Study Notes

I.      God wants intimate fellowship with you-John 17:3

A.    Eternal life is to intimately know the Father and His son Jesus

1.      God wants there to be a constant flow of communication from you to Him and from Him to you; this is where sweetness of life is, this is where victory is

2.      If I can be in constant communication with the One who knows it all, there’s no situation I’ll face that I can’t overcome 

B.     God wants intimate fellowship with you and therefore the enemy is going to do everything he can to keep that from every taking place

1.      When fellowship with the Father stops everything else begins to break down

2.      Condemnation is one of the main tools the enemy uses to drive a wedge between God and His children, stopping that fellowship in it’s tracks

a.    EX: I didn’t do this and I should have, I didn’t read, I didn’t pray so now I won’t talk to God the rest of the day

3.      A sin consciousness will rob you of fellowship

II.     Genesis 3:8-10-One of the major purposes of guilt is to drive you away from God

A.    Sin consciousness/guilt/condemnation will cause you to withdraw from God’s presence

1.      You sin you feel bad so you don’t talk to God, you don’t pray, read, study

2.      Remember when fellowship with the Father stops everything else begins to break down and condemnation came to stop fellowship

a.    Condemnation comes after everything in your life by getting you away from God

3.      Be conscious of your righteousness will cause you to draw to God like never before

B.     Guilt and condemnation are fear based and fear dependent

1.      Fear that God’s mad at you, fear that God’s not pleased with you, fear that sin is going to negatively effect your life and keep you from God’s best, fear that you’re always going to be bound by this

a.    Fear is twisted faith: Yielding to guilt and condemnation is to have faith in sin; More faith in sin and it’s ability than in the blood and it’s ability

b.    When you yield to condemnation you’re exercising faith in sin to keep you guilty rather than faith in the blood to remove that sin and free your from guilt

2.      Mark 5:15-17-Fear always pushes God away

a.    1 John 4:18-Developing love will cast fear out, developing fear will cast God out

b.    You sinned for the 100^th time and you’re afraid and you won’t fellowship with God

3.      Righteousness is faith based and faith dependent

a.    I’m righteous by faith, I believe I’m righteous by faith; I’m not moved by what I see

C.    We need to become experts at running to God when we sin-1 John 1:9-2:2

1.      If guilt drives you away from fellowship with God Satan is winning

a.    Refuse to allow guilt to drive you away from fellowship with God

b.    If the purpose of condemnation is to drive me away from God, then a refuse to allow it to do that; SETTLE IT

2.      It is what it is, you are where you are; get good at confessing it and moving on

a.    Run back to God, run back to His Word, run back to prayer, not away from them

b.    Condemnation is a waste of time

3.      Quick to repent, quick to receive forgiveness and go on is a sign of maturity & faith

a.    Slow to repent, slow to receive forgiveness, condemned for 3 days is a sign of immaturity and unbelief

III.   Guilt and condemnation destroy fellowship and intimacy with God; it’s very difficult to have intimate fellowship with someone who think is mad at you-Colossians 1:18-23

A.    Alienated-You were shut out from God’s fellowship and intimacy by wicked works

1.      These wicked works were keeping you out of fellowship then and a consciousness of wicked works will keep you out of fellowship now

2.      If the wicked works are shutting you out, then if there is an agent by which we can remove the wicked works and the consciousness of them, then we can restore fellowship

B.     Reconcile-Bringing back a former state of harmony; The former state of harmony was the Garden of Eden where man approached God with no consciousness of sin and as though sin never existed because it never did

1.      As God approached man and as man approached God there was sweet fellowship b/c there was no consciousness of sin; there was nothing between the 2

2.      20-The blood establishes harmony between God and man again b/c it puts man in right-standing with God and that right-standing that we have with God by the blood enables us to approach God and fellowship with God as though sin never existed

3.      When a man summons up the courage and faith to approach God as though sin never existed it will infuse purity into his fellowship with God

a.    Sin consciousness is the biggest thing robbing my people of fellowship with me

b.    They are so conscious of their sin that it strips the purity from our fellowship

c.     They can’t receive what I want to say through a consciousness of sin; to receive what I want to say they have to be conscious of their right-standing with me

C.    There’s something about knowing that you’re always going to be right with a person that allows you to take the level of fellowship in that relationship to the next level

1.      When you know somebody doesn’t like you are that you’re not right with them intimate fellowship with them can never be birthed and avoidance is inevitable

2.      A love relationship with the Father starts at the point of knowing I’m the righteousness of God

3.      When you understand your right-standing with God it draws you to Him, it draws you to intimate fellowship with Him-James 4:8

D.    Philippians 3:10-12-It’s interesting that his determined purpose was to know God and the one thing he made up in his mind to do was to forget his past

1.      To know God intimately, you have to fellowship with God intimately and to fellowship with him intimately you’re going to have to forget the past

2.      If you allow them to, past mistakes will rob you of present fellowship

IV.   A sin consciousness always gives birth to inferiority, unworthiness, and inequality and where these are working intimate fellowship cannot take place

A.    Intimacy is thwarted when equality is absent

1.      Where there is no equality there can be no intimate fellowship and a love relationship can’t exist

2.      EX: It’s like a fan of somebody is star struck

3.      A worm in the dust, unrighteous sinner can’t intimately fellowship with the King

4.      Truthfully, how intimate can a relationship be when one person sees him or herself as being less than the other person

B.     When God created us, he created us to have equality with Him; He created me in his image, made me in right-standing with him so that as His son I could fellowship with Him

1.      I come boldly to the throne of grace because I got a Father-Heb 4:16, Romans 8:14