1063. How Do I Know and Experience God?

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. The school was founded in 1927 by the evangelist Dr. Bob Jones Sr. His intent was to make a school where Christ would be the center of everything so he established daily chapel services. Today, that tradition continues with fervent biblical preaching from the University Chapel Platform. Today's message will be brought by Dr. Jason Ormiston of the Bob Jones University Seminary.

Take your Bible, turn to Hebrews chapter 11, Hebrews chapter 11, and I want you to look with me at verse 6, Hebrews chapter 11. This is going to be the key verse for us to consider, and you know, I like the concept of life hacks, you know, things that make life easier. For example, I've always found it easier when I am out to eat to take salt and just sprinkle a little bit on the napkin so that my water doesn't stick to the napkin. That's a life hack.

Have you ever heard that one? Or there's another life hack, which would be if you're sent to go out and pick up pizza, right, you go in and you happen to have a seat warmer in your car, turn on the seat warmer and put the pizza down. That's a nice life hack.

Okay. If you're having a hard time waking up in the morning, take your cell phone and that alarm and put it in a glass cup. Make sure there's no water in that cup and put it in that cup and it will magnify the alarm to wake you up. Maybe a roommate needs to do that to another one. Or if you're trying to figure out if a battery is working, you can pick it up in six inches from the ground and just let it drop. If it bounces once and lays down, it's still good to go.

If it bounces a bunch of times, you might as well get rid of it appropriately. Okay, so those are life hacks. Today, I want to encourage you to think about something that I wish I would have known about when I was in your seat in college. How do I know and experience God? How do I know his will?

How do I take steps towards pursuing him? Hebrews 11 six is part of that process. It says this, but without faith, it is impossible to please him. For he that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. So it's faith, which is in the unseen, which we know is not something that's easy to do, but we know that God requires it of us if we're a true follower of his. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. What I want to do for you today and just for the time that we have together, a message from the mind, someone said, reaches the mind from the heart will reach your heart, but from a life, hopefully reaches your life and changes your life and impacts you. So I want to share more of a testimonial of God's leading and help you see some principles that God's used in my life to encourage me.

So we don't have a clicker up here, so if I say next slide, next slide, don't be thrown off by that, but I know the group that's doing the AV does a great job, so I'm sure they'll get it, but here's the first start that I want you to see. There's a workbook that I've used many, many times called Experiencing God by Blackaby and I encourage you to jot that down and I know when I bring it up in an audience like this, there'll be some that says, well, are you aware of some of the critics that what they say about that? Sure, I'm aware of it. It's a book. It's not the Bible.

The Bible is the only perfect book, an authoritative book. It's a great guide though and I commend it to you and from it you'll see seven principles about how to know and follow God. The first one is God is at work all around you. This principle is so true from John 15 five, 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. Second one, God pursues a continued love relationship with you that's real and personal. John 17 three, and this is life eternal, that they may know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom you have sent. The third one, God invites you to become involved with him in his work. Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. John 14 21, he who loves me will be loved by my father.

I too will love him and show myself to him. Notice the next set, verse number four. God speaks by the Holy Spirit through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church to reveal himself, his purposes, and his ways. This is a really key one because we're always wondering how do I know when God wants me to do something, go somewhere, take that job, date that person, break up with that person.

What, how do I know these things? And I want you to know that God wants you to know his will and he will reveal himself to you. He uses the Holy Spirit to speak through the word. It's not an audible voice, but it's the word and the spirit within you and your praying and the circumstances that around you that are changing in the church. There are verses that go with all of these.

Because of time, I'm not going to share all those. The fifth one, God's invitation for you to work with him always leads you to a crisis of belief that requires faith and action. That's the Hebrews 11 six one. If you really want to follow God, it's going to require from you faith and then more than just saying, I believe God, I'm going to act on it.

I'm going to do something about it. And then the last two here is six and seven. You must make major adjustments in your life to join God in what he is doing. Luke 14, 33. So therefore any of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. And number seven, you come to know God by experiences as you, as you obey him and he accomplishes his work through you. John 14, 23. Jesus answered him, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him. You can find these experience of God.

Black could be all seven. They've been really helpful. Board willing, as you've heard in July of 2021, our family's moving to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I accepted an invitation to serve as the next senior pastor of Family Baptist Church, the church that I had the joy of being a part of starting.

My dad's been the pastor since the start of the church. And when I think of Minneapolis and I think of the city, I think of Jeremiah 29, seven, which says that we're to seek the peace of the city. So seeking the peace of the city is a big deal. It's seeking the Shalom of a place, whether I've caused you to be carried away captives. And this is in the context of the children of Israel getting taken away into captivity. And he says to all of them, don't run from that, stay underneath that pressure, but pray for the peace and pray unto the Lord for it.

