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How do you experience God?
11 Plays4 years ago
Vernon Terrell talks with Torben Jensen (Disciple Counselor at Grace Ministries International and on staff at Joni and Friends) asking, "how do you experience God?" So many Christians shy away from the one, sure-fire way to experience God in their life. You can actually experience God in every season of your life, but this particular season is where the sense of His presence seems to be most evident. What? Why? How? ...let's talk about it with Torben.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:03
Speaker
This is your host, Vernon Terrell, with Grace Ministries International, and it's time for Walking Free.
00:00:22
Speaker
Glad you're back with us. This is Vernon, and I have Torben Jensen here again with me. Welcome, Torben. Thanks so much. And we
Does God Communicate Today?
00:00:31
Speaker
had great response as we looked at this idea of hearing from God. And is that even possible? You know, and I can't believe this, but there are those who
00:00:49
Speaker
Christians who don't believe that God speaks to us today. And I just find that baffling. Why would He stop? I don't get it. And it's like to say, no, you can't add to the revealed revelation of God's Word. It's like, we're not.
00:01:14
Speaker
We're just listening to God leading us as a loving Father. Wouldn't you agree with that? Absolutely.
Experiencing God in Christian Life
00:01:22
Speaker
I think what happens there is that it's people's experience that then get to determine their theology. So it becomes, I don't hear from God, therefore He must not be speaking. Instead of, okay, if I don't hear from God and God is one who has always been communicating,
00:01:43
Speaker
and certainly hasn't stopped communicating, so what is it that's hindering me from hearing him? That would be the better question to ask instead of just deciding, no, God doesn't speak anymore. I love that. That is insightful. We're gonna talk about something, another question that might, I think it's a sister, this is like a sister podcast to our last episode, and the question we want to ask
00:02:10
Speaker
and give some insight to is why don't we experience God? And this is huge. There's, I see, and I know you do, we see in the course of our serving and ministering over many years, we see those who just fail, those who are floundering in their Christian life, and we've heard
00:02:38
Speaker
Many people say, where is God? And I don't experience God. I want to experience God. And that's a real question. Do we have any thoughts or answers for these folks?
00:02:52
Speaker
Yeah, first of all, I think it's a great question because I think it's a question that separates those people from those who have just given up, who have just accepted that, oh, there is nothing more. Again, every time I meet someone who wants more from God, I see it as an inherently positive reality in their lives that they are not satisfied. C.S. Lewis,
Seeking More in Spiritual Life
00:03:16
Speaker
in a speech one time, he said,
00:03:19
Speaker
Our passions are not too strong. They are too weak. We are far too easily pleased. And I think that's true for most people today. We're so easily pleased. We will settle for very, very little in our relationship with God, in our relationship with other people as well. We will settle and accept that this is probably as good as it gets.
00:03:43
Speaker
Yeah, no reason to rock the boat because it's not going to change or certainly not going to change in a positive way. But those people who have that question, again, like I associate myself so much with them and I wanted just to share just a couple of stories that tie in with that when
00:04:03
Speaker
When I was, I think I shared last time, 20 years ago, God called me into a new way of living, a new way of living with Him as my Lord. He got to be in charge finally of my life. And part of what He called me into at that point was to do a school with youth with a mission. It's the world's largest missions organization that work all over the world and do discipleship training and missions work and mercy ministry, all sorts of other stuff.
00:04:32
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And I decided, okay, let's do this. I went
Torben's Spiritual Journey
00:04:36
Speaker
to the school and one of the first assignments we got on the school was to, okay, go out and ask God a question. And I was not familiar with this way of thinking about God. Again, it did not come from a Christian background where asking God a question and expecting Him to answer was necessarily part of how we were told.
00:04:58
Speaker
But anyway, I went out and I sat down and I asked God a question. So God, how do you see me and how do I see you? That was the question we're supposed to ask. And I sat there and waited.
00:05:11
Speaker
And to my admit, big surprise, God started showing me the realities of where I was at in my life at that point. First He showed me a picture of me hanging on a cross and I was wearing the clothes I was wearing that day so I could clearly see there was me and I had a sense this is how it should be.
