My mind (and heart and spirit) keeps returning to thoughts of the glory and beauty of God and our desperate need for Him.
I simply cannot get away from the nothingness that we are apart from Him and how pitiful and pathetic our gestures are apart from Him. We were made by God, for God and intended to dwell in God and He in us. When we attempt things apart from Him we are attempting to create ex nihilo (out of nothing) and that is simply not possible. Scripture reminds us that it is in Christ that we live and move and have our being. Attempting to operate apart from Him is trying to work without life, love, peace, joy, grace, goodness and a million other things that flow from the heart and character of God.
Church apart from God is an abomination as it takes what was created only for His glory and makes it a mockery through religious exercises, human wisdom and human traditions. If we attempt to be the church without God’s presence, who are we worshiping? Who are we praying to? For what reason are we gathering?
Life apart from God is an impossibility because God is the giver of life and we only have life because His breath is within us. Life apart from God is hollow, depressing, the walking dead. Life apart from God is full of anxiety, worry and fear and a million other things that are opposite of the character and heart of God. In other words, life without God is death and hell.
So why do we try to handle things on our own? Why do we try to make things look good and sound good to other people, when God sees right through the house of cards we have built? What does it matter what the world thinks or if we gain the whole world, if we don’t have God?
And need I remind you that we don’t receive the presence of God because we wish for it, think about it, understand the theology of it or because we have certain spiritual exercises or disciplines that make us feel holy or pious. Receiving the presence of God is waiting for the presence of an actual living Being, who has His own thoughts, emotions and will. We cannot manipulate or coerce God into coming into our lives so that we can somehow have life and church. We must wait for and before God, trusting that He will reveal Himself in the way and in the time that He knows is right. When we are broken and surrendered fully and always unto Him, He not only graces us with His presences but invites and allows us to live in Him and He in us! And so then in response to our desperate cries comes His gracious and glorious habitation!!
Let us wait for the Lord!
Even so, Lord Jesus Come!
Pastor Michael Johnson 