An Interview with Dr. Richard Blackaby

• Richard Blackaby's parents moved the family from a thriving Los Angeles church to a Canadian church of 10 people that was about to die, and assumed God would do more than just help them survive; over 12 years there, 38 other churches were started from that church and its missions, along with a Bible college.
• Experiencing God almost never got written, because Henry Blackaby did not see himself as an author and was too busy, so Lifeway sent editor Claude King to follow him with a tape recorder and transcribe his teaching, and that transcription became the basis of the book.
• The publisher's benchmark for that series was 5,000 copies; the book sold roughly 500,000 a year and has now sold over 8 million copies in 75 languages, though Henry was paid about $2,500 flat with no royalty until around the 7-million mark.
• Richard was a field editor on the original writing and, about 15 years later, did a line-by-line edit to clean up the wording without changing the teaching; there have been three video versions — Henry's original, Richard with his father, and Richard with his son Mike.
• Henry called his seven points "realities" rather than principles because he did not want people following a principle instead of following God; the two most talked about are that God is always at work around you and that God pursues a real, personal love relationship with you.
• Richard recounted testimonies including a suicidal college student who was pulled into an Experiencing God study and later met Henry at a Dallas registration line, a Cape Town ticket agent reading Hearing God's Voice, and a South American woman whose husband burned her workbook and threatened her life before later being saved and going through the study himself.
• A sequel is set to release from Lifeway around June 1, running eight weeks instead of twelve, focused on recognizing God in the ordinary rather than expecting a burning bush every day and on daily habits that build spiritual maturity; Richard teaches it with his sons Mike and Daniel.

Take it further

1. Richard said his parents assumed God would do more than just help their church of 10 survive. Where are you currently praying only for survival, and what would it change to assume God intends more?
2. Henry's first reality is that God is always at work around you, and the question is whether you have the spiritual eyes to recognize it. Where might God already be working around you that you have been calling coincidence?
3. Richard described people who served God but did not love him, because they knew God as a doctrine rather than a person. Which describes your relationship with God right now, and why?
4. Henry insisted the book be called Experiencing God rather than Knowing God. What is the practical difference between knowing about God and experiencing him in your week?
5. Richard said some readers began expecting every day to be a burning bush experience, and that God most often works through the ordinary. What ordinary part of your life — your job, your home, your neighbors — might you be overlooking as a place to meet God?
6. Drew described tangible spiritual opposition the night he started the study, and Richard said Satan pushes back when someone starts getting serious about God. When you have faced that kind of resistance, how did you respond, and what does Richard's question — "What does Satan know that I don't know?" — suggest about it?