The Preached God Vs. The Personal God, Which Do YOU Know?

Are you struggling with your faith and it seems like God is hard to please?

If so, it may be that you're in a relationship with the wrong God!

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Summary

In this episode, Treveal C.W. Lynch discusses the importance of knowing God for yourself. He observes that many people struggle in their relationship with God and live limited, burdensome lives because they rely on someone else's interpretation or experience of God.

He emphasizes the value of having a personal relationship with God and understanding that God treats each person differently based on their unique dynamics.

Treveal encourages listeners to come to God for rest, relief, and refreshment, and to start the journey of getting to know God for themselves.

Takeaways

• Knowing God for yourself is essential for a fruitful and free life.
• Church context and conditioning can limit our understanding of God.
• God treats each person differently based on their unique dynamics.
• Come to God for rest, relief, and refreshment.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Welcome
01:27 Struggles in Knowing God
05:20 Knowing God for Yourself
07:14 Church Context and Conditioning
08:42 The Value of a Personal Relationship with God
12:32 God's Individual Treatment of His Children
17:19 Matthew 11:28-30 - Finding Rest in God
21:10 Knowing God vs. Knowing Someone Else's Experience
25:05 Living a Limited and Burdensome Christian Experience
29:21 Awareness of the Need to Know God for Yourself
30:20 Conclusion and Farewell

Transcript

Treveal C.W. Lynch (00:00.682)
Hey, what is good, my good people? Yes, it is I, Travell CW Lynch, Mr. What and Happy New Year's. Yes, welcome once again into the I Am The Possible universe. Welcome once again to the I Am The Possible podcast experience. I am so, so excited to be.

back with you once again in this new year. I hope and pray, man, that you are doing well. Wherever you are, I truly hope and pray that this new year is getting off to truly a new start. Guys, as I always do, let me pause for the cause. You are the cause. You're the reason I do what I do. It is the hope that I might say something, share something, show something.

that will be of value to you because you are of such great value to me. I thank you for who you are, I thank you for where you are, and I thank you for why you are. You are literally the image, you are the creation, you are the idea, you were formed in the imagination of God. You are an extension, you are an expression of God himself.

And so I value you, I love you, I accept you, I honor you, I celebrate you. Happy New Year's. Guys, today I wanna talk to you about knowing God for yourself. Do you know God or do you know the interpretation, the perspective, the projection? Do you know the experience?

of someone else. I think this is something I'm going to continue to hammer on throughout this year and perhaps the rest of my life. I am seeing so many brothers and sisters in the Lord struggling to feel good about themselves, to feel good about God, to feel good about their relationship with God. I see so many

Treveal C.W. Lynch (02:24.502)
brothers and sisters in the Lord, man, just struggling to walk with and live with a high level of confidence in who they are and like a high level of clarity in terms of their ability in Christ to live a fruitful and a free life. And what I'm starting to see, because a lot of this...

Not only, you know, stems from the things that the Lord has already put on my heart, but the more videos and the content that I put out, the comments that I'm getting back. Over time, I've been noticing this pattern. Whenever someone would comment, and let's just consider it or call it negative, where they, you know, kind of didn't agree with what I shared about God.

They didn't agree with what I shared about my relationship with God. They would make these comments. They would bring up scriptures and they would, in a sense, challenge or question my position. And I don't clap back. I don't get into internet wars. It actually breaks my heart because I see the struggle. I see the burden. I see the weight and the pressure that...

they put on themselves, that has been put on them, that they've adopted, that they carry. And it's anything but freedom, it's anything but liberation, it's anything but this life that Christ talks about in the word of God, this life to the full, this life to the abundant, this full life experience.

This isn't about naming it and claiming it. When I use the word abundance, it's not about money, while that could be included. What I'm more so talking about is the abundance and the fullness of the life experience. I'm sure you've heard the term, you know, being religious, being rigid, being very restrictive in our relationship with God.

Treveal C.W. Lynch (04:50.53)
And the more I live and the more I get closer to God, the more God reveals Himself to me, the more I see of God, the more I observe of God, the more I see how we are living these self-imposed, self-determined burdens and stresses and loads.

and weights. And I want to ask you that question, do you know God or do you know someone else's experience of God? Do you really know God for yourself or do you live out of, do you operate out of, do you know walk this faith walk out according to what's been preached, what's been taught, how you've been conditioned over time? And let me just you know say this right out the gate.

This is not about church bashing or bishop bashing or pastor bashing or church leadership bashing. There's enough of that out there. I'm not against the church. I'm in the church. I am the church. I'm a ordained pastor, minister, right? So it's not about me coming against any of this. It all has its place. It all has its purpose. It all carries a certain value.

