I have just come from sitting with my wife listening & watching a session of worship from Bethel church in California then a sermon from Pastor Kris.
As I have been thinking during it and now after it I am renewed in my confidence that nothing is more important than getting back to where we started, I believe that our model of what our Christianity is supposed to be all about is Adam and Eve in the garden walking and talking with God in the cool of the evening. God’s original created order, Intimacy, not awkward, not loud and aggressive, but something so right, so oh this is so what I want to be doing right now and my heart is just singing and free. Actually my heart is aching right now as I think of this as due to our current living situation we currently don’t have yet a special space set aside ‘a Tabernacle’ where I can go and so quickly and easily just hang out with God where we can just ‘be’ together, to chat to have him stroke and calm my soul, to know peace. His Peace. This is only our second night here so I suppose I can give myself a break. :-}
Anyway like just then we can get so complicated, “but my circumstances”, “but I need this”, “first I need to do this”. No, as Jesus showed us in the story of the prodigal son, at any point we can RUN back to the OPEN arms of Father God. Luke 15:11-32 This is God’s desire that we would KNOW Him and therefore know that we can so Yes go to Him and Know Him and Know His peace… Hmm I am very aware here that words are just so not cutting it, human language can not convey what it is to experience God, to sit with Him, to hang with Him, to feel His pleasure, to know His peace, heck to know that He loves me and accepts me just as I am.
Nothing is more important than this, no thing that I can do no thing that I can say, no thing nothing is more important than this. As I ponder this I reflect on conversations that I have had where people have told me how they spend time with God so that they can do ministry, so they are empowered, so they know better what to do. Well this may contain truth, but intimacy to GET something to fill your own needs goes by another name. I’m talking about hanging with God for Gods sake, for the sake of the relationship. Just to hang out. When you can manage to drop the agenda, or the religious benefits and just want to hang out with Jesus as a friend and let happen what happens then I think we are getting close. Hmm maybe we could even let Him direct the conversation.