The twelfth course, Working With God, takes us to the world outside the home and the church. It then takes us back into the church with a new view of how the church should be run.

• The Pursuit of God: So many Christians misunderstand God’s attitudes as they read the Old Testament. Because they see God as a critical, judging, intolerant, and punishing God, they take on those attitudes in the church. When they go out into the world, they carry those same attitudes, as they evaluate the people who are unsaved. As people who are unsaved come into the church, they experience critical, judgmental, intolerant attitudes from God’s people.
  
  Rather than being loved, cared for, forgiven, and helped, Christians and potential Christians are punished for every mistake they make. This causes few new people to survive the church experience. This course helps us see why the church should have the same attitude as doctors and nurses in the hospital. We are there to treat sin like they treat diseases.



• The Greatness of God: It is impossible to work with God, when you don’t really know Him and His greatness. Working with Him requires that you understand that God exists in great power and rewards with great love. Your expectancy is raised to a whole new level of faith as you look into God’s greatness. You will learn to expect God-sized results from such a great and loving God.
  
  As you work with God, you will learn how to let Him be God in your life. You will start allowing Him to do what He can do rather than limiting Him to your level of production and performance. This will create His greatness in your life and ministry. You and the people around you will benefit from the fullness of God’s provisions.



• The Dream: Working with God and the dream God has placed in your heart are like a hand inside a glove. You and your dream fit in God’s blessings, work, and ministry in perfect form and purpose. You learn that you can’t live a God-sized dream without God; and God won’t fulfill the dream without you. You aren’t working FOR God. Your dream comes alive by working WITH God.
  
  Dreams from God can only come true as you learn how to work with God. Once that starts to happen, your work inside and outside the church takes on a whole new purpose and style. The supernatural works that you could never offer a person before are now being done by God through you. God makes your dream come true by using you to help other’s dreams to come true.



• The Children of God: Sometimes we categorize people into sinners and saints. It is true that there are sinners and saints. However, you actually have no idea which are which. There is only one person you can know for sure that they have been born again; that person is you. You can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are a child of God. But, you must see everyone else as God’s children. That doesn’t mean that you fail to present the good news to them. That means you leave to God the final judgment as to whether or not they are saved.
  
  When you stop trying to decide who is a Christian and who isn’t, you stop judging, criticizing, neglecting, and talking against others. As you talk to and treat others as if they are members of the family of God, that is when you can start helping them with love. Then if you see sin in their life, you can lead them into praying whatever prayer they need to pray.



• The Word of God: One of the main purposes of the Word of God is to heal people. It is the medicine that God uses to heal people emotionally, physically, financially, relationally, spiritually, and ministerially. Human effort and human reasoning can only deal with surface issues. Healing symptoms only makes it look like the cause has been eliminated. God’s Word goes right down to the depths of the heart of the issue.
  
  God uses His Word to heal the real problem that is causing all the symptoms in a person. The more faith and dependency you put in God’s Word and the less faith and dependency you put in human systems, the more healings you are going to see inside and outside the church.



• Hearing God’s Voice: It would be impossible for you to work with someone, if you couldn’t communicate with them. One way God communicates with you is through His Word, the Bible. That is His letter to you. One of the problems with a letter, text, or email is the fact that the emotions and tones can’t be expressed. That is why we sometimes use smiley faces and different fonts.
  
  The best way for you to work together with God is to allow Him to speak to your thoughts and feelings. As you grow in your abilities to know when He is influencing your thoughts and feelings, you are able to do a lot more with Him as you work together with Him.

• God’s Answers to Prayer: Doctors and nurses are constantly consulting one another concerning the treatment of their patients. It your opportunity and obligation to consult the Great Physician concerning your patients. First, you need to “scrub up” and make sure you are clean and free from spiritual diseases that would contaminate your patient. You need to bring your heart and life before God by asking Him to examine and cleanse you.
  
  Being clean and without sinful contaminants gets you ready for your next step in bringing healing, you need to make sure that you find out whether or not your plan of ministering to those around you is in keeping with God’s will and purpose. You need to be in constant contact with Him throughout the entire course of your day.



• The Kingdom: As you work WITH God, your attention becomes more and more on eternal priorities. The demands of this life can completely dominate all you do and all you are. You can get so submerged into this life that it almost seems like this is all there is. Working with God keeps you from falling into that way of thinking. You are an eternal being that is being trained here for life in eternity.
  
  Only God understands what kind of training you will need. You need this God relationship so as to keep you from getting off track. When you move into your eternal life, you will totally understand why God directed you the way He did. But, for now, you can simply trust His direction and everything will turn out great for here and for eternity.



• Born to Win: It is so amazing the way God thinks. Who would ever understand a race where many of those who come in first will be last and many who come in last actually came in first? Learning to work with God will change your whole perspective about winning. With God, the more people you help to cross over the finish line, the more God presents you with first place rewards.
  
  The problem with God’s race is, you can get so busy helping people across the finish line that you end up crossing it last. But, to your surprise, the Judge of the universe will give you a first place reward. By working with God rather than working for God, your way of seeing things becomes totally changed. You will experience the joy of blessing others and the joy of being blessed by God.



• The Good News: Some of your most exciting moments of experiencing the things of this world are mundane in comparison to working with God. God working miracles in people’s lives and you being so close to the event that it actually feels like you worked the miracle, is something that all Christians can experience. Working with God takes the good news message from just words to miraculous events that change people’s lives in drastic ways.
  
  It isn’t good enough for people to hear the good news. They need to be able to experience it in their own lives. But, even though you are presenting it, you can’t make it happen in others. The good news takes on a whole new meaning, when you start allowing God to establish a collaborative relationship with you. Power starts flowing through you into other’s lives because God is being allowed to work through you.



• Building Relationships: People can be a real struggle at times. As you read the Bible and see all the things God expects you to do for people, it can become out right scary. How can God expect you to be so loving, forgiving, and kind to people who treat you the way some people treat you. The answer is found in your relationship with God. Working with God means that you receive His presence, power, character, and philosophies into your way of life. This helps us with your relationships with people and God.
  
  God’s presence in you makes it possible for you to feel things you would never be able to feel without Him. It is a miracle for you to be able to forgive some people. But, with God living inside you, He empowers you to want to do the godly thing and to actually put it into action. Working with God also means living with God. He helps you live out His way of life with love and victory.



• Working with God: Church is a place where people can have a spiritual home. It is a place where hurting people can get help without being judged or rejected. We will be taking the world of medicine and the environment of a hospital to illustrate how a church and church people need to interact. Church relationships don’t always follow a loving pattern. Church people don’t always act like Christians. However, if we are going to help our community and our world, we are going to have to make some changes in our church and in our own lives.