But what I'm saying is that I'm starting to see that many of us have come into a church context, many of us have come into a church experience, and we are told who God is. We're taught who God is. And that's not bad, but it's very limiting. I think it can be bad, depending on...

who you hook up with. I mean, everyone's not out for your best good, for your best interest. Not everyone has your best interest in mind. So there are some churches that are just full of mess. There are some churches that are on some foolishness. But even some of the, what we would consider solid churches, what I'm starting to see is, is not a fault of the pastor or the religious leaders. It's more so on

Treveal C.W. Lynch (07:14.046)
our culture and the way that we have been conditioned in the ways of we come into a church and we sit under leadership. And that's where the dynamic ends when it comes to us learning about God. Everything is fed to us by the pastor, by the leader, by the bishop, by the apostle, by the prophet. And again, I'm going to say this once and for all. I'm not going to...

continue to repeat myself. I'm not bashing or coming against the church leadership. I am church leadership. What I'm simply saying is, is that when it comes to living the fullness, the abundant, living the life that God created us to live, I believe, this is my opinion, that it requires a

personal relationship with God, where you get to know God. Not someone's interpretation of God, not someone's opinion of God. It's my opinion that you need to know God for yourself, but I'm not gonna give you an opinion of God.

for you to run off and know. Know, I wanna encourage you, I wanna inspire you, I want to exhort you to take the time to get to know God for yourself. That's like saying, I know someone, right? Let's say I have a friend, I know them. I've been rocking with this person since third grade. I know them in and out, right? I know their next words before they even speak them, right? Like, I know this person.

But let's say you've never met this person. And I come up and I say, hey man, this person is da da. I give you the rundown of this person. What am I doing? I'm giving you the rundown of this individual in the context of my relationship with them. You might meet this same person and have a totally different experience because we are different.

Treveal C.W. Lynch (09:41.078)
depending on who we're dealing with. I treat this person this way, I treat this person this way. Not about equality, but about context of relationship. I love my wife, she's a woman. I do certain things with my wife that I won't do with another sister in Christ. I love my sisters in Christ.

but I won't treat my sisters in Christ the same. Why? Because of the unique dynamics of the relationship. And what I'm saying to you is, is that God loves us equally, but I believe he treats us differently. Why? Because we're different. I've got four children. I love them all equally, but I treat them all differently. Why?

because they're different. I can't do certain things with my daughter that I do with my sons. And I can't do certain things with each of my sons that I do with each of them. Like I got three boys. I can't do the same thing with TJ that I do with, let's say, Aaron, right? TJ loves fishing, for example. I can go fishing with my son and talk aquatics all day long. If I say, hey, Aaron, let's go fishing, let's talk aquatics, he's gonna roll his eyes and be like, come on now.

You come on now, you know how I roll. But if I said, hey Aaron, let's go to the racetrack, right? Let's go watch some NASCAR. Then he's all in, he's in the car before I can get in. But after I told TJ, hey, let's go watch some NASCAR, he may or may not go, but I know that it ain't his thing. I just wanted to give you that example. I love them both equally. I'll give my life for both of them, but I treat them differently because of.

their personal bins and preferences and dynamics and their personality types. You have to learn and get really intimate with your children so that you know how to approach them if you want to have a fruitful relationship with them. Well, in the same way, wouldn't it make sense that God our Father, God our everything would want to, as we call ourselves, his children, wouldn't it make sense that he would want to treat me differently than he treats you?

Treveal C.W. Lynch (12:04.382)
not because he loves me anymore or less than he loves you, but because the dynamics of our relationships, of our relationship has to be different. It's just sense, it's just common sense. The dynamics are different, so he has to treat us differently. He can't say to me what he says to you because I'm not you and you ain't me. God is that smart. He's like that infinitely wise, like he's that brilliant, yes.

If me as a human father can discern, hey, I got four children and I need to treat them differently according to who they are, then why wouldn't God be that smart? Just a question. So I hope and pray that I'm not losing you with this, but that is all being strung together to sort of almost make an argument or make a case for the value of getting to know God for yourself because I can stand in a pulpit.

And I can tell you a story, which I've done many times. And I can say, you know, God told me to do this and I did this and these were the results. I've done that before. But that was my experience. Does God love you like he loves me? Yes. But that's not to say that if you do exactly what I did, God's going to do for you what he did for me. Why?

because your life is different. He needs to work with you differently. He needs to love on you differently. He needs to treat you differently based upon who you are. So guys, again, my point, I've seen and I continue to see so many people struggle in their relationship with God, in their trust of God, in their faith of God, in their love and their...

their willingness to truly go all in with God and just go all in on life. I've seen people struggle with accepting themselves. I've seen people struggle with living this life to the full. And I think it's my opinion, it's my observation that the consistent narrative, the common theme.

