Knowing and doing the will of God
     This amazing discipleship course has changed the lives for thousands of born-again believers. Written by Henry T. Blackaby and Claude V. King in 1990 for the Southern Baptist Convention, Experiencing God lives up to its title. It calls course participants to daily lessons, often asking soul-searching questions, over 12 week-long units. Be faithful over the long haul, and Almighty God will reward you beyond your most optimistic expectations. For example? Click to read how this course changed the lives of
     Knowing God does not come through a program, a study, or a method. Knowing God comes through a relationship with a Person. 
     This is an intimate love relationship with God. Through this relationship, God reveals Himself, His purposes, and His ways; and He invites you to join Him where He is already at work.
     This is the central thesis of Experiencing God by Henry T. Blackaby and Claude V. King. The authors' emphasis on revelation through personal relationship makes faith sound like a true adventure -- leading believers to engage with people and circumstances they might otherwise have avoided. 
     The organization of Experiencing God adds to this effect, proceeding step by step through the various ways a believer's relationship with God is deepened (via the Bible, prayer, and the Church, among others). Although there's strong tension between the self-help tone of this book and its hard-line argument that faith is purely a response to God's initiative, many readers will nevertheless find great encouragement in hearing a still, small voice among a vast number of everyday experiences.
     We often act as though God tells us what He wants us to do and sends us off all by ourselves to try to do it, any time we need Him we can call on God, and He will help us. That is never the Biblical picture.
     When God is about to do something, He reveals what He is about to do to His people. God wants to do it through His people, or through His servant.

                         
 
 
Experiencing God is based on these realities:

God is always at work around you.

God pursues a continuing love relationship with you that is real and personal.

God invites you to become involved with Him in His work.

God speaks by the Holy Spirit through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church to reveal Himself, His purposes, and His ways.

God's invitation for you to work with Him always leads you to a crisis of belief that requires faith and action.

You must make major adjustments in your life to join God in what He is doing.

You come to know God by experience as you obey Him and He accomplishes His work through you.
  

Memory Verses

Unit 1:
      "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing."
 -- John 15:5 (NIV)
 
Unit 2:
     Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.  
-- Psalms 20:7 (NIV)
 
Unit 3:
     Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment."
-- Matthew 22:37-38 (NIV)
 
Unit 4:
     Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him."
-- John 14:21 (NIV)
 
Unit 5:
     He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God."
-- John 8:47 (NIV)
 
Unit 6:
     Jesus gave them this answer: "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
-- John 5:19 (NIV)
 
Unit 7:
     And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. 
-- Hebrews 11:6 (NIV)
 
Unit 8:
     In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.
-- Luke 14:33 (NIV)
 
Unit 9:
     Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him."
-- John 14:23 (NIV)
 
Unit 10:
     so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.
-- Romans 12:5 (NIV)
 
Unit 11:
     But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
-- 1 John 1:7 (NIV)
 
Unit 12:
      And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another -- and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
-- Hebrews 10:24-25 (NIV)