SESSION SUMMARY

God speaks to His people by the Holy Spirit. He can speak in any way He chooses, but the most common ways through which God speaks today include the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church. He speaks to reveal Himself, His purposes, and His ways. When what God says through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church line up to say the same thing, you can proceed with confidence to follow God's directions.

Each believer is interdependent with all the others to function correctly in that body. You cannot fully know God's will for your involvement in the body of Christ apart from the counsel God provides through other members. All members of the body belong to each other, and they need each other. You can and should depend on God to speak through other believers and the church to help you know what assignment you are to carry out in the ministry of the kingdom.

When God invites you to be involved in His activity, He wants to reveal Himself to you and to a watching world. Therefore, He will give you a God-sized assignment. When you are confronted with such a task, you'll face a crisis of belief. You'll have to decide what you really believe about the God who called you, and the way you respond to God will reveal what you believe, regardless of what you say. Following God requires faith and action. Without faith, you cannot please God. And without action, your faith is dead (see James 2:26).

These are the characteristics of every crisis of belief:

• An encounter with God requires faith.
• Encounters with God are God-sized.
• What you do in response to God's invitation reveals what you believe about God.
• True faith requires action.

Now without faith it is impossible to please God, for the one who draws near to Him must believe that He exists and rewards those who seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6)

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• Are you interconnected in a church body so God can speak to you through other church members? If so, what is something God has said to you through fellow Christians?
• How do you respond when you become aware of a need in your church that you might meet? How do you know if you are the person God wants to use to meet that need?
• How is God presently using you to minister to other members of your church body? Are you actively seeking His will in this regard?
• Are you presently experiencing a crisis of belief? If so, what is God asking you to do? What is it that keeps you from obeying?
• What does your present walk with God reveal about what you believe about Him? What is the evidence of God at work in and through your life?
• What in your life or the life of your church can only be explained by the presence of Almighty God?
• Is there something in your life you struggle to turn over to God? How is God presently seeking to increase your faith in Him?

EXPERIENCING GOD TODAY

Pray for your church and the way God works in and through its members to help believers understand God's call. Reflect on times and ways God has spoken to you through other believers, and thank God for using them to speak to you. Sometime soon, get together with two or three other believers from your church to pray for each other and your church.

Read Hebrews 11, and think about the biblical heroes of the faith. Ask the Lord to increase your faith to believe Him in all things. Pray that He will enable you to walk by faith, even if the outcome matches the last half of the chapter rather than the first half.

*This content is a condensed and consolidated version ends of chapters 15 and 16. This is in no way original content to Fellowship Greenville. This content is from the book Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby, Richard Blackaby, and Claude King (copyright 2008). We are thankful for the use of the content and the impact it has had.