00:05:31
Speaker
The scene then shifted and I saw Jesus hanging on the cross and I saw myself again wearing the clothes I was wearing that day standing underneath the cross. I looked up at him and I had a clear sense, this is not how it should be. This is not right. The scene then shifted again and I found myself running in a field towards someone who was very clearly God who was standing in like a big white rope sort of thing and he had his arms open ready to receive me.
00:06:00
Speaker
But the scene ended right there.
00:06:03
Speaker
And I sat there and I was like, God, what are you trying to tell me? I was very discouraged seeing these pictures because I knew somehow this was off. But it was God's way of showing me that's what I thought of myself. I thought of myself as being unworthy. I thought of myself as being worthy of punishment for sure, for the way I was living, the choices I was making, but certainly not worthy of neither Jesus dying for me, nor worthy of God's acceptance and love of me as a Father.
00:06:33
Speaker
I didn't know what to do with the idea of God being a father who wanted to accept me and embrace me. I just saw with clarity how I saw myself and how I saw God.
00:06:48
Speaker
Maybe there are some of our listeners who can relate to that. I've often asked people to kind of draw an illustration of how do you see yourself and how do you see God in relation to yourself. And I've had a lot of interesting drawings that people have made just thinking about that sort of idea. I remember this one young man, he came in and he had two pieces of paper.
00:07:11
Speaker
And I was like, okay, you have two pieces of paper there. I just asked for one drawing. And he said, no, but it's really God and I were not even on the same page. So, of course, that was his way of illustrating how distant he felt that God was for him. And I love the way that he illustrated that just very simply. It was just two stick figures, but God was on a different page. And I think a lot of believers are there. And that's kind of what I wanted us to touch on today and talk about. Okay, so how?
00:07:40
Speaker
How does one move from that? And in my case, I'm happy to tell the story of how this happened in my life, how I moved from seeing God this way and seeing myself that way to seeing Him and me completely different. And before you do, I think you really touched on something on
00:08:02
Speaker
where many of the folks that I deal with itโI'm sure those who are listeningโhave thought that God
Changing Perceptions of God
00:08:11
Speaker
is just continually mad at them, that they are, as you said, just they're unworthy but worthy of punishment or judgment
00:08:22
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And God's just really waiting for them to slip up and mess up so He can just nail them, just nail them to the wall. And that is completely wrong. Jesus was nailed to the cross. All the nailing's been done. And He took and bore our sin, all of it. It's 100% off the table.
00:08:50
Speaker
And we died with him and he raised us up to a brand new life. And I often say, and we're gonna jump to your story and how you began to learn this, but I will say when I'm speaking or teaching with a group of folks, I'll say, what's the most famous verse in the Bible? And of course they're gonna say, John 3.16, absolutely.
00:09:16
Speaker
And I have them, somebody quote it, and they quote it, how God loved the world, He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him would not perish, but have eternal life. Absolutely. Then I say, what's John 3, 17 and 18? And most of the time, not always, but I'll get just a blank look. And I say, that's, you gotta keep reading.
00:09:41
Speaker
because God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He that believes on the Son is not judged, is not condemned. If you believed and received Christ, there is no more judgment. There is no more condemnation. All judgment fell on Jesus. And that is so powerful for so many. And Torben, I want to see and hear
00:10:12
Speaker
how you went from this view of God of being unworthy and just worthy of His punishment. How did that
Trust and Surrender
00:10:19
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change?
00:10:21
Speaker
I think the beginning of it was to be honest that this is where I was at. And in my case, I had to walk in and face, I think it was 27 other students from all over the world and just admit this is where I'm at. This is my reality. I wasn't going to argue with God. I knew him well enough to say that if this was his revelation for me, this is what he
00:10:44
Speaker
He wanted me to know. And so I started asking God that question was like, how does this change? I don't want to see you like this. And I certainly started reading, reading Bible, reading different books, et cetera, et cetera, stayed in Christian community. I think that's an important part of it too.
