences have you had with God? Only you and God! Not the experiences that you read of in the Bible, or that you heard from someone else, but what are the experiences that you have lived with God?
The Bible tells us that in addition to believing we have to experience or taste God!
Just like when you try some food – you know it’s good, not because you’ve read the recipe, but because you’ve tried it!
How many of you here like barbecue? Why do you like barbecue? Because one day you tried it, and liked it and now you can say that you love barbecue and no one can trick you by saying that barbecue is not good!
Since you like barbecue (or any other food), you will make an effort to go where there is barbecue. Right?
Many Christians do not enjoy being in the presence of God, they don’t like praying because they have not experienced how good God really is!
Your experience with God strengthens your faith and you enjoy being with Him, being at church, coming to prayer meetings, going to Cell meetings, coming to services, etc.
Christians nowadays have been lacking in experience with God.
First I want to clarify that faith is not based on experiences, but our faith is based on the word of God! The Holy Bible!
But experiences help to solidify and strengthen our faith!
The Bible is full of people who have had experiences with God!
These experiences people had with God are the foundation for the scriptures!
If you take experiences out of the Bible – there will be no more Bible!
The Bible begins at Experiences with God and the Bible ends at Experiences with God!
It begins with Adam’s experience with God in Genesis. It ends with John’s experience on the island of Patmos in the book of Revelation.
The entire Bible is about people’s experiences with God!
The experience of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Noah, Moses, Samuel, David, the prophets, Jesus, the experience of the disciples, the experience of the apostles, experience of the Church in the book of Acts. And these experiences make up the scriptures of the Holy Bible!
There are some leaders who value doctrine (teaching) but despise experiences!
Every doctrine in the Bible was the fruit of an experience that revealed the character of God!
The Bible is full of experiences that reveal truth!
We need to live a Christian life in which the Truth of God’s Word becomes a reality for us!
Let’s read this in Hebrews 4:2
Many receive the Word, but this word was useless, they came, they heard, but it was not received with faith! They didn’t believe in the Word!
Not all truth is transformative, not all truth can set you free! Why?
I will give an example, you’ll understand what I mean!
How many believe that Jesus can heal? But many people do not believe that this truth is for them!
How many believe that God works miracles? But miracles do not happen for a lot of people!
How many believe that Jesus saves? But many do not believe and they are lost.
Why? Because the Truth of Jesus the Saviour has not entered their lives, or they are still in love with this world and cannot love God!
The Truth has to be comprehended, it has to be revealed, and experiences with God have the power to reveal the Truth!
Experiences with God take truths from the Bible and turn them into reality in our lives!
It is experiences with God that strengthens our faith!
My first ever experience with God was when I was born again, that’s when I had my first Encounter with God!
When did you have an encounter with God? What was your experience? I remember mine very well, it was awesome!
Those who were born in the church have difficulty with this, because they have been coming to church since childhood, but they must be born again to experience it.
My second experience with God was after a year of being converted. I found my mother almost dying from shortness of breath, with asthma so I laid my hand on her, prayed and she was healed instantly!
Let’s better understand how this works:
Did Adam doubt the existence of God? No! Why? Because the experiences he had with God proved He was real!
No one needed to keep proving God was real to Adam because he had seen it!
No one had to prove the existence of God to Moses, because his experiences showed him God is real!
No one needed to prove Jesus was God to the disciples, because they had walked with Jesus.
Job said : “I had only heard about you before, but now I have seen You with my own eyes.” Job 42:5
Let’s read again 1 John 1:1,3
We have heard, we have seen with our own eyes, we have looked at, and our hands have touched it!
We have seen and experienced it and we are announcing it to you!
Beloved ones, what is lacking in the lives of Christians today is experiences with God.
Lack of experience has led people to a lack of commitment.
A Church without commitment is a church with no experiences with God!
For many people, God is a philosophy, theology or religion.
For many people God is only a subject of study! They study and learn about God!
What most Christians know about God is only what the pastor teaches, what they read or hear from others!
For many people God is an absent, distant and indifferent being!
And these Christians are full of doubts about God! There are Christians who are not even sure that God exists!
Thera are Christians that for never having an experience with God are frustrated, empty and full of doubts!
Since being born again I have experienced the supernatural of God!
It was these experiences that cleared all my doubts about God and filled my heart with faith!
I won’t tell you about all my experiences with God but I quickly want to talk about some of them:
– My baptism in the Holy Spirit. It was a beautiful experience, I was involved in a cloud of very bright light and I saw myself before God, I started to pray in tongues and I couldn’t stop praying! I couldn’t even sleep that night and I prayed until the next day!
– Prayer experiences: praying on the Hills, in the Woods, and church prayer meetings.
– Experiences of seeing angels of God.
– Seeing a fireball falling from Heaven while praying.
– Spending nights of prayer in the forest and the place got all lit up!
– Experience of running out of motorcycle fuel, not having money, praying, putting my hand on the motorcycle tank and the tank fills with gas.
– I’m driving (here in Monaghan) and my car brakes by itself! For me not to crash and I could have died!
– Experiences in casting out demons! There were many, hundreds of frightening experiences, demons facing me, delivering people who were possessed!
Unfortunately many people are in the church and have only been “trained” on how to be Christians! Many have only heard about God, but have had no experience with God!
A genuine experience produced by the Holy Spirit will reveal Christ in your life, it will fight sin, it will take you out of the world and lead you to God!
Experiences with the Holy Spirit will lead you to love Jesus, to love people and lead you to finding a reason to live for!
Not just a reason to live, but even a reason to die!
All the people in the Bible who had an experiences with God,
1- They became committed to God!
2- They became committed to the Kingdom of God!
3 -They became committed to what God Loves most: People!
Those who had experiences with God (who had a real encounter with God), their lives were completely changed!
Listen: It’s not my teachings that will turn you into a person who is committed to God! My teachings will not make you a better person!
If you don’t have personal experiences with God, your life will not be transformed!
If God doesn’t transform you, nothing will happen!
Man does not transform Man! A person cannot truly change another! Only the Holy Spirit can change you if you let Him!
Dear ones, for almost every experience I’ve had with God, I was in prayer. You need to thirst for God!
Many Christians do not enjoy being in the presence of God or being in prayer because they have not experienced how good God is!
Your experience with God strengthens your faith and you enjoy being with Him, being at church, coming to prayer meetings, going to Cell Meetings, coming to services, etc.
God is calling you to His presence!
He is saying to you: If you call me, I will answer you! I will show you great and mighty things that you don’t know yet!
Let’s look at one of the ways to experience more of God.
There is no other way! If we want to know God, we need to go into His presence. You need to repent the way that you are living ! Don’t say that your life is okay , draw near to God and repent! Repentance is the key to have an encounter with God!
Come to God and He will come to you!
Purify your hands, cleanse your heart! We need to repent and confess our sins. This is the way to have experience with God.
May the Lord bless you