God Conscious Faith Series

In Psalm 63 we hear King David lament, O God, Thou art my God, early will I seek Thee. My soul thirsteth for Thee, my flesh longeth for Thee, In a dry and thirsty land where no water is, To see Thy power and Thy glory, So I have seen Thee in the sanctuary. I can sympathize with the psalmist here, As our sanctuaries are barren today, For I believe the church is in a great spiritual wilderness.

We have lost a conscious presence of God. In His absence we have substituted loud man-centered music And man-pleasing entertainment In an attempt to fill the void Many have never even experienced. Few today know what it's like To experience the power of God in a meeting, Because if we lack that power in our own devotional life, How can we nurture it in the public worship of the church? We have substituted the power of God With man-centered methodologies Aimed at a form of religious activity.

The problem lies with our faith and lack of it. We have become too self-reliant. We don't need to rely on God anymore.

We can get more done with money and manpower Or our own ingenuity. But where is the power? Where is our faith? Why have we lost our God-consciousness? I believe you can be a Christian And still be out of touch with God. Some of you may be asking, What's this preacher even talking about? I'm talking about a God-consciousness, friends, That means being in touch with God In a growing experiential knowledge of Him.

I recall a time in my life Where I first experienced this. I was working 13 to 15-hour days Growing a secular business And at the same time Trying to grow my walk with the Lord. I literally was burning myself out.

I was busy at church Teaching a large Sunday school class And during the week and evenings in my home I was leading a men's discipleship group. I was meeting with men all the time Discipling them. I was only getting about Three or four hours sleep a night And I was plum worn out.

One night I woke up With a heaviness on my chest And I was having trouble breathing. So I got out of bed around 2 a.m. And went to my study And plopped myself down Before my open Bible And I was praying. I told God that I was worn out And I was ready to come home to Him.

I was ready to die If that was all right with Him. I heard a voice ask me a question. Not an audible voice But a voice nonetheless.

The voice asked What do you do for a living? I answered investments. Then the voice said I have an investment in you And I will receive the dividends From my investment. God was telling me I was just being immature By complaining about being overworked And it wasn't His will To take me home just yet.

He assured me He still had work for me to do For His glory. I'm glad He didn't call me home back then For I would have missed Some of the biggest adventures in my life In my life of faith My deepest experiences of God Were all still ahead of me And so was much of my usefulness to Him. All you have to do friends Is look in your Bible And see countless examples Of men and women of God Who learned the secret to Getting in touch with God And seeing God move miraculously In their life.

And that's the key friend To climbing this hill of faith And also the key to revival. That particular night When God spoke to me I began my journey Of the conscious presence of God Through an intimate walk with Him. This is what occurs in revival Where God invades a local church body And you feel the power of God In a meeting Where He reveals His manifest presence And lives are changed When the awful solemnity of a holy God Pervades the sanctuary of God And all the people of God can do Is weep and confess their sin And admit their own inadequacy That's when God steps in.

