God Encounters Will Change Our Relationships, Both Vertical (With God) And Horizontal (With Others) Series

Encounter with God Series

Part 6

Change in Relationships

For an Audio/ Video version of this message, please visit https://youtu.be/0C03d_AQF1k

Good morning.

This is the sixth part of the series on Encounters with God. We started off this series by realizing that one of the great reasons to come to church Sunday after Sunday is to seek and have an encounter with our God. I hope you have been having an encounter with Him in the past weeks we have looked at this topic.

I hope you remember some of the things we studied in the previous parts of the series.

1. If we are not watchful, we might miss an opportunity to have an encounter with God

2. It is entirely up to us to have the encounter. The first party is always there and always willing

3. God encounters are for everyone. It does depend on your level of righteousness or spirituality

4. God encounters are not a once-in-a-lifetime affair. We need to seek the encounter every day.

5. God encounters are intensely personal

6. God encounters always result in changes. It could be dramatic changes as we saw in Paul’s case or subtle changes as we saw in Jacob’s case, but changes will happen.

7. Three areas where changes happen due to encounters are Vision, Character and Relationships, as explained in my book Not-So-With-YOU (https://www.menorahleadership.com/not-so-with-you_book/).

8. Encounters with God will change our vision, enhance its scope and impact, and align it with God’s vision for us. We saw this happen in Paul’s life

9. God encounters will change our Character for good. We saw the Character changes that took place in Peters life. We especially looked at two aspects, Pride getting replaced with Humility and Fear getting replaced with Confidence. We also saw the need to balance between humility and confidence

In this part 6 of the series, we are going to look at the third imperative of Relationships that will be impacted by encounters with God.

When we talk about relationships, we have to consider both the vertical relationship with God and the horizontal relationships with others. One will be incomplete without the others. The good news is that an encounter with God impacts both these relationships.

Let us go back to Jacob’s transformation through the encounters he had with God. Before his first encounter with God in Genesis Ch 28, we do not even know if Jacob acknowledged God’s role in his life. We can well imagine Jacob to be an obedient child, but there is no indication that he was a pious child. We see him seeking his father’s blessings, but never blessings from God in the earlier chapters of his life. So, it is safe to assume that he was a passive “church goer”. Again, this takes me back to my own conversion story. Before I ever started to go to church , I used to go to temples. But my going to temples had nothing to do with god, or spirituality. It was either because my mother wanted to go, or because I wanted to see someone else who used to go to the same temple. You get the drift, right. Not surprising then that Jacob was busy setting his own course for his life through deceptions and lies, sometimes aided by his mother. It was at Bethel v1.0 ( I call it Bethel 1.0, because it was not yet named Bethel at that time, its name was Luz (Gen 28:19) and we will go back to this place later on) that he has his first encounter with God. We have seen this incident in the first second sermons of this series. God appears to him in the dream and then he wakes up and acknowledges God’s presence. From a relationship status that says, “don’t care about God” his relationship status changes to acknowledging the house of God. “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven (Genesis 28:17)!” This is the first change in relationship that we see as a result on an encounter with God. But as we saw earlier in the series, this change was very subtle. Even though he acknowledged the presence of God, he did it with several conditions. His vow tells the story. “If God will be with me and keep me in this way that I am going, and give me bread to eat and clothing to put on, 21 so that I come back to my father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God. 22 And this stone which I have set as a pillar shall be God’s house, and of all that You give me I will surely give a tenth to You (Genesis 28:20-22).” This is not an unconditional acceptance of God and His grace. This is very conditional acceptance of God’s grace.