Dear Children of the Most High God,

A little more than two years ago, the Lord provided inLight Consulting with a straight-forward process for joyful, Spirit-filled ministry.  We call it “The 3P Process”:

Purpose: Surrender to God’s specific purpose for this season of your life. This is the heart burden He shares with you.

Plan: Sacrifice for the plan that God will orchestrate to accomplish His purpose. This is Christ’s way, and we are to follow after Him; counting the cost.

Power: Submit to the power of God for ministry. This is the full manifestation of the Holy Spirit’s fruit, gifts and power; the life of Christ; and the glory of the Father.

The Lord has required my own passage through the 3P Process as He has matured this ministry. It has been easier said (and taught), than done – praise God for His grace. As I’ve said many times, it has been an adventure – exciting and scary. It has required surrender, sacrifice and submission, but the return has been exceedingly abundantly more than I could have imagined.  Our mission is to encourage and help every Marketplace Leader to take the adventure God has planned for them since before the beginning of time.  It encourages me to know that others are being successful in the same mission; which takes me to the purpose of this posting: Responding to a recent comment about Henry Blackaby’s famous Bible study and book, Experiencing God.

henry-blackaby_editedFor those of you unfamiliar with Henry Blackaby, he was a Canadian pastor and church planter for 12 years, and a director of various boards within the North American Baptist Church. He teamed with Claude King to write the Experiencing God workbook. Incredibly popular (4 million copies sold in 62 languages), the book encouraged and helped many understand how to find God’s will for ministry. As with all great discipling tools, it was written directly from his own personal experience. “Experiencing God is my life’s message,” Blackaby has said. “It is how I had always understood and walked with God. This is how I pastored and led God’s people.”

Interestingly, the Lord has expanded Mr. Blackaby’s attention to workplace ministry; where he is working with his son, Richard. Together, they have written a book entitled Spiritual Leadership (published by Broadman and Holman). I understand that Henry currently disciples many Fortune 500 executives in moving their companies on to God’s agenda. I imagine he continues to use the same “Seven Realities” of experiencing God:

  1. God is always at work around you.
  2. God pursues a continuing love relationship with you that is real and personal.
  3. God invites you to become involved with Him in His work.
  4. God speaks by the Holy Spirit through the Bible, prayer, circumstances and the church to reveal Himself, His purposes and His ways.
  5. God’s invitation for you to work with Him always leads you to a crisis of belief that requires faith and action.
  6. You must make major adjustments in your life to join God in what He is doing.
  7. You come to know God by experience as you obey Him and He accomplishes His work through you.

I hope you are as encouraged as I am to know God is so interested in our ministry and work. It is personally encouraging to see how my early training in the “Seven Realities” helped me understand God’s process for inLight Consulting. By comparison, numbers 1-4 relate to the Purpose step of the 3P process; numbers 5 and 6 to the Plan; and number 7 to the Power.

As I mentioned in my response to Jerald’s comment, I was relieved to rediscover that the catch phrase from Experiencing God (“find out where God is at work and join Him there”) is not all that Blackaby had in mind. God is working everywhere, and He does not want us to go just anywhere. As step 4 indicates, He reveals Himself, His purposes and His ways; and this is a very personal revelation available to each of His children.

In closing, I humbly offer one or two additional “realities” to our active experience of God:

  1. As we let our light shine before men (the world), they will see our good works and glorify our Father in Heaven (Matthew 5:16).
  2. We were created to glorify God, and enjoy His presence forever. If the work is not for His glory, it will not be truly joy-filled.

To make it an even 10, let’s also agree (and with Christ) that, as we do this work, we do it in unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:13). In this, the world will know that the Father loves them and sent His Son for them (John 17:23).

 

Your servant and brother,

Rob