Bob Sorge will minister to Filipino Christians as he speaks in the “Intimacy with God: Reaching Deeper into the Heart of God” Conference scheduled on September 15, 1:00 p.m. at the Music Museum and September 16, 3:00 p.m. in Tanauan, Batangas. The Conference will also broadcast real time via livestreaming at www.jilworldwide.org. Tickets for the online broadcast are available at www.jilworldwide.org/catalog.
THERE IS VICTORY IN INTIMACY
By: Evelyn O. Katigbak
“IN HIS FACE”
Bob Sorge
158 pp.
Bob Sorge’s emotions in In His Face is so intense that both a Bob Sorge first time reader and a Bob Sorge aficionado will have the same reading experience: a longing for real intimacy with God.
From a sought-after speaker in international Christian conferences, Sorge is now a best-seller Christian author whose works have been translated into other languages. In His Face is his personal story that narrates the painful experience of losing his voice due to a vocal injury in which the surgery permanently damaged his ability to speak. He describes “talking” as his livelihood, ministry, and life and calls the experience as “devastating.”
In His Face is the personal story of every Christian who is undergoing a Job-like experience. You serve God faithfully and honor Him in your ministry and then God sends his “darkness” over you. Like Job, you ride into a roller coaster of different emotions… from self-pity to anger, from depression to indignation.
In His Face is the personal story of every Christian whose heart has been hardened by the cares of this world but remains oblivious and insensitive to his disgraceful spiritual condition. “Hardness of heart is a sickness that afflicts the hearts of sincere followers of Jesus Christ,” says Sorge. This sickness alienates us from God until we no longer recognize, or, worse, hear the voice of our Lord. And then we hurt, we grieve over the emptiness.
So a Christian is at a loss as to what hit him? A Christian is alienated from the voice of the Lord?
Sorge, also an effective worship coach, brings his readers to a personal discovery when he went into a retreat during his personal crisis. As he completely immersed himself one more time in the Word of God, especially the Gospels, he began to see the victory in our expressions of intimacy toward God.
He tells us to release our emotions as we worship God. “When your face is set toward the Lord, when your spirit is poised to worship the Lord, let your emotions go. When you’re in the presence of God, that’s the time to release your heart in loving abandon.”
He reminds us to delight in the beauty of God’s power, sovereignty, and holiness. “Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us!” (Psalm 90:17).
And he teaches us to give ourselves to “praise prayers” in our time of crisis. “Paul and Silas were praying. And the specific form of prayer they were employing was that of singing praises. They were singing ‘praise prayers.’ God delivered Paul and Silas from that jail in a mighty way to demonstrate His pleasure in releasing His power when we give ourselves to praise prayers in our own midnight hour.”
In periods of devastation, Sorge says that the direction we must choose to aim our cries must be to the Lord… in His face. Let us allow Him to see our pain, our tantrums, our self-pity and then our joy as He delivers us from the devastation.
A lesson for Sorge as well as for all of us: Responding to God’s invitation to meet Him “face to face” is the most intimate relationship we could have with God.