We need to develop a God consciousness In our own life of faith So we will deepen our understanding of God And recognize Him When He moves into our circumstances. Unfortunately, many Christians Just go through the motions of Bible study and prayer And subsist on dryness In a parched land That have no power That have no deep walk with God But a mere form of religion That pales in comparison To what Christ desired For all followers of His Regarding abiding in the vine For without me ye can do nothing He said And the church today For the most part Does nothing of any eternal worth Because we have lost our conscience Presence of God We have drowned Him out with other things Whether it's worry or self-reliance Or presumptuous sin Or fleshly service He has gone away And the withdrawn presence of God Is deafening and deadening Duncan Campbell Was a man Who had an intimate walk with God And he knew the God of revival Duncan Campbell observed The danger in his day To sad spiritual decline in the church When he commented How many today Are really prepared to Face the stark fact that We've been outmaneuvered By the strategy of hell Because We have tried to meet the enemy On human levels By human strategy In this We may have succeeded In making people church-conscious Mission-conscious Or even crusade-conscious Without making them God-conscious Well, what does it take To develop a conscience Presence of God In our walk of faith Only He can fill that void But we can do what we can To nurture that relationship And intimacy Which so many desire In their own walk with God The first thing we can do is Pay attention to Amos 3.3 Which states Can two walk together Except they be agreed God will allow no Partial obedience Or a divided heart When it comes to Fellowship with Him So we must confess any sin That hinders our walk with God And turn from it In heartfelt repentance John Song, the great evangelist Whom God used to Shake China in Revival Was once asked by a fellow minister Why do your sermons Have such power To which John Song replied Because of my constant repentance So we too must have A consistent walk with God And constant repentance with Him My priority should be To get right with God Give myself clean And stay clean So I can be a clear and empty channel That He can flow through As a means of blessings to others But this life of faith Can be hindered by us We can fail to know God As we should I believe you can have As much of God as you want So long as He can have As much of you as He wants What is our daily living like? What's our daily devotional life like? Are we experiencing The conscience presence of God In our life? Or are we hindering it? Are we blocking the flow? Are we living a life of faith? Or are we just too self-satisfied? Can others see the reality of God In our life? Or are we blocking that Flow of divine power Marring the image of Jesus Through sin and self-indulgence? I haven't seen people Trying to get right with God lately It's as if they're desensitized to sin They don't see any need for it They think they're alright But they don't have a Regular witness to the lost They don't have a burden For the souls of men They don't spend their free time In the spread of the gospel They are not on their knees Or in their Bibles Or prostrate on their faces Before a holy God In intercessory burden prayer For the lost in their community Instead, they'd rather Plop themselves down In front of their TV And watch hellish Hollywood programming Until their eyes grow as big as saucers And their brain the size of a pea How can we maintain a Conscience, presence of God, friends If we are excluding Him From our own daily schedule? If you don't get to the top of a mountain easily You don't get there on an elevator You have to make the difficult climb yourself There are foreboding cliffs And boulders, obstacles in the way That must be scaled to go higher In Psalm 24 we have a vivid picture Of the one who has to ascend Into the hill of the Lord And these are the requirements to get there We read beginning in verse 3 Who shall ascend Into the hill of the Lord Or who shall stand In His holy place He that hath clean hands And a pure heart Who hath not lifted up his soul Unto vanity nor sworn deceitfully He shall receive the blessing From the Lord and righteousness From the God of His salvation We see here, friends, from this text Two main things mentioned here Clean hands and a pure heart Clean hands speak of our dealings With our fellow men Have we been honest with them? Have we lied to anyone? Cheated anyone? Deceived anyone? This is on the horizontal plane Of our dealings with others A pure heart signifies our vertical plane In our relationship to God Is there any sin area in our life That has not been dealt with And turned over and forsaken In heartfelt repentance to God? Have we grieved the Spirit of God By sin in any way? Whether it be a sin of commission Something we have done Or a sin of omission Something we should have done When these two planes meet The horizontal and the vertical They line up And when they do They form a cross The Christian life Is lived via the cross A sin in that holy hill Speaks of our walk with God In a conscious awareness of Him This God consciousness Is what we're speaking about It must be developed And nurtured over time Through a surrendered walk with Him Secondly, we must stay sensitive To His Holy Spirit Do we live under the discipline Of the Holy Spirit? Or do we sit on the throne of our life And rule there? Does self always have to have its way? Does self always need to be recognized? Are we willing to work for God And let someone else take the credit? Or are we doing Christian work Only for our own self-recognition? I remember a deacon I knew In a big Baptist church And he shared with me that For the previous four years He had gone to South America On short-term mission trips To the country of Uruguay To do construction work And build churches And each year The people there would Throw a big banquet dinner On the last night To show their appreciation To the volunteers from America Who had worked so hard among them And they would celebrate What had been done But my deacon friend informed me That this was his last mission trip Up down to that country Because they ruined the last night And changed things He said this year There was no reward banquet Or any recognition given whatsoever Because of that He wouldn't be going back Clearly This man went on these mission trips For selfish reasons He only went to receive recognition For what he did Do you serve in church Only so you can be recognized? Or are you willing To serve in the background Without getting any notice And let someone else Have the limelight? J. Siddle Baxter used to say How can a man Full of himself Preach to Christ Who emptied himself? A big part of the faith life, friend Is knowing that the Christian life Is a continual denial of self All self-promotion And self-recognition Must go the way of the cross If we are to experience A conscience presence of God In our lives Thirdly We must stay surrendered To Christ's lordship All must be placed Upon the altar In our dealings with God Jesus held nothing back at Calvary But gave his all for sinful man We should hold nothing back from him We should seek to live In utter surrender To the lordship of Christ In our daily living Fourth We must admit Our total dependence upon God In all things By abiding in him Apart from him We can do nothing Nothing impacting Or lasting for eternity I'll tell you a little secret, friend What we do for God that lasts Is really God Working through us It's his work That's getting done His work That impacts eternity We're just clean And broken vessels That's all we need to be And lastly We must exercise A life of faith In trusting God To be who he says he is In believing his promises To be true The more we Go out on a limb For God By faith The more we will experience him Stay in touch with him And maintain A conscience presence of him