Going Deeper with God

The deeper reality of God is a treasure worth pursuing and this requires sacrificial focus and discipline. Many people can’t even sit through a message without checking their email or social media 20 times. I’ve had to learn the destruction of distraction. I’ve had to learn to put my phone on “do not disturb” any time I’m needing to prioritize time with God, my family or anything else more important than being distracted by random messages and notifications.

We are all part of the bigger story of God and in this story, we begin to realize how we are part of the eternal plans and purposes of God. A deeper narrative exists within all of us. We are all created to experience the ‘Garden’ where we know God intimately and interact with Him conversationally. In this place we discover deep and meaningful friendship and a joining of our lives realizing it is not good for man to be alone. Even in our brokenness God is working to restore and rescue us. In his image we discover our design to build some form of an ‘Ark’ to help and even rescue others.

As we journey forward, God invites us to explore the reality of a ‘Ladder’ that exists between heaven and earth revealing how God’s presence can come into any place in which we dwell. The house of God is the gate of heaven. We are the house of God. We are the gates of heaven. “Lift up your heads O you gates that the King of glory may come in.”

This is where we begin to explore a greater place of promise realizing we were born to conquer giants and to tear down strongholds that no longer have the power to keep us from all God desires for us to possess.

Jesus is alive and so are we; truly alive. This abundant life is available for everyone who accepts God’s invitation to go deeper with Him.

Daniel 11:32 “…the people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out (do) great exploits.” NKJV

Know God! Be Strong! Do great things! This Hebrew word for, “know” is the same word used when describing how Adam “knew” eve and she conceived. A changed life begins and is sustained through intimacy.

Acts 4:13 Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. ESV

We are designed for intimacy with God and intimacy with brothers and sisters in Christ, as family. You and your children will be spiritually underdeveloped if you don’t cooperate with what God is doing in this season. There is a shift from function to friendship in this season of the church.

Not everybody wants to go deeper with God because it is costly and inconvenient. But we must ask the question, “Does the church of our generation embody the kind of intimacy with God that results in humility, authority and power?” When we evaluate the blueprint of Scripture from which the church should be defined there seems to be glaring discrepancies.

The Israelites came out of the world's system of Egypt them when they encountered pressure just how much of the worlds system existed within them was seen. The church has been built on the consumer strategies of the world's system. Covid was just the beginning of a little testing for the church to see just how much of the worlds system has defined some of our deepest desires.

Suddenly many people who didn’t truly value the gathering of the church took Covid as an off-ramp giving them an excuse to abandon what they never valued deeply enough in the first place. God is taking us into a deep sense of community where our lives are truly joined together and we begin to learn what it means to be members of one another and not just look at the church as a nether one of many priorities in our lives.

This is an amazing season of grace and unity God is awakening in the hearts of those who are willing to take the journey with him.

For Christians the ministry center has become the church. For Jews the ministry center has always been the home. Somewhere along the journey we made a transition from taking individual responsibility for the atmosphere of our homes to expecting an institutional responsibility to provide what we Christians need.

Yet the Bible is filled with passionate language about personally pursuing God, thirsting for him, longing for him, being given to the sacrificial pursuit of him!

We just don’t hear this kind of “consumed with God’s presence” language very much in the church. Often we hear Christians talk about how amazing a worship service was or how good a sermon was but rarely do you hear believers say they got into the presence of God to seek him and just didn’t want to leave. If you’re only engaged in worship in times when something his provided and presented for you then that makes church leaders producers and church attenders consumers. What are we producing in the churches of today? God is inviting us into something deeper than this kind of model.