For in the peace thereof, shall ye have peace. And that's a desire that I have when I think of urban ministry and our need to engage in urban ministry. So as I told you in 1996, 97, Family Baptist Church was started. Getting there for us was a part of the seven principles of experiencing God working its way out. I wanted to pastor somewhere, youth pastor somewhere.

No one was knocking at my door. My dad said, why don't you come and help us start a church in the hood? I said, sounds good. And I went to seminary and while I was going to seminary, started with what I enjoy, which is basketball. So I started collecting a group of guys and then that brought the girlfriends. And then we had a youth group of about 60 from just playing basketball on Friday night, feeding pizza and preaching gospel. By God's grace, we saw several come to know Jesus as savior. It was amazing how he worked because I wasn't thinking that's how my life was supposed to roll out of college, but that's exactly what God wanted for me.

I watched God do some amazing things at Family Baptist Church. Fourth Baptist Church, who started the church, gave the church $300,000 to get the thing started and a hundred members. And with that, the Lord used that the creativity that he's given my dad to purchase 10 homes in the area to revitalize the homes and sell them back to members. And we had incarnational ministry, which was people living where they minister in the city, reaching people in the city.

On top of that, we got under the crunch of not having a place to meet in because we were renting from the public school system. And there was a church adjacent to the property of the public school system. And it's a beautiful, beautiful building.

But the problem was the cost of the building was a million dollars. And who in the church plant has a million dollars? My dad begins to pray. He asks us to pray. And yes, God provided a million dollars from a gentleman who heard about the need and gave that to the church to buy that property. I know God wants Family Baptist Church in North Minneapolis. I have seen God do such amazing things in that church ministry. They've had their ups and their doubts. Right now, the church is sitting at, right after COVID, around 50 people in attendance.

Average age is around 60 to 70. It is a totally different place. At the peak of the ministry, it was running around 250. But let me keep going. So while I'm at Family Baptist Church, the Lord's working on my heart as I'm working on seminary. I decided I have no idea what I'm doing with this multi-ethnic ministry thing. And so I enrolled at Westminster Theological Seminary and finished a degree in urban missions, which was helping me understand really how to minister cross-culturally. And it was such a blessing in my own life. And then from there, the Family Baptist Church sent us off to plant All Nations Baptist Church.

And that was in 2005. And so you see from this picture, which I've shown several of you. I've had you in class. I start out with this. And I demonstrate, hey, how many ethnic groups do you see there?

There are over 13. So we started with three white families, called ourselves All Nations Baptist Church, claiming the promises of God. And God brought in the nations because they live in every city.

I mean, it is not complicated to engage in multi-ethnic ministry if you go where all the nations happen to exist. From there, I started teaching adjunct at Northland Baptist Bible College, where I graduated from, and at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. I taught on church planting. And when I was in the classroom for one week, I loved it. I had a captive audience. You know what that's like, right?

If you take a block course, you are there stuck with that teacher all week for about six to eight hours every day. I'm loving it. And I'm like, I can go to lunch with you and talk with you, play basketball with you afterwards, go to dinner with you afterwards. I was like, this is awesome. I came back and told my wife, Heather, we got to start praying that God might, you know, open a door for me to engage in teaching while I'm pastoring. And I was thinking when I turned like what the age I am now, I was thinking 50, I'm only 47.

So, but when I was 50, maybe I'd do that, right? And she said, let's start praying now. And I said, okay.

All right. And she said, let's fast. I said, Oh, okay. So we started and you know what, within three weeks, three institutions, one of them being Bob Jones University contacted me and said this, God has laid on our heart a burden to call you to ask you if you'd consider teaching.

I about dropped the phone, even though it was connected to the wall, you know, with the cord. And I didn't pick BJ first because I wanted to stay at all nations. So I was looking at a couple other options in that area, but God closed those doors and this one remained open. And I've been here since, as it's been stated, BJU 2007, enjoying the time here immensely. It is the, the, the, one of the most difficult things to leave here because I love teaching and I love pouring into you.

Like many of your teachers here. I mean, we're not here. We're not here because we don't want to be here.

Okay. We're here because we love you and we care and we want to communicate. We all do certain things better than others.

And some things, you know what we're not good at. I, we get that we're just humans, just like you, but we're here on mission and it's been such a joy to be here. So during that time was a part of starting Palmetto Baptist Church in 2010. I have so much to tell you about that, which I'm not going to take the time now. But suffice it to say, God opened up doors for us to meet in a storefront free of charge, open up a place for us to meet a rental property from Bethesda United Methodist Church. We've been meeting there for a thousand a month since 2010.

