your journey starts now

Mar 11

The Question Here is Who is God to You?

The God In Real Time approach.

God in Real Time is a simple approach to life and situations through a powerful understanding of scriptures. I say powerful as I have seen the contents of this simple approach literally be a transformative experience for thousands of individules who have taken the time to listen to it and view their lives through the lens of the scriptures given to us by Jesus and Peter.

Why is it called God in Real Time? The first is obvious, that we shift our focus on what God has to say to us. When we understand what God is up to, who God is, and what He is doing in and around our lives, it changes the way we view the world. It also has the power to change the way we live our own lives.

While this approach was developed initially to help those in time of critical need, it has application that is far more reaching than our crisis situations. God in Real Time is a fundamental approach to life itself. It is a way of understanding yourself, the world around you, and how God fits into that picture. It is a Biblical approach to all of life, not only those things around you but for all your feelings, your thoughts, and the world within you. It is the wisdom and discernment to know the difference between these two worlds, and then what to do with that knowledge.

First, the God in Real Time approach allows one to focus prayer effectively like never before. It gives one an understanding of what to pray for, how to pray for it, and then what is required to be done with the resulting insight of those prayers so that they turn into realities that will transform your world.

The second is the Real Time part. God does not have to be convinced to help you. One does not have to beg or plead or conjole His voice or intervention into our lives. God can speak to you in real time. He can also act in your favor and on your behalf to do things for you that you are not able to do for yourself in real time. In fact Almighty God, the father of all creation is doing that very thing for each and every person alive in the here and now, in real time for you and me daily, right down to the miliseconds of time and space. He never stops doing you all kinds of good.

So where is the disconnect? Why do I not feel His presence each and every day? Face it, we live in a real world that has great influence over us. We are also filled with worry, fear, doubt, and disbelief. These can often leave us with feelings that God is not there and that we are far from in control of our own lives.

The God in Real Time approach will guide you to see and understand how God is there and that he is available to you. Grasping His presence in your life can have a dramatic impact on your daily experience and outcome. So I invite you to join us on this journey. At the very least, you will come to understand what it is about the Christian approach that is so powerful and attractive to so many, why it has endured for generations and is applicable to every culture on tour planet. All this in spite of the many who have called themselves Christians and yet lived their lives so differently from its precepts. Don’t allow yourself to be put off by hypocrites, liars, cheaters, or phonies who have perverted the Gospel in order to advance their own agenda and power.

Remember that Jesus was a real personal being. He was actually here on the planet. He is the most well documented historical figure that ever lived. He lived to bring you life abundant and to the full. His disciples were real as well. They too were well documented and left a record of their lives and teachings. Their experiences are documented for us as a guide to gaining access to this realtionship with Father God that is so empowering and transformative. This relationship has the power to give one liberty in everything internally, and gives you strength, wisdom, and power to change things externally as well in your world.

Millions upon millions of people have lived before you and they have given testamony to this life and power in their lives.

What we do here is to show you in modern day terms how to see and understand your particular world (all those things inside yourself and all things ourside yourself). We will guide you to connect your world with real and workable principles of truth within the Gospel message of the Bible. We will show you where you might have disconnected from a natural process in the four step model of change and growth. Then we will show you how to reconnect and accomplish your purpose and destiny.

Questions for Consideration:

When did your relationship with God begin?

How has it progressed and changed over time?

What kind of relationship with God would you like to have?

Do you trust God with major discissions?

In a group discuss how you love God. What does that mean to you?

Challenging Your Inner Prejudice

Let me ask you a question. How honest can you be here? If you take a moment and be completely honest with yourself, what is your perception of God? Not what everyone else is saying or what others have told you. What is your personal perception of God? Your perception shapes your reality and greatly influences what you experience in this life. Jesus said it like this, “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. "But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!… Matt 6:22-23.

How are you responding to God? Your perspective will determine your experience and will limit it greatly.

Your expectation shapes the responses of people around you as well as your own experiences. Even when good things happen, if you are expecting something evil or judging those around with a negative filter or evil expectation, then it will diminish or even kill that experience. I see this all the time in employment situations, in marriages, and in many interactions with people.

