Pastor Gillean Levick, our anointed, bright and colourful woman of God spoke in one of the churches at Butterworth one evening. The message was practical, profound and prophetic in the way that she spoke about knowing God. Her life testimonies tells it all, and you know when the glory of God is upon someone,they shine. It was an eventful night with laughters over dinner, prayer for a cancer patient and the Word of God delivered. I took my friend's notes on the preaching that night to share it with my readers here. It may not have the same impact as to hear it live but I hope these notes will somehow encourage your walk with God.
10 steps to know God (with some paraphrasing - mine)
1) Grateful heart
- be grateful with everything we have as we are already blessed, reach out and receive it. Gratefulness takes you away from worrying and opens the way for God to bless us.
2) Be thankful
- in all things give thanks. There is no need to ask God, thank Him for what He's given and for the things He is going to give. Remember God works all things good for those who loves Him. God in His agape love wants to kiss our wounds to heal us.
3) Praise God
- a merry heart is like a medicine, bringing health to our bones and mind.
- when our emotions are bossy taking the leader role, we become double minded, don't know the arthur from the martha. God gave us the spirit ability to be leaders, to lead over our emotions, to tell our emotions to behave when they are not. Praising God puts our focus on Him and not on our difficult situations.
4) Trusting God
God is the only one who is 100% trustable. He will never leave us nor forsake us.
Prov 3:5-6, James 1:2-4 - there are 2 roads to choose, which will you choose.
A)When difficult things happen in our life, throw a party and rejoice - God will make you laugh. If we are full of joy, it will bring change to our situation.
B) road of despair.distraction, arrested development, depression, destruction and this is where the devil wants us to be.
If you want to trust God, you must take risk in taking that 1st step to cross the river, and take the journey He has prepared for us. Our inheritance is a spirit of boldness, love, and if sound mind.
When we are different, we will make a difference. It doesn't matter how people look at us, it matters how God look at us.
5) Worship
When we learn to trust, we begin to worship. Our whole life is an act of worship.
6) Obedience
-When we worship, we move into obedience... God is pleased when we obey
- Isaiah 1:19 when we are obedient, we will eat the fat of the land (we'll be blessed)
-Let's come into the Lords presence and not be afraid of our disobedience but repent and continuing on this journey with God. As we surrender unto Him, He will help us with our shortcomings and weaknesses.
A true story of this lady in the bus. Daily she takes the bus to work and one day, a voice told her to go to the Coke machine and do a headstand. She thought that was the devil and it must be crazy to do such a thing. Day after day, she kept hearing the same thing and finally she gave in and got out of the bus and did a headstand at the Coke machine and this man came down from the bus and asked her, "Why are you doing a headstand here?". She answered (probably in embarrassment) " Because God asked me to". He told her that He had asked if there is a God, let someone do a headstand at this machine. She was appalled but I believe she is so grateful a soul got saved because of her obedience to God. She asked God why did He picked her to do that and He said many had turned Him down and she was the only one who obeyed.
7) Intimacy
- intimacy with God brings freedom to be who we are. When the Son sets u free, you are free indeed
- Profess : I promise myself to be kind to myself , to forgive myself, to bless myself ,to make mistake so I can grow and develop true intimacy with God.. Amen
8) Authority
-When there's intimacy, we begin to know who we are and when we receive God's love, we can love ourselves, then loving others becomes easy.
-we hold the glory of God (ie the attributes and character of God)
-Rom 3:23 we hv fallen short of God's glory. But we should not focus about our behavior, but God's glory
-Phil 1:20 even though Paul is in prison, and others think bad of him, as long as he bring glory to God, other things don't matter
- We have the authority, and when we pray, declare, and speak forth, things will happen
- Gen 1:20 Abraham left the land, sees Abimelech and lied about Sarah... He was looking at the king rather than God. Though Abimelech is innocent, God gave him a 'spanking' but Abraham got lifted off (Read more on the story at Genesis)
- Abraham was considered righteous because he believed God, not because of his behavior. Because he's righteous, God backed him up. God also gave us the same authority and will back us up.
9) The Power of God for us
- When we connect to the Source, miracles, healings, blessings comes into our life and through us we are able to uplift another.
10) Dominion
-It does not mean lording over others but have victory over areas of our life, then we can be useful to others and help them to have victory. Remember that Christ lives in us, through us and for us.
There are 10 steps but they are not in anyway in sequence because each of us have different issues in life that needs alot of work on. Some of the steps for some might have already come to a certain level of maturity. So work on the areas that need working by the grace of God.
