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Overcoming Barriers to Experiencing God

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Title: Overcoming Barriers to Experiencing God


1
Overcoming Barriers to Experiencing Gods Love

2
The Great CommandmentLove the Lord your God
with all your heart and all your soul and all
your mind...Love your neighbor as
yourself --Matthew 2237-38
3
God wants lovers!
  • God wants lovers. Oh, how tepid is the love of
    so many who call themselves by His name. How
    tepid is our own - my own - in comparison with
    the lava fires of his eternal love. I pray that
    you may be an ardent lover, the kind of lover who
    sets others on fire.
  • --Amy Carmichael

4
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5
Tevia Do you love me? Golde Do I
what? Tevia Do you love me? Golde For
twenty-five years Ive washed your clothes,
cooked your meals, cleaned your house, given you
children, milked the cow. After twenty-five
years why talk about love right now?
6
Tevia But do you love me? Golde For
twenty-five years Ive lived with him, fought
with him, starved with him. For twenty-five years
my bed is his if thats not love what is?
7
Nothing can replace our Love for Jesus
  • The first thing which makes a true Christian
    minister or missionary or evangelist or preacher
    or Sunday School teacher, or leader or Christian
    worker of any kind, is not learning, not
    eloquence, not wisdom, not organising ability,
    not pleasing personality, not even a passion for
    souls, but a love-passion for Jesus Himself.
    Nothing, nothing, NOTHING, can take the place of
    that. All else without that is like withered
    flowers. J.Sidlow Baxter

8
  • Lovers make better Workers than Workers Do!

9
Why Lovers Make Better Workers than Workers do
  • No sacrifice is too great for the heart thats on
    fire with love
  • Love is its own reward
  • True love despises the recognition for
    sacrifices made for love.
    Mike Bickle

10
Nothing is More Sweet than Love
  • A great thing is love, a great good altogether,
    which alone makes light all that is burdensome,
    and evens out every inequality. For it bears the
    burden without being burdened, and makes
    everything bitter sweet and tasty. The noble love
    of Jesus drives us to the doing of great deeds,
    and stirs to the unending longing for greater
    perfectionNothing is more sweet than love,
    nothing stronger, nothing deeper, nothing wider,
    nothing more pleasant, nothing fuller nor better
    in heaven

11
  • The one who loves flies, runs and is glad he is
    free and not bound. He gives all for all, and
    has all in all, because he rests in one who is
    supreme above all thingsLove watches, and while
    sleeping does not sleep, wearied, is not tired,
    hemmed in, is not confined, fearful, is not
    disturbed, but like a living flame and burning
    torch, it bursts upwards and securely passes
    through allWiden me in loveLet me be possessed
    by loveLet me sing a song of love, let me follow
    my beloved on high, let my soul faint in your
    praise, exalting in love. Thomas
    A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

12
The Character of a Methodist
  • Who is a Methodist, according to your own
    account? I answer A Methodist is one who has
    the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the
    Holy Ghost given unto him one who loves the
    Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his
    soul, and with all his mind and with all his
    strength --John Wesley

13
Yeshuas Prayer for His Disciples
  • I made your name known to them, and will make it
    known, so that the love with which you have loved
    me may be in them, and I in them.(John 1726)

14
For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his
bride has made herself ready Blessed are those
who are invited to the wedding supper of the
Lamb --Rev. 197,9
15
Gods Love for Us
Our Love for God and Others
Inflow
Outflow
We love God because God first loved us-- I John
419
16
  • The springs of love are in God, not in us. It is
    absurd to look for the love of God in our hearts
    naturally. It is only when it has been shed
    abroad in our hearts by the Holy
    Spirit --Oswald Chambers

17
  • The truth is our love runs out

18
  • When we fail in personal Christian experience it
    is nearly always because we have never received
    anything.
  • --Oswald Chambers

19
And I pray that you, being rooted and
established in love, may have power...to grasp
how wide and long and high and deep is the love
of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses
knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure
of all the fullness of God Ephesians 317-19
20
The Love of God
  • Could we with ink the ocean fill
  • And were the skies of parchment made
  • Were every stalk on earth a quill
  • And every man a scribe by trade.
  • To write the love of God above
  • Would drain the ocean dry
  • Nor could the scroll contain the whole
  • Tho stretched from sky to sky.

