Authentic: Cultivating Authentic Relationship With God - Softcover

Reimer, Rob, Dr.

 
9781956370508: Authentic: Cultivating Authentic Relationship With God
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1956370501 ISBN 13: 9781956370508
Verlag: Carpenter's Son Publishing, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

How do we develop a deep lasting intimacy with God?

One of the problems with being a Christ follower is that we can substitute religious expressions and religious behaviors for authentic experiences and encounters without even know we are doing it. The longer we go to church the more we know the right words to say and the right things to do, but we can easily say those words and do those things without transformational intimacy with Jesus? We can start with significant, transformational encounters with God, and end up with dusty old religion.

In Authentic, we will explore the following:

  • What is religion and how do we avoid falling into its traps and snares?
  • How does intimacy with God and people work?
  • How do we develop depth with God and sustain it over a lifetime?
  • What are the practices and attitudes that we can develop to help us draw near to God so we can learn to live an authentic spiritual life in Christ?
We don’t want to settle for the counterfeit, when Jesus offers us abundant life.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dr. Rob Reimer's passion is to see the kingdom of God advance through spiritual renewal. Rob began Renewal International to assist pastors, leaders, and churches to equip the people of God to live in freedom in Christ, and to walk in the fullness and power of the Holy Spirit.

Passionate about Jesus, personally transparent, and committed to the Word, his books including Soul Care, River Dwellers, Spiritual Authority, The Soul Care Leader, and The Tenderness of Jesus incorporate lessons God taught him over the years through life and ministry. Rob draws on these lessons for his conference speaking and while mentoring pastors and leaders globally.

In addition to his work with Renewal International, Dr. Reimer is Professor of Pastoral Theology at Alliance University in NY, NY. Explore more of Rob's resources, view his itinerary, or invite him to speak at www.renewalinternational.org

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Introduction: From Learned Behaviors to AuthenticExperience

Think about the season of your lifewhen you connected with God most deeply. When was it when you felt His love thestrongest, heard His voice the clearest, experienced His presence the deepest?I remember the first time I experienced Jesus in a significant way. It wasafter a breakup with a girlfriend in college, and I had a life-alteringencounter with the risen Christ. I felt His overwhelming love. Then, yearslater, I remember experiencing Jesus deeply in the midst of a crisis in theearly years of my marriage with Jen. I experienced God’s voice, His sustainingpresence, His daily strength, His tender compassion, and His transformationalwork. I remember the time I began to hunger and thirst for God’s presence, whenI longed for more.

I sought God with all my heart inseasons of prayer, fasting, retreating, and prayer watching through the night.And God met me in amazing ways. I was living in the floodgate of God’s presence.I could write about many deep seasons I have had with God. Thinking back onthese times makes my heart long for more of God. I don’t want to lose thepassionate edge, the palpable presence, of God in my life. I don’t want tosettle for the mundane, the routine, or the ruts of religion. I want theauthentic. I don’t just want to know about God; I want toknow Him deeply and personally. I want to experience more of His love,presence, and power. I want to hear Him more clearly, follow Him more closely,and honor Him more completely. I want to draw near to God in real and authenticintimacy.

One of the problems with being a Christ-followeris we can substitute religious expressions for authentic experiences and noteven know we are doing it. We can start with significant, transformational,authentic encounters with God and end up with dusty old religion. We can losecontact with these real connections with God and look back on them with distantmemory, wondering how we lost our way and how we get back to where we were. Orwe can chalk them off as anomalies.

After that firstencounter I had with God, I remember asking people about their spiritualjourneys, if they had similar encounters. I asked them about experiences wherethey were filled with the Spirit. Many people told me about some encounter theyhad many years ago, but it was now a distant, twenty-year-old memory. When Iasked about their current experiences with God, they were often left with aloss for words. They weren’t living in the current fullness of the Spirit. Theyhad a previous encounter they recalled with fondness, but they were now livingin a bit of a spiritual desert. And sadly, they often talked with me as if thatwere the norm.

