You Can’t “Be with God” – Lies of the Enemy #36 – Purity 1048

To see today's photo, go to mt4christ.org or follow me, M.t. Clark, on Facebook or Twitter. Good morning. Today's photo of sunrise from the vantage point of Panther Top Tower in Murphy, North Carolina comes to us from Fred Dimmick, who shared this scene on social media back on May 12th with the following prose: Fire in the sky from the morning sun As whippoorwills sing, the day's begun. Well, it's Saturday, and while I am happy, uh, the day has begun because I have to work today, I am looking forward to the end of my shift because I will be headed north to join my wife at our countryside home to celebrate the 18th birthday of her son Jacob with a barbecue. Although the local forecast is calling for showers today You can't rain on my parade because as long as the Lord wills it, rain or shine, I will be in the company of the one I love. And this is how you know that you are in a love relationship. You find peace in the other person's presence no matter what the circumstances are. Doesn't matter if it rains or it's sunny, and it doesn't really matter what you're doing. When you love someone, you long for and enjoy their company. Uh, love relationships— quality time is not necessarily based on the things you do or the places you go as much as it has to do with being with the other person. Early on in my relationship with Tammy Lynn, we recognized that often couples worry about what plans they could make, what things they could do, or what places they could go. And are busy trying to, quote unquote, make one another happy by creating circumstances for happiness. And when those activities stop, they don't know what to do with one another. But we agreed that true intimacy, true love, was found in just being at peace in one another's presence. So early on, we took some time to grow closer together by just being with one another. Talking, looking into one another's eyes, embracing, and just hanging out. We tried to establish being comfortable with one another by just doing nothing and just hanging out, uh, and I think we've benefit— benefited from it because now whether we are just hanging out or working on something together or going out to explore and enjoy God's creation or the things that man have built, we are together. In it, uh, because we know one another and focus on that aspect. We aren't striving to accomplish something to make us happy because we already have peace being with one another. Likewise, our relationship with God shouldn't necessarily, uh, be about doing everything right to make God happy, where we feel good if we're doing everything we think we should to please God and where we feel condemned when we mess up, step out of line, or make a mistake. We are not in a relationship based on performance. God has sought our love and presence by revealing the truth of Jesus to us, and he has fully accepted us the moment we put our faith in Christ. However, most Christians forget about God's grace the moment they receive it and quickly make their walk of faith about doing everything right. Where they judge their relationship with God on the things they do. I'm not praying. I'm not reading my Bible. My attitude isn't right. I should, I should give more. I should do more. I gotta clean up my act. I have to learn more. Now don't get it twisted, because I usually define the path of Christian discipleship by some of the things listed here, as they are disciplines of our faith. But a love relationship isn't about discipline. It's about being in love and acting in love. It's not about getting approval or acceptance. You already have it. It's about being at peace in God's presence. Prayer, Bible study, serving, giving, and living for God are not things we do to earn the love of God. They are the things we do because we already have it and desire to be with him and to be together in, uh, whatever it is you are doing. Um, whether you are just hanging out, working, or going somewhere, or doing some— something fun, no matter the circumstances or outcomes, when we are with God, we already have what we need: peace in his presence. And that brings us to our current series, The Lies of the Enemy, which is an examination of some of the common lies sometimes sneakily whispered into our minds as first-person statements that the enemy tells us to cause us to doubt our faith, lose our peace, cause division, or influence us to not follow the Lord with the way we live our lives. So today's big lie is lie number 36: you can't be with God. This lie of the enemy is the foundation of religion, where the only relationship you have with God, uh, small g, is by trying to please him through through performance, where the foundation of one's faith is little more than following rules and often degenerates into looking good on the outside but having little or no changes on the inside, perhaps other than puffing up one's pride if one is able to do everything right, or the establishment of a double life as secret sin and shame are stewing just below the surface of what we that of what would look like a normal, quote-unquote, normal Christian life. Church sex and financial scandals and abuses testify to the fact that things