21
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved
you. Abide in my love John 159Keep
yourselves in the love of God Jude 21
22
Where He tells me I am Beloved
  • The indispensable condition for
  • developing and maintaining the
  • awareness of our belovedness is
  • time alone with God. That is
  • where we discover that the
  • truth of our belovedness is
  • really true.
  • --Thomas Merton

23
The Love of God...
  • 1. Love like the Father and Son have for Each
    Other
  • As the Father has loved me, so I have loved
    you.--Jn 159
  • And have loved them even as you the Father
    have loved me the Son--Jn 1726

24
The Great Dance
  • The Great Dance has been from all eternity and
    first and foremost in the love that has always
    been going on between the Father and the Son. To
    enter into the Dance, then, is to enter into the
    living dynamic activity of the Love that has
    always been between the Father and the
    Son.Leanne Payne

25
As the Father has loved me
  • The love of the Father to the Son is that divine
    passion with which He delights in the Son, and
    speaks, My beloved Son, in whom I am well
    pleased. The divine love is as a burning fire
    in all its intensity and infinity it has but one
    object and one joy, and that is the only-begotten
    Son
  • And yet this love of God to His Son must serve,
    O my soul, as the class in which you are to learn
    how Jesus loves you.

26
So I have loved You
  • As one of His redeemed ones, you
    are His delight, and all His desire
    is to you, with the longing of a love
    which is stronger than death,
    and which many waters cannot quench. His heart
    yearns after you, seeking your fellowship and
    your loveHis life is bound up in yours you are
    to Him inexpressibly more indispensable and
    precious than you ever can know.
    Andrew Murray

27
Enfolded in Divine Love
  • This is the most beautiful moment
    of any creatures life to know that one is
    loved, personally, by God to feel oneself lifted
    to the bosom of the Trinity and to find oneself
    in the flood of love that flows between the
    Father and the Son, enfolded in their love,
    sharing their passionate love for the world.
    Raniero Cantalamessa

28
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29
  • Love that enjoys and delights in you
  • He delivered me because he delighted in
    me.Psalm 1819
  • He will take great delight over you he will
    rejoice over you with singing he will quiet you
    with his love.Zeph 317
  • Your name shall be called Hephzibahfor the Lord
    delights in youAs a bridegroom rejoices over his
    bride, so will your God rejoice over you.Isaiah
    624-5
  • You have ravished my heart, my sister, my
    bride.Song of Songs 49

30
  • The Ravished Heart of Christ
  • Our lover has been smitten by this girl.. The
    verbal form translated ravished is derived
    from the noun for heart, and can mean either,
    You have captured or taken away my heart, or
    else, You have inflamed, aroused, excited my
    heart. It is a rare form in the Hebrew, and can
    most likely bear both meanings Our lover is
    completely
    bowled over.

31
  • One glance is enough to slay him, one
    sparkling shaft reflected from her jewels, is
    sufficient to render him helplessly in love. He
    is captive. He cannot help himself. He has been
    remorselessly drawn to her. His thought process
    cannot explain it, his love is in a sense
    irrational. He has been rendered weak and feeble
    by her beauty, overpowered by her loveliness, yet
    aroused and made strong by his every
    thought of her.--Tom Gledhill

32
I am my beloveds, and his desire is for me
Song of Songs 710
33
We will never have more affection or passion
for God than we understand he has for
us --Mike Bickle

34
The only thing that makes life livable is
enjoying the joy that comes from knowing one is
enjoyed by God. --Sam Storms

35
  • 3. Love that endlessly pursues you.
  • Surely goodness and mercy hesed will follow
    radaph - pursue me all the days of my
    life--Psalm 236

36
  • What is it like to be pursued?
  • When have you pursued someone or something with
    abandonment?

37
Gods Love for Us
Our Love for God and Others
Inflow
Outflow
We love because He first loved us. -- I John
419
38
Gods Love for Us
Our Love for God and Others
Inflow
Outflow
We love because He first loved us. -- I John
419
39
  • God is no respecter of persons, but He is a
    respecter of conditions.