Treveal C.W. Lynch (14:27.778)
the thread that's woven in all of these comments and conversations that I'm being exposed to is that they point to God and they say, he's like this. Therefore, I can't do this or this can't be true. Or they'll say, God is like this. So why would I wanna follow him? Why would I want to be a Christian, right? It's like the whole spectrum.

Some are just limited in their lives because of how they see God. Some of us are just all out on God. I ain't following them and I ain't going to church because of our perspective. Either way, I think that a lot of it has to do with not having a personal relationship with God, but rather having a relationship with the experiences of someone else's relationship with God.

You're trying to replicate what someone else said. You're trying to experience what someone else experienced. And it doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way. I wanna read a couple of scriptures to you. Actually, you know what? Let me just read one today. I don't wanna take too much more time because today was just about awareness.

Treveal C.W. Lynch (15:48.706)
Today was just about asking the question. Today was really more so about just really bringing some light to this and really seeing possibly where you stand on this and really making sure you're just trying to fix some of my camera issues here. If you're watching, let me just try to fix this issue here. But if you are listening.

then just continue to listen. Here, let me fix my little technology here. But again, I'm gonna read the scripture, but really this is more about awareness and just bringing some things to our awareness for us to think about and to chew on, to process, because you may be someone.

You may be someone out there today that is, you know, not experiencing God the way that you should or that you could. So I just really wanna help with that. All right, yeah, I don't know what's going on with my video, but let me just continue to record the audio. All right.

So let me read this passage to you here.

Treveal C.W. Lynch (17:19.342)
Let me see. All right. It's out of, let's see, Matthew 11. Matthew 11. Matthew 11 verse, starting at verse 27. Oh, you know what, actually starting at verse 28. It says, and I'm reading out of, you know what, I'm gonna read the amplified version. I like the amplified version with this one.

Treveal C.W. Lynch (17:50.362)
Let's see. So it says, come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden and overburdened and I will cause you to rest. I will ease and relieve and refresh your souls. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me for I am gentle, meek and humble, lowly in heart.

and you will find rest, relief and ease, refreshment, oh, and recreation and blessed quietness for your souls. I think that's pretty cool. I think what that says is that God is revealing how he is.

Jesus is saying this is how I operate. This is how I am. If you were to come to me, this is how I am.

He says, come to me and get rest. He says, come to me and be refreshed. He says, come to me when you're burdened and when you're wore out. And there's been some translations here that just simply says that this is talking about the religious burdens, having that religious experience with God, where you're just really weighed down and you're really stressed out because of the rigidness that you.

are experiencing in your relationship with God. And so I just wanted to hear, if I get this technical piece going here, sorry about that. Yeah, I'm not sure what is going on with this technical piece here.

Treveal C.W. Lynch (19:45.366)
but I will continue to record. So yeah, so it's again, it's really talking about the idea of being free in God and experiencing this rest and this relationship with God. I think this is why I was saying, I don't get when we have these conversations about

you know, God and not receiving God or not really rocking with God all that much. Because here God is saying, come to me, this is how I am. I mean, from this description, why would you not want to serve this God? Why would you not want to be in a relationship with this God? And if this is how God is, then why would I not?

be able to be free and to be rested in my heart and in my mind. Like, where is all this stress coming from? Where is all this burden coming from? Where is all this wear and tear on my soul coming from if I'm truly in a relationship with God rather than in a relationship with other people's projections of God, other people's experiences of God.

Like you can actually, because I even preached this from our church, or preached this for my church, it's, we are actually able to think that we're in a relationship with God, but actually be in a relationship with someone else's expression or someone else's experience of God. Like all these years, you thought you were knowing God.

but what you really knew was the God that was preached. What you knew was the God of someone else's testimony. What you knew was the God of someone else's experience. And it's caused you stress and frustration because you're trying to duplicate or replicate or you're trying to experience what they experienced. You're trying to fit their...

Treveal C.W. Lynch (22:05.394)
version of God, their experience with God, which could be completely honest, completely true. They could be keeping it in a book. I mean, what they testify of, what they preach of, what they talk about, it could absolutely be true of them, for them. And we can come into this context called church or Christianity or, you know, whatever it is, we can come into this faith. And if we're not taught,

out the gate, hey, be careful. When someone testifies, they're testifying of their experience. Hey, when someone's preaching, there's an element of them that's a part of that sermon. Yes, they've maybe prayed and they've fasted and they've heard from God, but at some point, right, because we're human, the human-ness, the human element is going to come through. It's going to be expressed at some point.