were actually not okay when it seemed everything was good, righteous, and holy. Although the people involved in these scandals seemed to be walking with God, it turns out they were putting on a show as large portions of their lives were being— were were not spent being with God because their attitudes and behaviors in some areas demonstrated that they chose to not follow the full counsel of God and twisted things to have their will be done rather than his. This is an extreme example, however, and as much as it may be popular to go after the mighty who have fallen, I would choose to go after those whose, whose simple faith sneers at the idea of being with God as something extreme, or, and as artificial as, as the seeming faith of those who have fallen in sin. These quote-unquote regular Christians are wary of any claims of intimacy with God and treat the subject as hocus-pocus and reduce their relationship with God to just being good people. They just believe. They don't pray. They never read the Bible. Why would I? I'm not the priest. They give sparingly. They never serve. Their church attendance can vary. These believers can— could go to church a couple of times a year, or could go to the building once a week, or even every day. But that's as far as they will go with their intimacy with God. God apparently lives in the church building, so that's where you can be in his presence, but the moment you step beyond the threshold of the local cathedral or sanctuary, you are no longer with God as, as normal resumes. Regular Christians like this honestly don't even understand what someone is talking about when someone mentions their relationship with God. How can you have a relationship with someone who is invisible? Impossible. I'm pretty sure those people are cuckoo. Now, before anyone gets upset, I have to admit that I have lived most of my life with similar attitudes. My liturgical church tradition was a religion, not a relationship. We went to church, we weren't the church. That's crazy. How can you be a— we be a building? Church was for Sundays and the occasional weird non-Sunday holiday like Ash Wednesday, not every day. You can't be with God. You can't have a relationship with him. He's in heaven. Of course, that all changed back in 2010. I was so far from God, it wasn't even funny. I'd basically stopped believing in a God and had adopted a spiritual philosophy that denied the Creator as a mystical, unseen, impersonal force— karma— that was too mysterious to know. I was wrong, of course, But many regular Christians still believe this lie of an impersonal God, a distant God, or a super mysterious God that they— you can't know, that you can't have a relationship, that you can't be with. God is alive and well and is available to those who seek him. But if you believe the lie that you can't be with God, you will never even try to have a relationship with him. God revealed himself to Abraham, Moses, the nation of Israel, and to all of us through his divine interventions, his words, and the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. And we can know him, and when we put our faith in Jesus, uh, we can be with him. Jesus is also known as our Emmanuel, which means God with us. So don't believe the lie that you can't be with God. God gave us his word and his Son and the Holy Spirit to believers so we could be with him. So when we treat our Christian faith as a set of rules or empty disciplines to appease an unseen entity, we deny and fail to receive the fullness of God's love and presence. We can be with God, but it does require our interest and desire to know him. Contemplative prayer, or listening prayer, is heralded as one way that you can know God's presence. Googling "being with God" turned up several books on the subject, in fact. Liberating Prayer by Dr. Neil T. Anderson is a good book on prayer, but reading the book won't do much good unless you decide to actually pray and to do it as a means to be with God rather than just trying to do something. My basic instruction for being with God is to seek Him, and to do so in whatever ways the Lord guides you to. Whether through prayer, Bible study, thinking about God, listening to sermons, reading Christian books, or by serving His will in some way, all of these activities, as long as they are done from a heart that wants to know and connect with God, can be a means to be with Him. Give it a try, because I assure you that when you seek him, you will find him. Today's Bible verses come to us from the New Living Translation Bible Promise Book for Men. This morning's meditation verses are Psalm 23:1-3, and the word of God says, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Today's verses were offered by our research, uh, resource under the heading "When You Feel Burned Out in Your Job." As I work on Saturday, I find that amusing. As direct— and, uh, it directs us to focus on the peace that we have when we stop the striving. I shall not want. And rest, lie down in green pastures, in the Lord's peace. When we do this, we will be renewed. He restores my soul and he gives us, and gives us direction for the future. He leads me in paths of righteousness. Notice this dichotomy of resting and walking. God leads