Tag: fellowship with God

Sharing Your Life with God

IMG_0064 (2)Psalm 17:3-5

You have tried my heart, you have visited me by night, you have tested me, and you will find nothing; I have purposed that my mouth will not transgress. With regard to the works of man, by the word of your lips I have avoided the ways of the violent. My steps have held fast to your paths; my feet have not slipped (ESV).

One of the basics about the Christian life is that we have fellowship with God; we share our lives with God. Indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3c ESV). The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all (2 Corinthians 13:14 ESV). We know this, yet I think that we don’t do well in actually sharing our lives with the Lord. Perhaps part of the problem is that we don’t know how. Yes, we we’ve been taught how to have devotions, how to pray, how to read the Bible, how to participate in a public worship service, how to witness, and perhaps how to meditate and how to listen to a sermon. I am not for a moment downplaying the importance of such skills. I would only say that praying, reading, and so on should not be mechanical or ritualistic. But that is not the concern of this article.

Let’s think on a larger level than the particulars. Let’s think about sharing our life, because a passion for one area can easily “eat up” the others. For this, we need a model or example. The Spirit has given us one in David, the man after God’s heart. Our text has several ideas about sharing one’s life with God.

  • David knew that God was directly involved with him. He did not live like God was far off. He knew that the Lord visited him by night. As Paul said, “God is actually not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27 ESV). God is near, close to us, so that we can share our lives with him. God tests us; this might sound scary, until you remember that God is your Father and loves you. The testing is for your benefit.
  • David knew the importance of the heart, the inner person. This takes us off the stage of attempting to impress God by what we do. He knows our motives and attitudes and emotions. David, like the writer of Hebrews knew that he stood naked before God. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account (Hebrews 4:13 ESV). To share life with God, we must want this openness. You can’t share, if you’re trying to hide or avoid.
  • David desired to live godly. God is the Holy One, and to share our lives with him, we must purpose to live in conformity with who God is. Our words come from our hearts (Matthew 12:34), and so David sought comprehensive godliness. To share one’s life with God does not simply happen. It requires godly desires that we put into practice. These come from our union with Christ by the Spirit’s help. God wants us to want his way of life.
  • David realized that he needed instruction from God’s word. He listened to the word of your lips and his steps held fast to your paths. Notice the personal awareness: the repeated your. As he listened to the word and meditated on it, he made choices to live for God. To say it another way, God was his personal coach or mentor. There is a freeness of exchange between a coach and his athlete. For example, “Here is the correct form you need to make a layup.” A wise athlete will seek feedback from his coach about his or her progress in achieving that form.
  • David kept focused on the Lord. He avoided some ways, and held fast to others. The writer of Hebrews urges us to keep our eyes on Jesus (Hebrews 12:2). To share life with God, we must, so to speak, stay close to where he is and avoid where he isn’t. A basketball team is told to put on a full court press. Each player must know where the coach wants them to be and what to do in various contingencies. “You’re responsible for that area of the court.” The players must keep their heads in the game. We can’t share our lives with God if we “check out”. God is “on the court” with us, and we discuss with him how his story is opening up in our lives.

One more thing: David wasn’t talking theory. This was his life. He shared life with God among other people who had no desire to do so. He made the daily choices necessary to be with God and to interact with him about his life. Do we?

Grace and peace, David

Can We Pray Differently?

20120605_095529Ephesians 1:16-19

I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might (ESV).

Prayer ought to be a joyful experience for every follower of Jesus Christ. When we pray, we have the awesome privilege of communicating with God our Father through Jesus the Son of God with the help of the Spirit of God. Prayer is a time of fellowship with the living, eternal, holy Maker and Sustainer of all things! Yet, do we experience the holy joy of this fellowship? Are we willing to confess our lack of this fellowship? It seems that most do have this lack. From numerous years of experience as a pastor and teacher, I have observed the following.

