What will RiverLife look like in ten years? When today’s third graders will be graduating high school? Join us as we share our vision for our church's future in serving next-gen Hmong and beyond.

INTRO

Last week, we kicked off a new series called RiverLife 2034 and introduced our new mission statement: we are a next-gen Hmong church experiencing God together. To briefly recap last week’s sermon, we talked about the importance of passing our faith onto the next generation. Our leadership team felt it was necessary to develop a new mission for RiverLife to be effective at reaching the next generations. We saw that hope and healing was effective in reaching second-gen, but we needed to shift our focus for the next-gen. We considered what research, statistics, and the Holy Spirit had to say and landed on the mission of experiencing God together. We felt like the components of experience, God, and together, are vital to the future of RiverLife.

Why is Experience essential to our new mission?

In the next few weeks, we are going to explore each part of this mission. We’re going to discover why each component is important and essential. And this morning, we start off with experience. I believe that when you encounter the power and presence of God, it does something to you. I can still remember my first Jesus experience.

I was 14 years old at a HLUB conference and at the end of a sermon, the pastor invited people to come up for prayer if they felt like the Holy Spirit was leading them to. I didn’t have any intentions to go up for prayer, but I felt an overwhelming sensation inside my body, and I remember feeling chills and goosebumps all over my body. I couldn’t bring myself to not go up. I felt like I had to respond to the message by going up for prayer. It was also at that moment where God felt the most real to me. I felt like I needed to surrender my life to him and obey his plans for me. That experience was so formative and life-changing.

Earlier we sang Amazing Grace and it summarizes this concept well at the end of his first verse when the author writes, “I once was lost, but now I’m found. Was blind, but now I see.” Encountering God’s grace changes you from being lost to being found and being blind to seeing.

Experience in the bible

In the Bible, we see individuals like Moses, Elijah, and Saul have their own God-experience that changed them.

• Moses experienced God at the burning bush and he changed from living a quiet life keeping to himself to liberating an entire nation from slavery.

• The prophet Elijah confronted the evilest king, Ahab, and fell into a deep depression. Elijah was so depressed he asked for God to take his life. In Elijah’s darkest moment, he experienced God and changed. No longer was he depressed, but he found the will raise up another prophet in Elisha and continued to confront Ahab.

• Saul tormented and persecuted believers to stop the growth of Christianity, but when he experienced Jesus on the Damascus Road, he became a believer, and he proceeded to spread it wherever he went.

We specifically see that when someone experiences God firsthand, they change. When someone experiences God firsthand, they change.

Our desire is to have you experience God’s power and presence first hand so that you change. That’s we do the things we do during our service. We invite you to engage with God firsthand. We invite you to pray with us during the opening prayer for the Holy Spirit to move freely in you and help you worship and hear and respond to God. During worship, we invite you to sing and proclaim truths about who God is to you and to others. During spiritual exercises, we invite you to recite the Lord’s Prayer and creeds. We spend a minute in silence and stillness where you can simply be with Jesus. We prompt you to pray for what’s happening in the world, the universal church, the local community, the suffering, and the RiverLife congregation during the Prayers of the People. Offering allows you engaging with your heart to financially give to God. Even during the benediction, we invite you to open your hands to receive God’s blessing. We intentionally invite you to these firsthand experiences because we want you to engage and experience God’s presence so that you can be changed.

This concept began during the pandemic. We wanted to make church more about engaging in experiences and less about consuming information. Consuming information is a second-hand experience. You can’t change much through second-hand experiences. You can certainly gain knowledge from it, but you’re simply observing it. You can’t live off someone else’s faith or experience. You have to experience it yourself.