That's unheard of. We have 24 seven access to it. He opened up doors for us to get into a sports complex. It's a basketball court with a football field. Um, he's helped us purchase two pieces of property. It looks like by God's grace, the church is going to break ground on the land in powdersville area this coming summer. Um, so God is doing such amazing things and you know what, just the buildings and all of that. That's something, but what's more important is the number of people that have come through the church and are on the mission field or pastoring churches. What a joy it has been to be a part of Palmetto Baptist Church. So I'm sharing my story because I want you to know just reality is, um, this is God's doing some amazing things, but there's a stirring going on in my heart. I came here because I wanted to train people to go back into the city.

Okay. To reach across cultural and ethnic barriers, right? And I find myself preaching in a suburban church and yet I'm trying to teach classes in the seminary about urban ministry and you know what, something's not matching up, right? I know when I'm a student, I'm going to look for a professor, not that just talks about something he used to do, even has a degree in it, but he used to do it. I want to go to someone who's doing it, who's engaged, who's like in the arena.

And so I'm thinking about that and praying about that, but God's blessing in so many ways here at BJU, at PBC, Palmetto Baptist Church. And so common sense would tell you, you know, Jason, just stay put. And then I don't know if this ever happens to you. Have you ever watched a movie and it just kind of rocks you to the core? I watched this movie, Free Burma Rangers. Have you ever seen that? You should. It is an amazing story about how God used a former soldier, an army ranger to make a difference in Burma and then over in the Middle East. And it is a compelling story of someone who is totally committed to God and how God blessed and directed and led him.

So then it goes to stirring. And then I got this phone call in 2019 that was heartbreaking. And that's my brother. He died. His heart stopped. You know, that's not super helpful because his heart stopped. What are you hiding?

I'm not hiding anything. He actually was a guy who was a preacher boy who then ended up getting married. Then he got a divorce. He's no longer in ministry. He hid a drug addiction to heroin for 20 years.

Now, we always knew he was weird, but he would act weird and strange, but we just thought that was Karsten. By God's grace, I was able to see him come back to Christ, graduate from Minnesota Teen Challenge treatment program, and he was doing really well. But those years of drug abuse impacted his heart and his heart just gave out and he died. And I was asked to, I mean, I went back for the funeral. My dad was a complete mess and he'd tell you that. He could not conduct the funeral even though he's done hundreds of funerals. He couldn't order the family together because he just couldn't think. He couldn't read.

He was just in shock. And so they said, hey, Jason, do you think maybe you could do this? Lead the family in this and lead the funeral?

I said, sure. So I put the grief off for a little bit and did all of what I needed to do with the funeral. But I tell you, when I was standing there conducting this funeral in the auditorium of Family Baptist Church, and it was packed out. For them, that's about 350 people full of people from different ethnic groups, pierced and tattooed. It was urban. It was beautiful. And they were there honoring my brother.

And I thought to myself, this could be Family Baptist. It gets down to 50 people now. Now, at that point, it wasn't down to 50 because pandemic hadn't hit yet. But God used that in my heart to say, Jason, maybe you got to stop talking about and teaching on it.

Maybe you need to go back and do it. So with that, God used that. God used that. And then the pandemic hit. I don't need to spend a lot of time on that one because that's impacted all of us. And I'm watching from the live stream in church services, and then I'm getting the word about George Floyd's death in Minneapolis. And that's going on. The trials going on.

I hope you're aware of that right now and praying. But that led to Minneapolis burning. In Minneapolis burned.

Over $2 billion worth of damage took place. Go to the next slide where it shows the after effects and then another one, just a combination of pictures of the after effects. And so many things happened in my parents' lives that were just dramatic and life changing. And I want you to quickly see a video made by the seminary when dad came and gave an overview for a lecture series.

So you can see firsthand from his mouth. I'm Lee Ormiston. I pastor Family Baptist Church in North Minneapolis. We've had several people talk about moving right away, getting out of here and going someplace else. We have had people have said, I'm not ever coming back.

Sorry, pastor. The truth is it is dangerous in some respects. But the other side of it, there's a tremendous need, tremendous opportunity.

And if you, if we're trying to outreach, there are a lot of hurting people and more receptivity than I don't ever think I've seen more receptive group. Now, unfortunately, the number one way is around the deaths and the funerals and that type of thing. Well, if I was thinking about unrest in the area and what type of a spiritual opportunity, a tragic situation that happened as a young lady was run over intentionally by her boyfriend and killed in my front yard, that precipitated a group wanting to put a memorial together. My wife permitted that around a tree and that precipitated gatherings every single night of a very large group. Ultimately, I was even given the opportunity to conduct the funeral.