00:11:03
Speaker
have people to ask, okay, so how does this look like? How does it look like to learn to truly trust God? In my case, a couple of years after this, I was going to Ukraine. My wife and I had just gotten married and this was another crazy time of God leading us. We were 11 days after our marriage, we sat in
00:11:30
Speaker
in a house in Denmark and all our plans have fallen through the floor and we're like, okay, what do we do? We thought we were gonna do one thing that wasn't going to happen. So we sat there and we're like, God, what do you want us to do? And after several days of praying, God, He spoke to us and told us to go to Kiev in Ukraine.
00:11:49
Speaker
I had no real desire to go to Ukraine because I have been there on a previous mission trip, but again, we trust that what He says is what's best for us. So some months later, we moved to Ukraine. When I was there, and this is kind of how God started getting my attention when it started to show me more of who He is.
00:12:09
Speaker
We had a British lady, she came to Ukraine, and she just asked me a simple question. It was very, very simple, but she looked me in the eyes, and she asked me, Tom, how are you really doing? And for some reason, that question really opened me up, and I started weeping on the spot there. I was like, not great. I feel lost. I'm working in a mission organization. Again, I'm leading all these things. I'm teaching whatnot, but I feel very confused.
00:12:39
Speaker
started sharing about finding out who she is in Christ. And I was very intrigued by this and my wife was too. And we're like, okay, she had invited us to come and do this four week training program in England, learning more about what it looks like to have your identity in Christ and to live with him as your soul in life. And then like, okay,
00:13:04
Speaker
we can scrape together the money for my wife to go and do that. And I had a clear excuse. Again, I didn't have enough money. We didn't have enough money for both of us. So I wasn't going to go and do that. And literally the day after God, he did a funny thing that he's never done. He's made sure to give us a lot of different financial gifts over the years. But this time he
00:13:27
Speaker
kind of went a little bit above and beyond because he got a person who is not a believer and who has never expressed any interest at all in church faith, anything like that. He's a former boss of mine in a bookstore in Copenhagen and got him to give a substantial gift of almost $3,000. And I still to this day have no clue how on earth he got through to this gentleman and got him to give. But that's exactly what we needed for me to be able to go to England as well.
00:13:55
Speaker
So yeah, we came there and just started learning, started asking questions, started just, God, we want more, we want to learn. What does it look like to trust you? What does it look like to live in a way where we see you and experience you as our Father and we're safe?
00:14:15
Speaker
in that relationship with you so we can just be honest we can be real we can be real with you we can be real with other people we don't have to pretend we don't have to act as if everything is great if it's not and he really started taking us both of us on a journey.
00:14:31
Speaker
into the Scriptures and again, faithful listeners of the podcast will, I'm sure, have heard a lot about what does it look like? What does it look to live this exchange life where I actually receive the perfect life of Christ and I have nothing to worry about? That there is no condemnation anymore. No matter what I do say, think or feel, I know that I am perfectly okay with God.
00:14:55
Speaker
So things started changing in my mind, in my heart, in my spirit. And I remember some weeks after coming back from England, I sat and it was just a regular day at this mission center we were working at. And God, during a prayer time, showed me some pictures again. And this can sound like God shows me pictures every time I close my eyes. It really doesn't. It's actually quite rare.
00:15:17
Speaker
But this time he wanted to show me some pictures.
Living as Sacrifices
00:15:20
Speaker
So again, he showed me hanging on a cross wearing the clothes that I was wearing that particular day. And I knew that I didn't actually belong there. The scene shifted and I saw Jesus hanging on the cross. And I looked up at him and I was able to look at him and say, thank you so much for doing this for me.
00:15:37
Speaker
the scene shifted again. I ran in the very same field that I had been running in four years earlier and I ran into the arms of God because now I knew that he wanted me there. Now I knew that I could trust him. Now I knew that I could fully give my life to him and there was nothing to be afraid of. That's powerful and there's so much that we could dig in just onto those pictures where
00:16:08
Speaker
Folks need to understand that when you receive Christ, you were crucified with Jesus. Yes, He died for you, but you died in Him, and you really died. That old you is gone, and you were raised up, a brand new creation, and you have a loving Heavenly Father who wants nothing more than for you to receive His love and to experience Him.