The dangers of experience

And as we make experience a core element of our mission, we realize the concern that you or others might have. While experience is important and biblical, we also see the danger of experience. My personal experience is limited to me and your personal experience is limited to you. How you and I perceive a situation can be completely different and there is no objective truth that grounds us. Because we perceive that situation feels right, it doesn’t mean it is right. So it’s important that these experiences are rooted in the truth about God. We’ll talk more about this next week, but the idea I want us to understand is that our experience of God must go hand in hand with our understanding of God. Tim Keller says this,

“We are not called to choose between a Christian life based on truth and doctrine or a life filled with spiritual power and experience. They go together.”

And we see this in scripture.

God

Earlier during scripture reading, we heard from Luke 9:28-36. This is the narrative about the Transfiguration. Jesus takes the 3 disciples that he was closest with to a mountain to pray. While Jesus was praying, Jesus’ appearance changed. Scripture describes it like this,

“the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning.”

The purpose of the transfiguration was to reveal to the disciples that Jesus was indeed God. Up to this point, the disciples knew that Jesus was human, but he was regarded more like a special human because of the miracles he did. The transfiguration gave the disciples a glimpse of Jesus’ godliness. Jesus made his infinite worth, incredible magnificence, and complete fullness of his perfect and godly form known to his disciples. The disciples experienced not just to human version of Jesus, but they experienced Jesus as God.

Now, for Peter, this was a special moment. Not only did he witness Jesus as God, but he also Moses and Elijah were there too. Imagine your Mount Rushmore of the greatest athletes, movie stars, or celebrities. For Peter, Moses and Elijah were both Old Testament prophets and leaders who he grew up hearing about. They were the heroes of his faith, individuals that he deeply revered. When Peter saw Jesus, Moses, and Elijah standing together, he responded by wanting to build 3 shelters for them. These shelters were like the tents or tabernacles that the Israelites lived in after they were freed from slavery in Egypt and wandering the wilderness. These tents were also used in an annual feast called the Feast of Tabernacles. This feast commemorated their liberation from slavery in Egypt and the anticipation of the Christ’s second coming. The tents represented a temporary dwelling place for God and expectation that he would return to dwell again with us.

Bible scholars suggest a variety of reasons why Peter offered to build 3 shelters. Some suggest that he wanted this experience to last longer while others suggest that he wanted to build 3 shrines honoring the holy experience. Regardless, scholars all agree that Peter’s experience caused him to overlook a significant truth. He wanted to build 3 shelters for each individual because he recognized that each were important, but in the next verse, God intervenes and says this,

34 While he was speaking, a cloud appeared and covered them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. 35 A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.”

Peter was so caught up in his experience that he forgot how much more significant Christ was. Peter wanted to embrace the greatness of all 3 individuals forgetting that both Moses and Elijah pointed others to Christ, not to themselves. God redirects Peter and reminds him that it is Jesus who Peter needs to focus on. And interestingly, even though Peter saw all of this with his eyes, God tells Peter to listen to Jesus..

APPLICATION

The one thing we can learn from Peter is this. Whenever we experience God, we need to listen and hear biblical truth is present. Whenever we experience God, we need to listen and hear biblical truth is present. Experience coupled with truth gives us faith. Romans 10:17 reminds us that faith comes from hearing the message of Jesus. For some of us, we may have never experienced God. Experience God begins with hearing the truth about him and responding to Him.

• Admit your sin

• Believe Jesus paid the penalty for your sin

• Agree with God that your sins separate you from him

• Turn away from your sin

• Turn your life over to God

• Be in a church community

For others, listening to God means we engage with scripture, prayer, and the church community. We cannot hear truths on our own. It must be revealed to us through the Holy Spirit, scripture, prayer, and others. And when you experience and listen to God, you have to adjust your life to do what God is inviting you to. Adjusting means have to move away from our way of thinking and acting and adjust to God’s way of thinking and acting. When Moses experience God he had to adjust from being a shepherd in the desert to an abolitionist in Egypt. When the disciples experienced God, they had to adjust from being fishermen to preachers of the gospel. When we experience God, we have to listen to see where we have to adjust. And when we adjust, this is where change happens. This is where change happens. So experience God through listening to him and adjust based on how he wants you to.