The Barriers That Separate Us From God

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Today, while reading my daily devotional Jesus Calling by Sarah Young, I was struck by the first two sentences.  God's voice seemed particularly clear and direct as my heart heard these words come forth:

"You can live as close to Me as you choose.  I set up not barriers between us; neither do I  tear down barriers that you erect."  (November 5, page 324) 

While reading the first few words my heart was shouting a big "Oh, yeah!"  But the jubilation only lasted a second.  My heart was pierced by the last part.  "Neither do I tear down the barriers that you erect."  Stopping myself from reading the rest of the devotion, I sat silently pondering those words.  God's direct approach this morning had caught me so completely off-guard, I knew that I could read no further until I had addressed His comment spoken so specifically to me.

"Neither do I tear down the barriers that you erect."  You see, I love the idea that you I can live in such close  proximity to God that I experience many intimate moments throughout the day.  And I also love the idea that I could never go so far wrong that God would build a brick wall between us.  God set in motion a plan of relationship with Him that involves me running boldly into His throne room, without hesitation or fear, so that I can jump into His lap and be encircled by His loving arms, and at any point during my day, frequently if desired.  But what I don't like about what He said is that if there are any walls that are put up between us, it will be of my doing.  And what's more, He will not be the one to tear them down.  If I build a wall, I will be the one to have to destroy it, if I want it down.  Even worse for me to hear, there seems to be the implication that I have erected and will erect these walls.

My convicted heart knew in that moment that there is still a wall of barrier between me and my Lord.  I have built this wall, brick upon sinful brick, as I walk in the disobedience of my own fleshly heart.  What stands between me and the Lord are my sins, and the only way those bricks of sin are coming down is if I surrender myself to the Spirit within me,  and I  begin to obey the commands of God's word.  In a nutshell, the wall will come down as I repent, turning completely and resolutely away from each individual sin that is a brick in my wall.

Once again, my Lord has brought me back to the same thing He has been addressing in my life for several months now.  It is the issue of the individual sins and idols that are still in my heart, and  they are  affecting my spiritual  life and walk with Jesus.  This has ramifications on my intimacy with Him, too.  The bottom line is this:  I can spend much time in the Word; I can learn all that it says to me by dissecting the words I study by defining them more correctly in the Greek and Hebrew; I can do endless cross-referencing that will support the concepts found in a single verse; I can sit in on multiple Bible classes and teachings each week.  But if I am not applying what I am learning, and if nothing really changes in my thoughts, words, and actions, then all my knowledge and understanding comes to nothing.

For years I have basked in the idea that "knowing" is a great blessing.  But the blessing only comes when we "do" what we say we "know."  Jesus told His disciples a powerful truth, just after He had washed their feet and challenged them to live spiritually higher and more intimately than they could completely understand.  These are the words He spoke to them, and to me today, "If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them."   I have coined a saying that is similar to what Scarlett O'Hara said in Gone With The Wind.  Here is my thought that seems to line up with what Jesus said to His disciples, "Knowin' and sayin' ain't doin'!"

In the end, my biblical knowledge on the topic of the importance removing sin and idols from my life, the verses I can quote about it, even teaching the Word's truth of it to others, will never equal the 'living it out' in my own life.  The wall I have created out of multiple bricks of sin and dependence on things other than God Himself must come down!  The difficulty of the task can never be my excuse to avoid tearing it down.  The state of the mortar that holds it together (whether hardened by years, partially solid, or still soft from its very recent application) is irrelevant.  The wall must come down if I want to experience life in the Holy of Holies.  My wall is the veil between the Inner Court Classroom on my spiritual journey and the intimate presence of God in the Holiest Place of All.   The wall, the veil in the Tabernacle, is my own flesh!

To turn away from the difficult work of rooting out all sins, idols, and wrong attitudes in my life through my surrender and repentance is to make a choice to live farther away from God than He desires.  It is a choice to live with my sin-wall between us.  Yes, my wall MUST come down!