00:16:40
Speaker
So I'm loving the story. That's just a beautiful illustration of how God brought you from one place to another. So did it just magically? I mean, now you experience God.
00:16:54
Speaker
I think the key to experiencing God more as a daily reality has to do with two key realities of the Christian faith. I think it has everything to do with trust and I think it has everything to do with full surrender. And in order for us to fully surrender to God to the point where we experience
00:17:16
Speaker
Him leading, guiding, making decisions. We have to trust Him fully. Again,
Suffering and Spiritual Growth
00:17:23
Speaker
Romans talks about being living sacrifices. We can't be living sacrifices. We can't jump up on that.
00:17:30
Speaker
the altar, as it were, in that illustration, if we don't trust that God is good. And there's this journey into trusting that God is good that I think we have missed the way to get there. Sometimes I talk to people about, if you see, say, a church billboard will say, again, we'll have a series the next four weeks, getting to know God, knowing God more intimately or something like that. I'll guarantee you that
00:17:58
Speaker
those Sundays will be spent on Bible study, maybe quiet time, maybe evangelism, scripture memorization, but there's most likely not going to be anything about suffering. And that's weird, that's problematic to me because when you look through the New Testament, every time
00:18:21
Speaker
The Bible talks about truly knowing God, truly trusting God, learning to do that. It's in the context of suffering.
00:18:29
Speaker
whether we like that or not. 2 Corinthians 1, 8 through 9 talks about, it's Paul talking, he says, hey, we don't want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters of our affliction, which occurred in Asia, that we were burdened excessively beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life. So he's talking about this reality again, they were burdened way beyond what they could handle, of course, going against the
00:18:53
Speaker
the religious idea that God won't give us more than we can handle, which is, of course, absolutely not scriptural. But the next sentence then talks about that in verse 9. Indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead. So Paul says that the way to learn to trust in God is actually to go through suffering
00:19:23
Speaker
where we are burdened excessively beyond what we can handle. Paul will talk about the same thing in Philippians where he talks about, again, we want to know him. We want to know the power of his resurrection. Most Christians kind of want to stop the verse there, but again, it's in the context of sharing in his sufferings. If we don't share in his sufferings, we don't actually get to know him fully.
00:19:47
Speaker
There is this key there that I didn't know either. And it's part of what God has been showing me along the last decade, I would say is, okay, Tom, when you experience suffering, that is where you find out who I am. That's where you find out and it's really solidified who you are. That regardless of what people do, regardless of what people say, regardless of what terrible things you may experience,
00:20:13
Speaker
you can know and rest in who I am and in who you are. And that trust is what leads to the full surrender and says, okay, God, nothing makes sense. It all feels terrible. It all feels like it's deteriorating in my life. I don't know what to do at all, but I look to you. I trust you. You're going to have to lead me. You're going to have to provide for me. You're going to have to guide me.
00:20:42
Speaker
And when we get into that reality, that's where I know from my own life, we get to experience and more. We get to experience God speaking to us, encouraging us, becoming that the only one that we can rely on. That's been my own experience as well over these last few years. When I look back on my, I do a lot of journaling both on my computer and in a book that I write in, the difference that has
00:21:12
Speaker
It's just been happening in my relationship with God.
00:21:15
Speaker
where now I just walk around and talk to God. I have a secret that most listeners don't have. Again, I do speak Danish as my mother tongue, so I can even walk around in a supermarket here in Nashville. I can just put my headphones in. People think that I'm talking to somebody on the phone, but really I'm actually just talking to God. I'm just walking around there talking to God. That's a normal thing for me to do. This sort of idea that I'm in constant communication because I know
00:21:45
Speaker
He is in me, I know He's with me, I know He's for me, I know He wants good things for me even if I can't see it at all. But trust is what needs to happen and it happens through, even though it's so hard for us to understand, it happens through suffering with Christ.
00:22:03
Speaker
And suffering is going to look different from person to person. For me, a lot of my suffering has had to do with my jobs, with callings, but also with relationships. There has been a lot of different relationships and close friendships that have blown up in my face in ways where it's been devastating to me.