I think there are a multitude of reasons whywe trade authentic encounters for religious activities. As Christians,sometimes we can end up doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons.We spend regular time alone with God, pray, and read our Bible every day, becausethat is what good Christians are supposed to do. Over time our motivation forour spiritual practices morphs from moved by love to motivated by duty, and wedon’t even notice the subtle slide. We keep doing the right thing, but we nolonger draw near like we once did. We keep on with the old activities, but weno longer have that fire burning in our hearts. When we continue to practicethese disciplines devoid of the authentic encounters with Jesus that lead todeep, life-changing intimacy, our spiritual life often becomes dry and shallow.At other times we shift toward religion because our rhythm becomes tired. Itwas once fresh and powerful, but now it is stale and routine. We are stilldoing the same spiritual activities, but we’re no longer seeing the results weonce saw.

Still other times we move away from the authenticbecause we are carrying unprocessed pain. We are hurt and disappointed. Webecome a little distant from God because our trust has been undermined bylife’s pain. We still do what we once did because it has become our routine,but we no longer carry the trust, enthusiasm, and passion that used tocharacterize us. Sometimes we drift into the ruts of religion because we arebusy doing so many things—good things, things with family, things at church,things for God—but we lose our first love for Jesus in the process of life’swearisome busyness.

Too often the problem is we are stilldoing the same things we were doing. So much is the same that it makes us feellike we are on the right track, but in reality we have lost our way. We aren’tdoing bad things, but our hearts are drifting from Jesus. We are no longerpassionate for Jesus like we were, and we are no longer encountering Him likewe once did. We look back on those earlier days with gratitude and nostalgia,but they are fading into a distant memory. So many other people have the samestory to tell, so we normalize it and, all the while, live beneath ourpotential.

We can be on this road toward religion andspiritual dryness . . . and not even know it, because we are doing the rightspiritual things. We miss the subtle shift that has taken place in our heartsbecause there hasn’t been a significant shift in our behaviors. Remember: thePharisees read their Bible vigilantly, yet they killed Jesus. Their reading wasfull of knowledge but devoid of revelation. They learned all the rightreligious behaviors, engaged in all of the right spiritual disciplines—likefasting, praying, tithing, and Bible study—but they missed out on authentic,life-giving encounters with God. Somehow all their religious activity didn’tlead them to the right outcome. Engaging in the right spiritual activitiesdoesn’t guarantee the right results. It could just make us religious andactually lead us far from God. It could leave us hard-hearted, judgmental,angry, and not like Jesus at all. How do we avoid simply being religious, andlive a vibrant Christian life? How do we avoid substituting learned behaviorsfor authentic encounters?

One of the keys is tolive an examined life. If we keep doing our regular routineswithout reflecting and inviting the Spirit to examine the condition of ourheart, we will inevitably end up in the spiritual desert. Jesus said, “For outof the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34). The Proverbwriter said, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flowsfrom it” (Proverbs 4:23). An unguarded heart will never drift in a spirituallyflourishing direction. A field left alone does not naturally move towardabundance; the law of entropy says the field will tend toward chaos. So it iswith our souls. We need to take time before the Lord, and others, to live anexamined life; we need to be sure we are doing the right things for the rightreasons. This book will help you reflect on your life and help you root out anyweedy entropy robbing you of spiritual fullness.

Years agoI went to a conference and the speaker called the pastors up front after theservice. He and the other conference speakers laid hands on all the pastors whocame forward. There were probably one hundred and fifty pastors standing acrossthe front of the large auditorium. As these famous pastors went down the rowand laid hands on the pastors, one by one, they all fell over. By the time theyfinished praying for everyone, I think I was the only one left standing. Now,please hear me: I wasn’t resistant to receiving whatever God had for me. Infact, the whole reason I came to the conference was because I was hungry for moreof God. But I wasn’t going to fake an experience to please the people prayingfor me, or to fit in with the crowd, or to meet anyone’s expectations. I wantedan authentic experience with God; I didn’t want to act likeI had had one. I wanted a real...

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Verlag
Carpenter's Son Publishing
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1956370501
ISBN 13 
9781956370508
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
193
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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Verantwortliche Person
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