Your Journey To Intimacy With God

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(Excerpt from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 12)

"Out of God's great desire for us to walk in a deep and intimate relationship with Him, one in which we begin to turn over our entire lives to His full control, He woos us by His Spirit to walk through the Door of Jesus.  We are saved through our belief in Jesus when we walk through that Jesus Door.  We then claim His sacrifice on the cross at the bronze altar as His act of sacrifice on our personal behalf, and we are baptized in the cleansing water found at the bronze laver, whereby we associate ourselves with Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection.  This is our Outer Court experience, but it is not the end of our journey.  It is not the goal.  It is not the place of the greatest intimacy.

As we continue to make our way through the Tabernacle, our journey takes us into the Inner Court.  It is that place where we begin to grow up in our faith.  It takes some believers (like me) many years to pass through that particular door because we are content with our Christian life in the Outer Court, just the way it is.  Others begin to grow right away, flourishing in the Holy Spirit, in the Word, and in pure worship to the Lord.  No matter into which category you happen to fall, the Inner Court is a place where you will become even more intimate with the Lord by way of walking in the Spirit, delving more deeply into the Word, and by learning to worship in both Spirit and the truth found in the Word.  Our growth will be evidenced by our greater fruit.  But this fruit is not limited to the ministry that God has given us to do.  We must also focus on the fruit that will grow inside of us, the very fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience,kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.  The Inner Court will be the place in which we identify, confess, dispossess, and take full vengeance on those actions and attitudes that do not line up with the Word and the Spirit.  It is also the place where we will learn to follow the commands that are found in the Word.  The door into the Inner Court is a "cross-roads" in our journey to the Holy of Holies, one which will determine if we will take the easy road (and stay in the Outer Court) or adjust our course, choosing to take the narrower path.  If we choose that narrow path into the Inner Court, it is there that we will be aligned and adjusted in our hearts to the good and perfect will of God, and begin to obey His commands with our whole hearts.

A marvelous thing happens when we are consistently seeking to turn our whole lives over to the Lord Jesus Christ through our confession of sin and the surrender of our will to His.  Through deeper study, a closer walk with the Spirit, and worship from a much more pure heart, we discover moments of great intimacy with the Lord such as we have never before experienced.  These are indescribable times of joy that only flow from a heart that is chasing after the God who can restore it.  This is the experience of those who have chosen to pass through the veil, crucifying their own flesh and will, and step into the Holy of Holies.  This is spiritual healing and intimacy with Christ!   And ultimately, our earthly level of intimacy will grow exponentially when we see Him face to face in Heaven!

The Tabernacle is where we meet Jesus.  It is where we identify our lives with His.  It is the place where we give Him the rule of our broken lives, tarnished with sin.  It is whee our intimacy with Him grows.  The Tabernacle is a picture of the journey of a true believer, and it reveals the relationship that we are currently having with Jesus!"

The God-Centered Life

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Is God in the center of ALL of your life?  The Israelites knew how to live with Him in the center of theirs long before they reached the Promised Land.  As they moved through the wilderness for 40 years the very layout of the "campground" had the Ark of the Covenant in the center.  But it would be different as they spread out in the Promised Land.

"This was God's plan--for His children to live in the land He freely gave them and to worship only Him.  The same is true for you.  Your Promised Land, having had all of your false gods removed, will be like living intimately with your God--in the Holy of Holies--alone, with no other gods but the one true God.  Do you see that?  Do you understand how you fit into the picture God gave us from the journey the Israelites made from Egypt to the Promised Land?  We are to journey from our bondage all the way to the presence of the Living God!  The goal of the tabernacle is to reach the Holy of Holies, to have been made holy and like Christ, to be living maturely by the purity of our hearts.  The god of the Israelites, who were set free from their bondage in Egypt, was to live in the Promised Land, a land with its idols removed.  The Promised Land was a picture of God in the center of the lives of His chosen ones who walk in unity with Him and Him alone.  It is a picture, as well, of the godly, sin-healed heart of a Christian!

But most of us are still either in the Outer Court of our salvation of the Inner Court of our sanctification (the process of being made holy).  Either way, we are being prepared to enter into the Holy of Holies, our Promised Land, the land of our truest and deepest intimacy with our God.  And if we want to step through the veil into the most intimate place with God, we must clearly understand the next point.