Well, it's interesting to see how God's working. One night right after the riots, you know, that really devastated our neighborhood where, frankly, it was so dangerous. The police weren't coming into our area, so it was patrolled by vigilantes. And they had, the rioting had destroyed all the places people could buy groceries and medicine. And then they ended the public transportation in the area. So certain people were really in trouble. And you saw the hand of God work in the hearts of many of them, most of them, Christians from the suburbs. And they brought in what was, to Pam and I, almost brought us to tears.

Tons of food, diapers, help. And you, when you live here, you recognize, wow, without it, I don't know what would have happened. And what we need is Christians who are here and burdened for souls, burdened to make a difference for the Lord Jesus Christ, burdened to be the light that He has called us to be. One of the hopes I have in regards to the conference is that it would be a challenge and a wake-up call to all of us. There's a fertile ground here for revival, and that's my prayer, that the gospel will go forward.

It would powerfully change lives, and we would be able to powerfully live it before others. We need to take this opportunity and face it and recognize and inventory our own lives. Are we doing what we can do to share Christ? Are we bold enough in our witness for the Lord Jesus Christ? Are we willing to stand up and be accounted as one of as one of His?

This world is getting frightening in that regard. There's a lot of pushback, but may we not be intimidated by the evil forces that are at play, but that we would shine and be the light that Christ has called us to be. So that video was made by Chris Harmony here in the seminary, and he does such a great work. And I'm very aware of the time, and I'm not going to go over. Just follow me.

Just let me have a couple more minutes. I want you to see that what happened next is we started to pray, and we prayed, does God, do you want us to be a part of this solution? And in the process of that, had communication with the pastors at Palmetto Baptist Church. They've known about this burden in my heart for a while, and I asked them specifically to pray about it in July of this past year. I let the deacons know in September, and then in October I received a call from the pulpit committee, but what led up before that the pulpit committee at Family Baptist. My dad had a 70th birthday, and he announced his retirement and that they were going to be looking for the next pastor. I could sense that God was leading me to a crisis of belief that required faith and action, but then the logical side of me steps in, and I have that too much. Maybe you do too. I came up with, you know, what are you supposed to do?

Ben Franklin, right? Pros and cons. Like write down your pros and cons about why I should stay or why I should go, and I had this massive list as to why I should stay. I had a massive list for, you know, why I shouldn't go, and while I'm doing that, I got a phone call from a donor who said, hey, Jason, I want to introduce myself to you. I want you to know that God's laid a burden on my heart to help you, and I know you're going to a rough situation. I would love to offer you some money to help you with the transition. How would $30,000 suit you? I'm like, what?

Phone drop, no connection with a cord this time. Thank you for laughing on this side. Okay, so here's the point.

The point is God has made it so abundantly clear. What's that $30,000 for? Helping us move. The website at Family Baptist needs a ton of help. I mean, there's just so many transition type things that need help there, and that's just the beginning of what God's doing, and so my son, I have three sons, three daughters, so we're abundantly blessed with kids. Izzy's right up here.

Hi, Iz. My son Elijah had the biggest struggle with this because he's like, he loves South Carolina. He's like, Dad, you are not making any sense. Dad, you're having a midlife crisis. Dad, stop. I'm like, no, buddy, God's doing something, and so when we were there visiting and going through the pulpit committee and meeting with them, I turned to Heather. I said, Heather, could you check?

We're coming back from the Mall of America, which is a very touristy thing to do. Could you check any D2 schools in the area? Because he has several D2 offers here in the South Carolina, North Carolina area, and we found a school called Concordia University of St. Paul. I called them, and I actually called the coach because parents calling the coaches doesn't work, to just tell you that. The coach from the high school he attends at Cannon, North Carolina, called them and talked to them about Elijah, sent video. They had a Zoom call on Monday morning, and on that call, he offered him a full ride. So look at this next slide. That's my man.

All right. He's going to Concordia. We get to watch him play ball.

You know what? I bring that up to you because God desires a relationship with you that's real and personal, and when you follow him, it impacts a lot of people, and it's not just about you. It's about watching God do his thing through the lives of everyone around you, and I'm just calling you to consider what God wants you to do. Does he want you to follow him?

For me, next slide, it's Family Baptist Church, summer of 2021, and then the next slide for you, it's reminding you God's invitation for you to work with him always leads you to a crisis of belief that requires faith and action. I'm calling you to consider that. What does God want from you? Are you willing to give that to him? Let's pray. God, help us to follow you and take faith and action in Jesus' name. Amen. You've been listening to a sermon preached by Dr. Jason Ormiston of the Bob Jones University Religion Faculty, and we look forward to the next time as we study God's Word together on The Daily Platform.