I am a Georgia born, California raised, and now acclimated Texan so I tend to be real friendly. On a recent trip to Boston I had to dampen my usual “How-di-do” as it was often greeted back with something along the line of, “What’s your problem?” “What’s wrong with you?” Or, “What do you want?” I even had one response, “Go back to Texas!” yelled at me while waving to someone from my convertible while in stop-and-go traffic on a busy street in downtown Boston. This is part of the hazards of east coast city life I guess. Friendliness was often greeted with wariness and suspicion.

My point here being, how are you responding to God? Your perspective will determine your experience and will limit it greatly. Ultimately your perspective is a direct reflection of your belief. Belief is the great dividing point of what happens in the Christian life and what does not happen. Here are a few scriptures to illustrate what I am saying about your perspective as being a window into the heart of your inner beliefs.

Mark 11: 24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

Matt. 21:22 “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer."

James 1:5-7 “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.”

When God is speaking to you, in and around you, are you responding to Him like that Bostonian? “What do you want?” Or worse, “Go back to heaven where you belong!” “What is this stuff about you loving me?” Or you could be saying, “What? Go talk to that man? I have nothing to say to him!”

Questions to Consider:

Can you challenge you inner prejudice for a moment here with me?

Take a moment and write down three things you believe most about God.

Name one or two things you struggle with regarding God in your life.

Have you ever been angry or disappointed with God?

Do you really believe God loves you?

Do you really believe that God desires to talk with you and to listen to you?

Do you really believe that God wants you to ask Him for what you need and desire?

Group Discussion: list your responses

List all the ways God is expressing love to you and everyone each day.

List ways we can respond to that great love.

What is a Relationship with God Really Like?

How can you have a relationship with someone that you cannot see? To scientists, doctors, non-believers, and skeptics this is absurd. It’s like talking to yourself! And I would agree. It is like talking to yourself, because in this relationship and in this conversation only one of us has an actual tongue. But what are the ways that you and God are alike? You both have personalities, minds, spirits, wills, and the ability to choose. You are both personal beings seeking to be known and to know others. Since we are created in His image, it should go without saying we are like God in many ways, only a lot more limited. So this relationship must function within those limitations. Since this is a relationship with the Divine, it comes with many benefits that no other relationship will have.

God knows everything about you already and still wants to have you tell him all about your situation.

First, God knows everything about you already and still wants to have you tell Him all about your situation. God is always there and He is everywhere you go, even in the shower, even in your dreams. He can communicate to you through other people, through circumstances, through the created order, even through a donkey when it’s appropriate. (See Numbers 22:21-31)

God’s preferred method of conversation with you is that still, small voice within your heart, from deep within you. To hear Him you do have to get in touch with yourself and get control of your own thoughts, emotions, and notions. Quietness is a good beginning, but God is not limited to the perfectly still moment. He is very flexible and He makes use of every opportunity. God does not simply want to teach us all the time. His desire is to spend time with us and for us to spend time with Him. In essence God wants to hang out with you. Yes, that’s right He wants to just spend time in simple dialogue with us, being in the presence of each other. It’s called “fellowship”.

Questions to Consider

Have you ever had a personal relationship with Father God?

List at least 5 ways that personal relationship was lived out in your life in real time.

In what ways do you feel as though something has been missing in that relationship.

Group Discussion:

Do you desire deep, loving and abiding personal relationships?

Where does that desire come from?

Can God possibly desire that with you?

Dealing with Our Innate Desire to Control

Three Essential Themes

There are three essential themes you must come to terms with on your journey. We will explore them in this book. They are:

· The Role of Ownership - What do I own and what is it I can never own?

· The Role of Truth - What is absolute truth and can I know it?

· The Role of God - Who is God, and what does he have to do with me?

The Prayer for Serenity is a good beginning point. Most people recognize it, but few understand it fully. For me, it has all the elements that help to make a productive Christian life. It should be noted here that though the authorship of this prayer is much contested, it is still generally attributed to the great theologian and teacher, Reinhold Niebuhr and this version is dated to 1926.

The Issue of Control

The author of the prayer first recognizes that we are not totally in control. In fact, there are many things in life we will never completely control, and many more that we will only influence to a degree. Still others we absolutely do not control or our influence is insignificant at best. For this very reason, the author realizes that there are things in life that require God’s help and assistance. Sometimes we will even desperately need His omnipotent and divine intervention.