40
The Drenching Rain of the Father
  • The love of the
  • Father is like a sudden
  • rain shower that will
  • pour forth when you
  • least expect itWhen
  • this happens do not put
  • up an umbrella to protect
  • yourself but rather stand
  • in the drenching rain
  • of the Father.
  • --Richard Foster

41
But there is a problem.
  • Our hurts can cause us to avoid love

42
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love
anything and your heart will be rung and possibly
be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping
it intact, you must give it to no one, not even
to an animal... --C.S.Lewis
43
Walls of Protection
44
Admitting they are there
  • You cannot confess to God what you will not first
    admit to yourself.

45
Nails in my soul
  • There were nails in my soul which were causing
    pain. But I had gotten so used to them, I hardly
    felt themThey were old and rusty, big and small
    nails, but like my stubborn father I didnt want
    to admit they were there or that it hurtBefore I
    could forgive those who drove them in, I had to
    admit they were there.

46
Living Your Wounds Through
  • The great challenge is living your wounds
    through instead of thinking them through. In
    your head you can analyze them, find their causes
    and consequences, and coin words to speak and
    write about them. But no final healing is likely
    to come from that source. You need to let your
    wounds go down into your heart. --Henri
    Nouwen

47
  • The beginning of all wisdom is to call a thing
    what it is. --Chinese
    Proverb

48
I Am A Rock(Paul Simon)
49
  • A Winters Day
  • In a deep and dark December
  • I am alone
  • Gazing from my window
  • To the Streets Below
  • On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow
  • I am a rock
  • I am an island
  •  

50
  • I build walls.
  • A fortress deep and mighty that none may
    penetrate.
  • I have no need of friendship, friendship causes
    pain,
  • Its laughter and its loving I disdain.
  • I am a rock, I am an island

51
  • Dont talk of Love, Ive heard the word before.
  • There sleeping in my memory.
  • I wont disturb the slumber of feelings that have
    died.
  • If I never loved I never would have cried.
  • I am a rock, I am an island.

52
  • I have my books and my poetry to protect me.
  • I am shielded in my armor.
  • Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
  • I touch no one and no one touches me.

53
  • And a rock feels no pain.
  • And an island never cries...

54
My Machine-like Persona
  • As an Adult Child Of an Alcoholicin many ways I
    grew up like a machine. No matter what happened
    I could not be hurt I just kept marching
    through, streaking through life no matter what
    the obstacles. I didnt realize until I was
    thirty that switching off the pain sensors also
    meant switching off the core love sensors and the
    all important intimacy sensors. Because of my
    machine-like, nothing can hurt me persona (which
    the world and the church often rewarded), I was
    completely impotent in truly loving my wife as
    God had called me to and as she needed me to.

55
Walls often consist of
  • Bitterness and Unforgiveness
  • Vows and Judgments

56
  • A lesson from a pagan!

57
  • Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea,
    until they have someone to forgive.
  • - C.S. Lewis

58
Seven Steps in Forgiving From the Heart
  • Preparing to Forgive - Focuses on the Past
  • Facing the Facts
  • Feeling the Hurt
  • Confronting the Hate
  • The Heart of Forgiveness The Present
  • Bearing the Pain
  • Releasing the Person Who Hurt Us
  • Starting Over
  • Assuming Responsibility for Ourselves
  • Opens the possibility for Reconciliation

59
What Forgiveness is NotAdapted from R.D.
Enright, in N. Denison, To Live and Forget, On
Wisconsin (Nov.-Dec. 1992)
  • Forgetting deep hurts can rarely be wiped out of
    ones awareness.
  • Reconciliation reconciling requires two people
    an injured party can forgive without reconciling.

60
Forgiveness is Not, cont.
  • Condoning forgiveness does not necessarily
    excuse bad or hurtful behavior.
  • Dismissing forgiveness involves taking the
    offense seriously, not passing it off as
    inconsequential or insignificant.

61
Forgiveness is Not, cont.
  • Reinstatement of Trust forgiveness never
    disregards the hurts or the potential for future
    hurts it can occur while maintaining appropriate
    boundaries.