00:22:24
Speaker
Through all of that, I've learned more about trusting God. I've learned more about experiencing God as the only one who can be fully 100% trusted by me. Even when other people fail me, even when things happen that I just have no way of knowing what to do. I know that He does. I know His plans for me are good. And that's where when we get into that reality with God,
00:22:52
Speaker
I think that's where we start to experiencing more as a daily reality. I remember one time a friend of mine, we were on a mission trip in South Africa, and he just asked the best question. He looked at me and he said, Tom, I know you. I see your life with Jesus. I know the way you're close with Him. And I just want to ask you, what's been the price tag? And I just looked at it and was like, that's the best question anybody has ever asked me because it's true.
00:23:18
Speaker
If you're around a person who has an honest, living, beautiful relationship with God, there's a price tag. There's been stories of suffering where they have walked with God and they have gotten to know Him in a way that has transformed them and has transformed how they see God.
00:23:40
Speaker
maybe more so in our Western culture. We've turned God often into just a cosmic slot machine that if we put the right performance coins in and we just keep pulling the lever, keep doing the Bible study, keep doing the formula, then eventually we're going to hit a jackpot
00:24:01
Speaker
And the jackpot is supposed to be some type of financial blessing most of the time. And that's just such a lie. This is not true. And when it comes to suffering, I'll tell you, you don't have to invent your own suffering. You don't have to create your own problems. Many of us do, that's part of being human. But you don't have to create your own
Personal Experiences of God's Presence
00:24:25
Speaker
suffering. There's plenty of suffering just being a human on the planet.
00:24:30
Speaker
But also as we are living and trusting Christ and walking humbly and righteously and walking in compassion and kindness one toward another, there are going to be others who aren't going to like that. There's going to be others that are going to come against you. And let me warn you, if you haven't,
00:24:59
Speaker
learned this already, there are gonna be those in the church who will come after you for being gracious and kind and loving and walking with humility. You think, oh, in the church, absolutely, it happens. And so that's why Peter says it. And Paul says, Peter specifically says, don't be surprised at the trials that are gonna come. They're gonna come.
00:25:29
Speaker
Don't be surprised. And so let me encourage you again. You don't have to create your own suffering. Don't worry. You don't have to pray that God sends you suffering to experience Him. Don't worry, it's coming. Our job is to, I think one reason why people don't experience God is this point. Our job is to keep our eyes open and to look. God is always at work.
00:25:57
Speaker
God is always at work in you. God is always speaking. As we said last episode, God is always speaking. Are you listening? Are you watching? God hasn't stopped working. We get distracted. We get busy. We pray and forget what we prayed. We're to watch and pray and then pray and then watch some more because God is at work.
00:26:27
Speaker
and we should anticipate that He is going to speak to us and that we are going to experience His provision. We're going to experience His grace. We're going to experience His comfort. I've had to experience a lot of that.
00:26:47
Speaker
with having my wife who was diagnosed with cancer, and we were on that cancer journey for so many years, and God was with us. You said, well, Vernon, God wasn't blessing you. Absolutely He was. Well, your wife still had cancer. Yes, she did. She absolutely did.
00:27:11
Speaker
But God was with us through every step of that journey because He never leaves, He never forsakes, and we experience God in the midst of that journey. In fact, as Torben has said, even more so. But you know, you can experience God in the blessings, absolutely, but it's just sometimes a bit more challenging because we're comfortable.
00:27:37
Speaker
We're comfortable. We have what we need. And isn't it true? We often turn to God in a time of what? Need, not in a time of plenty. No. And it's again, like I've always loved
Leadership through Suffering
00:27:49
Speaker
the story where Jesus takes Peter and a couple of the other disciples to the mountain and he is transfigured. And we have this incredible scene with Jesus and Elijah and the whole
00:28:02
Speaker
The whole band is there. And of course, Peter is just like the rest of us. He's like, hey, let's set up tent here. Let's stop here. Let's camp here. This is great. This is fun. This is exciting. This is mind blowing. And I think to me, that's a picture of how we are as people again and how
00:28:20
Speaker
So often we are in the evangelical church where it's like, let's go and find that mountaintop experience. But Jesus in the story seems to be almost in a hurry. He's like, yeah, this is fine, but we got to get down again. Because Jesus knows that what's really going to change Peter's life is not having that mountaintop experience.