When my children were little and very sick with a fever, I would pray for God’s assistance and guidance in seeking their proper medical care. I would do everything within my power to help them get better, but occasionally the fever would not lift. All that I did was not enough, and I would find myself calling out to God for His divine intervention and would always see Him work. This is no mystery to any parent or for anyone who has been in a situation where they recognized their inability to change things external to themselves. So they looked to God for help.

The Position of Dependence

The author of the Prayer then asks God for courage and wisdom to take charge of the things which he, and only he, can change. But even for the things that he knows he is totally responsible, the author recognizes his need and dependence upon a Holy and Magnificent God.

In this book, you will see the wisdom of knowing the difference between what I cannot control and what I can control. God is here and present with you in whatever circumstance you find yourself. And if you are truly willing to work his process of surrender, (that’s right there is a process to surrender and to coming to God) then God will meet you and you will find his ways are easier, lighter, and they will always bring Serenity.

I write this book out of a life experience of walking with God. I have struggled with my own flesh and sinful nature, many times out of simple ignorance. I have spent a lifetime watching God do for me what I could not possibly do for myself even after a long period of trying to do it all myself. It is simply what God has shown me over the process of many years of helping people through many transitional points in their lives. We have turned things over to God thousands of times only to be faced with the same situation over and over again, without true change and especially without internal peace. So that is where this process is headed; Real Handles on Real Problems, for Real Change by learning to experience “God in Real Time”.

Embracing the Now

Next in the Serenity Prayer is the focus on living in the now, “one day at a time”. All too often when working with people experiencing difficulties, I notice there is the distinct tendency for them to either look to the future and always be waiting for their ship to come in, or be looking to the past when they were a better person, or life was better, or what might be called the “good old days” syndrome.

The truth is that you really need to grow much further and much stronger than you ever dreamed possible. The rest of your life is going to demand a greater level of strength just to complete what God is putting in your heart right now.”

Living in the now requires three things right up front. First is the letting go of all obsessions whether they are things in the past, things in the present but not in the immediate grasp of your control, or events in the future. To understand this more, let’s look at Jesus as he stood before Pilate.

The solution focused person is focused on the here and now.

Before Jesus was arrested, he was in the Garden of Gethsemane. While he was there he foresaw the cross and all that he would suffer. There he embraced the moment and struggled with his will and the will of the Father who was with him as he struggled. There he did what only he could do. He decided to embrace the mission of the cross for the sake of all of us. Hours later after the arrest and five other mock trials, he stood before Pilate who was indignant with Jesus. “Do you not know that I have the power to crucify you or set you free?” Jesus did not argue with Pilate, he did not challenge his authority. He could have prophesied and told him everything. Instead, he simply embraced the moment, accepted the world as it was, accepted Pilate as he was, accepted his circumstances the way they were, accepted the judgment the way it was going to be, accepted Israel’s rejection the way it was, accepted his own disciples' rejection the way it was, and said, “You have no power over me except that which my Father has given you.” And Jesus let it be. He embraced his moment. Jesus was constantly embracing moments throughout his ministry and his life, thereby accomplishing what Father God wanted to do in the moment right then.

Remember there are two types of people; those who work toward solutions of desired goals, and those who seek to find others to blame for all of life’s imminent failures. The solution focused person is focused on the here and now. The blame shifting person is looking everywhere else, and doesn’t really put the effort into the future because he/she does not believe it is worth the effort since they expect failure anyway. They are tied into a belief system of failure and often tend to see themselves as victims of others, society at large, and eventually of God himself.

The Pathway Process

Reinhold makes another observation in his prayer. He recognizes the value of accepting hardship as a “pathway to peace”. This acknowledges the fact that in order to advance or move forward, we must always push against a tendency to recline in the comfortable. We have in us the natural desire to find comfort and stay there.

An illustration is a woman giving birth to a child. Life must push forward. There are precious few moments of peace that can compare with the moments after childbirth when a mother holds that child for the first time. Childbirth is a hardship endured in order to come to the point of knowing beyond expression, the love, peace, meaning, and purpose of the experience of motherhood. The curse of “pain in childbirth” is in reality the “pathway to peace”.

The Awesome Power of Choice

“Taking…this …world as it is, not as I would have it.” We allow so much of our time and energy to be consumed over issues that we couldn’t change with an army. For instance: you can’t make: the past disappear, or make someone love you or treat you right, or make the future a certainty, or all the traffic lights in front of you to turn green, or enough money or time, or have enough energy, your health to always be perfect, or your loved ones to never suffer pain or discomfort.