  • Many churches no longer have a regular prayer meeting. Prayer meetings used to be the hallmark of gospel teaching churches.
  • Churches that do have prayer meetings have less than ten percent of their morning service in attendance.
  • People in prayer meetings look bored, act bored, talk bored, pray boring prayers, and some fall asleep.
  • Prayer times in Bible studies and morning services are perfunctory, people-focused, and usually powerless. When I was young, the pastoral prayer in morning services used to be at least five to ten minutes in length. Through pressure from the unspiritual or to please the unspiritual, such prayers are timed to about one to three minutes.
  • Prayer requests are about ninety-nine percent focused on the physical or material needs of people. This does not count the spiritual requests for the local church, its missionaries, and mission that are printed on a weekly prayer sheet. At a prayer meeting, such spiritual requests are neglected or prayed for in a ho-hum manner.
  • People in local congregations are unaware of the spiritual needs of one another and so never pray for one another as they ought.

I could add more, but to present our problem is not to solve it. At the core is a fundamental disconnect with the Lord. People also pray for the wrong things (for example, James 4:3), do not receive answers to such requests, which then produces little faith and discouragement about prayer. Another difficulty is that we need to pray differently. In articles to come, I want to explore this idea. I dream of seeing believers committed to communicating with God again. I want to see them open their hearts to the Lord, and to one another. I long to join with other saints (people that are set apart to the Lord) in fervent prayer, to hear something like “Can we pray soon? I’ve been bursting at the seams out of a holy desire to pray with you all!” Or, “Can we get together so that we can pray?”

Let’s pray.

Grace and peace, David

Draw Near to God

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Hebrews 10:22

We live in a day that emphasizes methodology and technique above character. People in our time suppose that it doesn’t matter what you are as long as you do what you’re supposed to, whatever that means. This can be seen in the attitudes of people towards star athletes on their favorite teams. Character doesn’t matter until the athlete does something so horrendous and out of control that people have to notice. However, people of true greatness avoid that trap. For example, consider John Adams at the time of the Boston Massacre. He was then a prominent lawyer with a growing practice and enlarging political prospects. Then came the tragic events of the evening of March 5, 1770. The British officer and soldiers who fired on the crowd were charged with murder. No one would defend them in court—except John Adams. Though he feared for his reputation and even the welfare and lives of his family and himself, he did not hesitate to take the case. Why? He did so because he believed in the rule of law and the right of every man to a fair trial and a proper defense. So he risked everything to do what was right.

Every church must have a sense of Christ’s character and want to demonstrate his character and way of life before a watching world, and more importantly, to God. To say this another way, our individual spiritual lives must be in right order before the collective “body life” of our church can be right. A crucial aspect of this way of life is drawing near to God. When Christians draw near to God, then they realize that they are near to each other. Consider Romans 15:7.

The Holy Spirit in this text gives as tremendous exhortation: “let us draw near”. But think of the One whom the writer encourages us to approach. He is the true and living God. He is the God who is glorious and majestic (1:3), the Creator of all things (3:4; 11:3). He is angry with sinners (3:10; 10:27) and is all-knowing (4:13). He is also the Judge of mankind (10:30-31; 12:23; 13:4) and is a consuming fire (12:29; cf. Deuteronomy 4:23-24). Anyone that takes these words seriously might want to draw back. We might well fear him rather than want to be near him. You see, in order to draw near to God, we must have a correct concept of the God who is there and who wants us to draw near! This involves an ever-deepening knowledge of God’s revelation of himself in the Scriptures.

“As long as we do not look beyond the earth, being quite content with our own righteousness, wisdom, and virtue, we flatter ourselves most sweetly, and fancy ourselves all but demigods. Suppose we but once begin to raise our thoughts to God, and to ponder his nature, and how completely perfect are his righteousness, wisdom, and power —the straightedge to which we must be shaped. Then, what masquerading earlier as righteousness was pleasing in us will soon grow filthy in its consummate wickedness. What wonderfully impressed us under the name of wisdom will stink in its very foolishness. What wore the face of power will prove itself the most miserable weakness. That is, what in us seems perfection itself corresponds ill to the purity of God” (Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.1.2)