00:28:39
Speaker
And Peter has to walk through suffering. Peter has to, in his case, deny Christ openly. Peter has to show how, as long as he's just relying on his own strength, he's got nothing to show for it. He has to become a person who is.
00:28:56
Speaker
broken. He has to, in order for him to become the leader of the first church that Jesus wanted him to be. Jesus knew that Peter had to go through incredibly humbling and humiliating realities and
00:29:10
Speaker
So when he stood there in the day of Pentecost, they all knew what he had done. They all knew that he had shown himself to be a coward and that he had lied about not knowing Jesus, but that Jesus had restored him and Jesus had put him in this position and now he could be the leader because now it was no longer in Peter's own strength. It was in the strength of Christ.
00:29:33
Speaker
And that's what we all have to go through. We all have to go through that reality of Jesus has to show us whatever circumstances He's going to be using. He wants to show us, as we just read from 10 Corinthians, to actually trust in God and allow Him to be the source that we draw from, allow Him to be the one that is leading through us, teaching through us, loving through us, parenting through us.
00:29:59
Speaker
So it's not up to me, it's up to God. And He is in
Understanding Faith Journeys
00:30:03
Speaker
me and He's fully capable of facing all the different challenges that I find myself in. And I think that's, again, that's this ongoing journey of learning to trust God. And we just learned that as we suffer well with Him. And I think my encouragement to anybody who's listening is, just like my friend there in South Africa was doing, he saw something in me that he was like,
00:30:30
Speaker
I want more of that. So what's the price tag? That's a great question to ask. If you have people in your life where you just see, they know Jesus in a way that's just, that's incredible. They seem so close to God. Ask them, so what's the price tag? What's been the cost? What's been the journey to get there? And I'm sure they'll tell you a story that's gonna be, it might be really difficult, but it's also gonna be beautiful experiencing God.
00:30:58
Speaker
leading and guiding them through whatever valley of the shadow of death that he's had to take them through. I think it's a great place just starting, and that's what I do myself when I meet people where I just send, you have something special. I'm just like, I want to know. I want in.
00:31:15
Speaker
Again, so many have lost that sort of curiosity. There's something beautiful about being curious and especially when it comes to spiritual life and to say, so what is it you have that I don't necessarily have? And how can I, can you tell me your story? How did you get there? How was your life transformed?
00:31:34
Speaker
And for those where it's a living reality, they're not actually going to give you a list of here are the top 10 things that I did myself. Here are the books that I read or whatever. No, they're actually going to tell you real life stories of Jesus walking with them, Jesus showing them through their failures, through their missteps as well, that He is good, that He is faithful and that He is in them and that He wants to do life through them.
00:32:03
Speaker
That's again been my experience with people in my own life. Well, this is a good point just to wrap up and I will encourage you as Torben has given us so many good insights on this episode that you make it a prayer
Encouragement and Conclusion
00:32:25
Speaker
Say, God, help me understand how I can experience you. And if you're in a time of suffering right now, take advantage of that time to seek God, to seek your Heavenly Father who is for you. Yes, even in the midst of your problems and your issues and your suffering and your mess, God is for you. He's never against you.
00:32:52
Speaker
and He is with you in the midst of the suffering, what I encourage you to do is look, open your eyes, ask Him to reveal Himself in the midst of this journey that you're in. And if you're just, things are going great,
00:33:11
Speaker
and you're just on a high, whether it's financial, career, physical, family, relational, whatever, awesome, fantastic. I would encourage you as well to seek the Lord and say, God, how can I experience you in this season of my life? And how can I encourage others now to see you in whatever season they're in?
00:33:41
Speaker
It's our desire that you experience your loving heavenly Father in your journey right now. And I'll ask you, what is your next step? What is your next step of faith for you to experience God? And as you ask that question, it may be time for you to stop talking and start walking.
00:34:12
Speaker
You've been listening to Walking Free, a production of Grace Ministries International in Marietta, Georgia. For more information, go to our website at gment.org. That's gminc.org.