Right? And that's why some people rock with certain pastors and, you know, you don't rock with other pastors. Why? Because every, because they're people, they have personalities. They may be preaching and teaching the word of God, but it's through the filter, it's through the vessel, it's through the person and they have a certain personality type. So make no question about like, don't, you know, let's not get it twisted. The greatest sermon, you know, preached

by any of the world's greatest preachers. And however you determine greater or great, that's on you, but that's a whole different topic. But if you take the greatest in your consideration, the greatest pastors, the greatest preachers, the greatest orators, the greatest communicators of God's word, I don't care what sermon, what teaching, what speech, what thing they've said, there is a part of them that's a part of that.

It's a part, a part of them has to be a part of the message that they preach. It's just impossible to do otherwise. It just doesn't work that way. It has to come through the vessel. And so again, what's my main point? Let me recap so I can shut this down. My main point is...

Treveal C.W. Lynch (24:35.242)
And this may be true for you. There are people who are living very limited, burdensome, stressful lives, or very burdensome, limited, stressful Christian experiences. Their Christianity, their faith has become a burden because they've not gotten to know, and this may be you, it was certainly true of me.

where I didn't know God, I knew the God of someone else's experience, of someone else's testimony, of someone else's relationship with God. And I was trying to fit God into that box. And I was trying to experience what they experienced. And I was trying to live it like them. And I was trying to see Him show up and show out in my life the way that He was showing up and showing out in their lives.

and it only led to frustration, disappointment, letdown, deflation. And you may be in that place as well. I want you to remember Matthew 11. Matthew 11 says, come to me. He says not to people. Jesus says, come to me. Those are the instructions. That's the CTA. He says, come to me and I will give you rest, not come to the next person.

Going to people getting advice, getting mentors, going to your pastor for some advice, going to Godly council, yes, yes and amen. All, listen, anything that I share, I'm never discounting something else. I'm never canceling other things. I'm just simply saying that don't leave this out. You see what I'm saying? Don't leave what this passage is saying out. Because I could also go to the Proverbs where it definitely talks about

you know, godly counsel and getting wisdom from other people. Yes, that's that it all has this time and place. What I'm saying is don't leave out Matthew 11. Don't leave out going to God and getting his personal rest. He says because my yoke is easy, my burden is light. If the yoke on you, that spiritual yoke, if it's a burden, if it's heavy, if it's wearing you down, if you're struggling.

Treveal C.W. Lynch (27:02.718)
Maybe there's a problem. Maybe you don't know God. Maybe the God that you know ain't the one that he's trying to be for you. And you've edged out unknowingly, this ain't me pointing the fingers at you, but unknowingly, just like me, I didn't know any better. And maybe you don't know any better. And that's okay because now you do know better. Maybe you did know better. And don't get down on yourself saying all these years, I've lost all these years.

are worth nothing, it's no, no. Don't take that route. Don't worry about that. Pick up where you are, start from where you are. Look forward. Now you know that perhaps you need to know God and he is a prayer away. He is a observation away. He is a conversation away. This isn't magic. This isn't gonna take you 20 years to get it right. This can start for you right now, right where you are.

Dear God, show me who you are. Help me relate to you. Help me come to you and to get to know you, to receive you. And help me to continue to respect all these other elements, the preaching and the prayer and the.

and the counseling and the fellowshipping of the saints. And let me appreciate all of this support, all of this community. But let me also begin to live the life that you sent your son to provide for me to live, the abundant, true, full life experience that I have.

this amazing opportunity to experience and to live. I wanna live that life. So teach me who you are for me, just like a parent to their child. Teach me how to relate with you. Teach me who you are. Teach me how you work with me. Let's start there, guys. Again, today, the purpose is really about awareness, awareness.

Treveal C.W. Lynch (29:21.814)
I'm going to be coming back to this topic all throughout the year. I just wanted to kick it off today with some awareness and I hope and pray that you are more aware that you don't have to be so stressed out. You don't have to be so wore out. You don't have to be so rigid and just torn down and beat down trying to, uh, fit your relationship with God into the box of someone else's relationship and someone else's preaching and teaching. You need to know God for yourself.

and God wants you to know him. And God wants you to live out of that relationship and out of that revelation of him. Okay? That's it, man. I love you guys. I'm praying for you guys. I'm believing in you guys. Normally there's a video version of this. I don't believe I was able to successfully complete the video version of this. So it just may be audio.

But when I shut it all down, I'll see where we stand with that. But nevertheless, you've got the audio. So I hope and pray that this has been a blessing to you until next time, guys. Until next time. This is Trevail CW Lynch, Mr. What What, your self-worth specialist. And this has been another episode of the I Am the Possible Podcast Experience, the place where possibilities become perspective. Until next time, guys. Love.