However, (and this is the good news!), because of God’s free grace to us in Jesus Christ, we can approach God with joyful confidence. This joyful confidence rests on what we have in Christ. “Since we have… let us…” (10:21-22). In the words of Margaret Clarkson in the hymn “We Come, O Christ, to You”: “You are the Way to God, your blood our ransom paid; in you we face our Judge and Maker unafraid.” Here we see the logic of the believer. Or to say this another way, God wants us to love and worship him with our minds. Think about what you have in Christ, and then think about what you should do because you have been so richly blessed. Our nickname for this is “Therefore Christianity”. Know what you have in Christ, and therefore, live this way. How then should we think? Don’t merely moan about your failings. Proper mourning over sin is fine; in fact, it is commendable (Matthew 5:4), as long as it doesn’t leave you in the swamp of depression. True spiritual sorrow over sin in a believer will lead the saint back to Christ and real repentance (2 Corinthians 7:8-11). However, don’t look for a supplemental experience, as if Christ were insufficient. Instead, by faith lay hold of Christ and then live like someone in Christ should live.

By these words God the Holy Spirit is revealing to us God’s desire for close fellowship with his people (1 John 1:3-4; 1 Corinthians 1:9). God wants you! Therefore, a Christian who is living by faith in Christ should have a good self-image. On the other hand, if anyone is struggling with self-image problems it shows some sort of failure in the life. It might be sin and a guilty conscience or more specific sins or weaknesses, such as not laying hold of spiritual blessings by faith, or having little faith, or becoming disconnected from Christ by legalism, or not meditating on the Bible, or not keeping in step with the Spirit’s leadership or grieving the Holy Spirit. To draw near to God is the way to have a little of heaven on earth. In heaven you will be with God; on earth he would be with you. Is there any difference in kind? So then, we see a spiritual attitude of which we should be giving evidence and promoting. What is it? We should be exhorting one another to draw near to God. “Let us draw near to God.”

Grace and peace, David

An Extra Day

DSCN3748Leap year day comes every four years giving us an extra day in the year. There are never enough opportunities to praise Our Lord, and on this day we are given twenty-four more hours to use in praise. In praising God, we become overwhelmed by joy as God expresses to us His pleasure in our obedience. Thank the King of kings for creating you, praying that He would fill you to overflowing with His love to saturate your spirit.

If that is not enough, praise Him because He already owned us as His creation. He paid an exorbitant price for us by redeeming us with the blood of His Son. Even though He owned us and bought us, in order to place an even higher claim on us, he exhibited His endless and unfailing love. He adopted us and promised us a rich inheritance! He does all these things and so much more every day. How can it not bring praise to our lips as we realize the pure love, joy, peace and freedom that these gifts bring? We can only accept them by thanking Him for them.

Have you ever woken and just stood beside the window, looked out and up, and gave praise to the Lord? Perhaps on a warm morning you even carried your breakfast out to the porch and read your Bible, communicating with your Heavenly Father, the One who created you. Somedays you might see a beautiful sunrise and hear the birds lift their voices to the Creator. The Scripture says, “Let all creation praise the Lord.”

I sing an old hymn by the title of “Praise the Savior”. Perhaps you could think about some of the words of Thomas Kelly as he expresses himself in praise. We can’t possibly tell just how much we owe Him for all He does and gives. He watches over us. His eyes never leave us for we are His treasure. We should give Him our praise, thanking Him for designing us just the way we are.

Mr. Kelly also wrote in verse two that Jesus is the Name that charms us, for He fits and arms us for the conflicts we face daily. God never changes. Nothing moves us and nothing can harm us while we trust in Him! There is so much in these words of a hymn writer whose heart was filled with praise. God is faithful and there is no force nor deceit that can ever sever our relationship with Him. His love for us is deep!

Next, the author writes, “Keep us, Lord, O keep us closely to Him. Keep us believing!” God enables us to believe through each day of our lives until we reach Heaven, where we will receive so many more joys.

Finally, in the fifth stanza of this little hymn he writes that when all this has taken place we shall be where we would be, and we shall be what we should be, because things that are not now nor could be, soon shall be our own.

This is our confident expectation as we approach Easter time. We should daily praise God for giving us His Son and for forgiving us of all sin! Praise is God’s way of opening us up to sharing His joy. The Psalmist says in Psalm 145, “I will praise you every day”! Feel blessed that you have been given this extra day to praise the Lord!

Praising the Lord, Sharon

(You can listen to Thomas Kelly’s hymn on YouTube.)