POINT #2:  We must be fully armed when we cross into that place in our journey called the Promised Land, into the Holy of Holies where our gods will be dispossessed.  We must be prepared for this battle, and we must know what God's battle plan is."

More on that tomorrow!

Choose Your Path: Complacency or Vengeance

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"Think back now to the Tabernacle we studied a few chapters back.  Do you remember the courts and their purposes?  If you have been hanging around in the Outer Court, comfortable enough in your salvation and baptism, yet oblivious to the victory over sin that God is calling you to, it is time for you to take a step into the Inner Court of obedience.  Are you already in the Inner court, enjoying the Holy Spirit's company and the Word of God, but still living in cyclical sin?  Then it's time for you to put shoe leather on the soles of your spiritual walking shoes!  It's time to take some serious vengeance on your sin!  Are you willing now for your heart to be laid bare before you and the Lord, so that the idols and sin can be removed?  If you are not willing, you will not be able to grow any closer to God than you currently are.  Are you satisfied with that, and satisfied with living your 'small g' god-driven life?

God sent Israel to war!  This will be no less a battle for us, and it will likely last for our entire life.  Will God find you obedient to this call, or will you take the easiest, most flesh-pleasing way out?  The first will lead yo to victory and intimacy with God; the other will eventually defeat you and keep you from drawing near to God.  The choice, ultimately, is yours.  Choose wisely.  Choose to take full vengeance on your sin.  The alternative is only  foolishness, and ultimately it reveals your complacency.  Consider these wise words that speak of this kind of complacency in your Christian walk.

Complacency is a blight that saps energy, dulls attitudes, and cases a drain on the brain.  The first symptom is satisfaction with things as they are.  The second is rejection of thins as the might be.  'Good enough' becomes today's watchword and tomorrow's standard.  Complacency makes people fear the unknown, mistrust the untried, and abhor the new.  Like water, complacent people follow the easiest course--downhill.   They draw false strength from looking back."

What path have you chosen?  Do you need to change your course?

Your spiritual journey is made up of countless choices between your flesh and the Spirit who dwells inside of you. The valley of decision is often a bloody battlefield. But the Spirit CAN win each battle if you are surrendered to Him.

(Quoted from Chapter 7, "Taking Full Vengeance" from Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory by Cheryl Gnagey)

THE RESURRECTED LIFE -- Day 13

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Day 13:  The Paralytic and His Determined Friends  (Luke 5: 17-26)

Three of the four Gospels record the story of the faith of a paralyzed man and his friends who were quite determined to see their crippled friend healed of his paralysis.  The measures they went to were extreme, and the result of their faith brought blessings untold.  Their faith was a witness as well to those who were content to live by the Law of Moses.

“What a blessed day this will be,” the Lord mused to Himself, for he knew power would be going forth from Him today for healing.  “The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees will also be present to witness the Father working through Me.”  Quietly He began to teach.  When He noticed some men making a desperate attempt to enter the room, He continued with His lesson, keeping His eye on the situation. 

The room was just too crowded.  No one budged.  Since they could not gain entrance, the men slipped back out the front door.  Moments later there was a commotion over the place where Jesus stood.  Looking up, Jesus drew everyone’s attention to the ceiling above Him.  A hush fell over the room as one tile after another was removed.  Amazement filled their eyes when they saw a man on a stretcher coming through the hole!  With great strength, the four men lowered their friend carefully into the presence of the Lord.  A collective sigh of relief escaped from the onlookers as the stretcher came to rest in the center of the room, right in front of Jesus.

Jesus knew the faith it had taken for these five men to come before Him, and the great compassion displayed toward their friend also revealed their love.  That faith and love resulted in the paralytic’s spiritual healing as well as his physical healing.  Because they acted on their faith, Jesus was able to clearly establish His authority over forgiveness and healing.

How determined are we to come into the presence of the Lord?  How determined are we to see our lost friends spiritually healed by salvation?  To what lengths do we go to be able to grow our relationship with God?  Are we willing to go outside of the norm in order to show our faith to God and others?  Or do we live in our comfort zones that keep us from intimacy and from receiving all that we need to live victoriously?