62
II Timothy 414,15
  • Alexander the coppersmith has done me much harm,
    but the Lord will judge him for what he has done.
    Be careful of him . . .

63
Forgiveness is . . .
  • a commitment to act humbly when I feel justified
    in my right to exact retribution.
  • a choice to extend mercy out of gratitude for the
    mercy that has been shown to me.
  • a willingness to love when I feel no love at all
    and everyone around agrees that Im entitled to
    my resentment.

64
Disappointments with God
65
Disappointments with God
  • When something unexpected happens to us
  • When obedience results in trouble.

66
Moses Disappointment with God
  • Moses returned to the Lord and said, O Lord,
    why have you brought trouble upon this people?
    Is this why you sent me? Ever since I went to
    Pharoah to speak in your name, he has brought
    trouble upon this people, and you have not
    rescued your people at all.(Exodus 522-23 cf.
    Numbers 1110-15)

67
Similar experiences?
  • Have we not all had experiences of a like kind?
    We have felt the unmistakable urge of the Spirit
    to some new form of service, or to some special
    line of action, and have obediently pressed
    forward, confident that the inward urge itself
    was the guarantee of immediate success. Then
    instead of success, opposition and disappointment
    and seeming failure have stunned us into
    bewildered despair, until we have ever been ready
    to fling the charge of unfaithfulness in the face
    of God. J. Sidlow Baxter

68
  • Then instead of success, opposition and
    disappointment and seeming failure have stunned
    us into bewildered despair, until we have ever
    been ready to fling the charge of unfaithfulness
    in the face of God. J. Sidlow
    Baxter

69
Disappointments with God
  • We are apt to imagine that if Jesus Christ
    constrains us, and we obey Him, He will lead us
    to great success. We must never put our dreams
    of success as Gods purpose for us His purpose
    may be exactly the opposite.
    Oswald Chambers

70
Disappointments with God
  • When something unexpected happens to us
  • When obedience results in tribulation
  • When something unfortunate happens to someone we
    love

71
Understanding The Process Spiritual Responses
  • Anger at God
  • Blaming God
  • Loss of spiritual appetites
  • A loss of the sense of the nearness of God

72
Repressed Feelings of Disappointment
  • Multitudes of Christians struggle with repressed
    feelings of disappointment. God allowed things
    to happen in their lives which deep down they
    believe He ought to have protected them from.
    These repressed feelings then prevent them from
    entering into a passionate relationship with
    their Lord.

73
Repressed Feelings of Disappointment
  • Worshipping with one hand open and one hand
    clenched into a fist

74
Repressed Feelings of Disappointment
  • It is difficult to be romantically involved with
    someone whom you do not believe has your best
    interests at heart.
  • --Selwyn Hughes

75
Love often succumbs to a cold death on the
sharp rocks of disappointment --Dan
Allender
76
Disappointments with God
  • Damage our love receptors
  • Create anger towards God
  • Expose our idols
  • Psalm 374 Delight yourself in the Lord and he
    will give you the desires of your heart.

77
Bring Your Disappointments with God to the Yeshua!
  • My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!
  • Bring your hurt, your anger, your idols to the
    foot of the cross.
  • Ask Jesus to touch you with his nail-scarred
    hands!
  • By his wounds we are healed

78
Lies that Were Not Lovable
79
Lies that Were Not Lovable

80
What Voice Are You Listening To?
  • Shame
  • Pride
  • Intimacy

81
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83
The greatest trap in our life is not success,
popularity or power, but self-rejection...Self-rej
ection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual
life because it contradicts the sacred voice that
calls us the Beloved. --Henri Nouwen

84
One Of Our Greatest Needs
  • To be fully known and loved unconditionally
    anyway.
  • But God demonstrates his own love for us in
    this While we were still sinners, Christ died
    for us. (Romans 58)

85
Our Own Failures and Sins

86
Not Like Real Children
  • Some of us keep living like maids and butlers
    instead of like real children. Working
    frantically to earn the right to stay, we never
    really settle in, kick back and enjoy our
    Fathers company. In effect, we live in the
    crummy, cramped quarters over the garage rather
    than in the magnificent main house
    Sandra Wilson

87
  • Theres a world of difference in knowing were
    the forgiven and knowing were the beloved.
  • --Sandra Wilson

88
Our Own List of Unforgivable Sins
  • Im too bad because

89
Yeshua bent down and wrote on the ground with his
finger. John 86
90
Forgive Yourself
  • You can no longer evaluate yourself based on your
    life before life with Yeshua.
  • Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new
    creation, the old has gone, the new has come - 2
    Corinthians 517.