The list could go on. So how will you choose to embrace your now, your present, and what you can do that will cause the needed change?

Letting Go

Another thing we must do in order to focus on the now, is to relinquish the past and let go of our obsessions. Trusting that God is in ultimate control of your life and all that is around you does this. That is what Jesus meant by what he told Pilate. He was not engaging him in debate, but reaffirming his conviction that Father God has ultimate control, even in the face of certain, sudden, even immanent death.

So many people respond, “How can I do this? You don’t know my past or problems! I cannot let go!” From the pains of trauma and abuses to the grieving of the loss of a loved one, it is often hard to let go. But nothing could be more critical to moving forward.

I am reminded of the movie Castaway and the scene where the main character is in the ocean making his escape from the island. He is dramatically and suddenly faced with the painful choice of letting go of his ball, named Wilson, or his life raft. He cried in agony as he said goodbye to his only friend, the ball that was stained with blood from the pain of his own massive effort to survive. He finally chose to turn around in the great “sea of forgetfulness” and swim back to his life raft. As a result, he was eventually rescued from being lost for years. How true that scene is for so many of us. We must choose to let go of what we are hanging on to, in order to make room for and receive what we need.

Surrendering to God

Throughout the serenity prayer is a central theme that patients and clients have pointed out week after week as I presented this. That central theme is surrender to God. Patients by the hundreds have said over and over again, “To surrender we must trust, and to trust we must believe that God really does love and care for us. A Believer’s number one job is to believe!” “And without faith it is impossible to be well-pleasing unto him; for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that seek after him.” Hebrews 11:6

Of course “to Believe” begs the questions, “Believe in whom?” “What am I to believe?” “How can I believe in a God I do not even know?” “How can I trust in someone I have never met?” These questions are at the heart of the issues of everyday life, are they not?

Understanding the Sin Issue

Listen, it’s as simple as this. Yes we have all sinned, and sin has entered the world, both collectively as a race and individually. It comes down to a personal choice for each one of us. No one is exempt, no one is perfect, and no one is beyond reproach. We have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, His perfection and choosing to perfectly obey Him 100 % of the time. And sin being what it is, has worked death into all of life. Sin doesn’t just separate us from God’s presence; it has invited evil into every part of our existence so that we are dying from birth on.

Self-centeredness has worked into everything we do, like yeast worked into dough. We have so embraced sin that it is destroying even the very genes in our DNA and causes sickness, disease and eventually death. We were not created to die. We were created to live!

In every culture, we grieve the death of our loved ones, and we celebrate the birth of our children and grandchildren. I have never met anyone praying for a horrific disease to consume and kill them. Even people who are suicidal do not pray for such things. We all pray for health, happiness, and peace. We all have a built in desire to live!

All sin, sickness, death, and disease can be traced back to one man, Adam. Sin entered our world and mankind specifically through one decision, the decision to disobey God and eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Once eaten, once chosen, sin entered and Adam’s descendants (us) have been making sinful choices ever since.

So we make the choice every day, and every moment of that day. You and I make a choice to either do things our way or God’s way. As the scripture says, ”Choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve Jehovah.” Joshua 24:15

How often instead of surrendering to God, we blame God for our decisions of anger, rage, or self-centered actions. We curse, we fight, we demand of others. We do so many things out of self-interest. We want what others have and what others can do for us. James puts it so very well. “You fight and you quarrel because you do not have. You have not because you ask not. And when you do ask, you ask out of lust, that you may consume it on your lust.” James 4:2-3

Questions to Consider

Who owns your life?

How important is truth in your life? If you can know the truth, do you want to?

Describe God’s Role in your life.

Describe control in your life.

The Pathway to peace is often difficult. How are you transformed by that process into a peaceful place?

How is the sin issue resolved, once and for all?

Describe 2 ways you can let go of things holding you or controlling your life.

What does it mean to surrender to God, yet still stay responsible for your own life?

Scripture to meditate upon

! John 1:9, Romans 8:1, John 3:16,

2 Peter 3:18 “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.”

Hebrews 9:26 “Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.”

2 Peter 4:1 “Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin.”

Dennis Madden