91
Messages Weve Received from Others

92
Something that my parents taught me, but I have
found to be untrue.
  • Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words
    will never hurt me.

93
  • (Prov 119 NIV) "With his mouth the godless
    destroys his neighbor, but through knowledge the
    righteous escape." 
  • (Prov 1218 NIV) "Reckless words pierce like a
    sword, but the tongue of the wise brings
    healing."
  • (Prov 154 NIV) "The tongue that brings healing
    is a tree of life, but a deceitful tongue crushes
    the spirit."
  • (Prov 1821 NIV) "The tongue has the power of
    life and death, and those who love it will eat
    its fruit."

94
A Complete Waste of Life
  • I grew up in a very broken and destructive
    homeEmotional and physical abuse were both very
    real and present My mother used to call me all
    sorts of names. I recall one of her favorites
    being (Censored!) and when she wasnt calling
    me that she was telling me to go to hell. I never
    understood what I had done to make my mother hate
    me so much. I certainly couldnt be lovable.
    She wouldnt have done all those things if I were
    capable of being loved. I saw myself as a
    complete waste of life

95
The Architecture of Despair
  • There was nothing my father could not teach me
    about the architecture of despair. I knew all
    its shapes and its blueprints, the shadows of all
    its columns and archways. My father could send
    me reeling down its hallways and screaming into
    its batspliced attics with a curl of his
    thin-lipped mouth. He brought madness home every
    time he entered the many houses of my overlong
    childhood. His cruelty baffled me, shamed me,
    and I promised myself I would never be anything
    like him. Pat Conroy

96
A Genius for Scab-flicking
  • My father possessed a genius for scab-flicking,
    for zeroing in on that tenderest spot of the
    psyche where healing was most difficult, exposing
    the rawness of the wound again and again.
    Pat Conroy

97
Cats in the Cradle Moments
  • My childhood was full of cats in the cradle
    moments where joy at a promised time with Dad
    turned into great disappointment of promises
    broken. So many little league games, scouting
    events, and band concerts, I turned my eyes into
    the crowd and found him nowhere.

98
  • When the You ares become the I ams

99
Our Fear of Letting God Love Us

100
What We Fear Most
  • What we humans fear more than anything else is
    not the evil all around us, nor even the evil
    inside us. What we fear most is the good in
    ourselves. It is so demanding we repress it.
  • William Sloane Coffin

101
Taking the Risk of Letting God Love You
  • Odd as it may seem and counter to ordinary
    human expectations, the Christian life consists
    in taking the risk of allowing ourselves to be
    endowed with gifts from God.--Thomas Oden

102
What need is being met in You by your refusal to
let God love you?
  • These walls are funny. First you hate them.
    Then you get used to them. Then you grow to
    depend on them.--Red in The
    Shawshank Redemption

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105
Bernard of Clairvauxs Four Forms of Love
  • Love of Self for Gods sake
  • Love of God for Gods sake
  • Love of God for Selfs sake
  • Love of Self for Selfs sake

106
The God Who Sings Over You
  • The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to
    save. He will take great delight in you, he will
    quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you
    with singing.
  • --Zephaniah 317

107
  • There is nothing you can do to lose Gods love
    stop fearing.
  • There is nothing you can do to earn more of Gods
    love stop striving.

108
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109
The only thing that makes life livable is
enjoying the joy that comes from knowing one is
enjoyed by God. --Sam Storms

110
Here I Am Lord!
  • I the Lord of snow and rain
  • I have borne my peoples pain
  • I have wept for love of them
  • They turn away.
  • I will break their hearts of stone
  • Give them hearts for love alone.
  • I will speak my word to them.
  • Whom shall I send?
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