us to lie down, but also to get up and walk in righteousness, to be restored and to not want We need to follow the Lord's lead and live it, live with and for him. Oh boy. Anyway, that's, that's that. As always, we invite you all to go to mt4christ.org where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk. Today we continue sharing from A.W. Pink's The Holy Spirit And today we begin chapter 2, The Personality of the Holy Spirit. So I'm just sharing a couple of paragraphs from that first— second chapter. So if you want to, you know, see what that has to say about the personality of the Holy Spirit, go to mt4christ.org and you'll see that resource at the end of today's blog post. Also at the end of today's blog post, you'll see an encouragement says join our Victory Over the Darkness, the Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ series of discipleship via the MT for Christ 247 podcast. Um, so we invite you to check that out. They're on the podcast, but they're also on the YouTube channel, uh, MT for Christ 247, and it might be easier to locate the teachings that way as there are playlists for each class. And if you wanted to take those classes, uh, take a deeper dive into them, uh, you can contact me at M.t. Clark price247@gmail.com, and I will send you the, um, the Word documents that I handed out, uh, for those classes so you can do a study guide or answer the questions basically that pertain to the teaching. And, you know, we can also get the books and read those too, um, because that's really what the classes are. It's just basically me presenting the materials that Dr. Neil Anderson presents in those books. And we found them to be life-changing because we had successfully gone through recovery. And, you know, and, you know, you gotta— that's, that's a major thing, you know. You, you do your moral inventory and you, and you say no to the substances that have held you in chains, and you get a sense of freedom. But then I did the Steps to Freedom in Christ, and something miraculous happened. The mental chatter that was in my head that was always condemning and guilt-laden and shame-laden was silenced. And whether it was demonic oppression or just the, uh, the fact of, uh, going through the repentance process that Steps to Freedom in Christ gives you, um, you know, canceled enemy ground. Um, I had silence in my mind. Um, there was, there was peace, and there still is peace. And, uh, you know, we do have to take every thought captive, um, continually as we go about our day, as the enemy in our flesh will try to draw us into distraction, confusion, and sin. Um, but the baseline level of peace that comes from, uh, going through the Steps to Freedom in Christ is worth investigating. So if you're one of the people who doubt that you can be with God, this might be something you need to do. You might need to repent. And the Steps to Freedom in Christ is a process, a prayer process of proclamations, renunciations, and confessions where you clean house. You take care of all the business, all your personal and spiritual business um, before the Lord in prayer, and it doesn't require anything other than faith, um, and the booklet Steps to Freedom in Christ, which you can find on the blog. There's free PDF copies out there on the internet, and, um, if there's a heading Steps to Freedom in Christ, if you check that out, you're bound to find, bound to find one of the links, um, for the, for the process. And what you do is you, you humbly and genuinely come before the Lord and pray through those, those steps. Um, could take a little bit of time, but it's what time well spent because it resolves, you know, in, in faith it resolves your, uh, your spiritual and personal conflicts. And so we recommend it. That's why we got the teaching from Freedom in Christ Ministries to be a Community Freedom Ministry Associate, to be trained in administering the steps to people. And, um, that's why we push things like the Who I Am in Christ list, the My Father God list, is because they're foundational teachings that, you know, somehow, you know, people don't pick up from the church, um, although they should. But it's a, you know, it's a worthwhile study, and that's why we, uh, we promote it, and that's why we do it. Um, because sometimes bitterness and things can lie within you that you need to get rid of, and, uh, the Lord will take it away, but you have to come to him humbly in prayer to do so. Um, so give it a shot. Anyway, I do have to work today, and so that means I have to run out the door and be prepared to be at my wife's house overnight. So, uh, I'm going to pray, um, because I need help. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, we thank you so much for all that you've done for us in Christ. Lord, we pray for anyone who's listening or reading this message today, that you bless them, that you come alongside their prayer request and guide them as they go. And Lord, we're asking for ourselves too. Um, Lord, we pray for you to go before us, open our eyes to the things you want us to see today. If you can keep us dry, that'd be great. Um, also, we pray for you to lead us in the way we should go. Show us the things we need to know today, um, because we'll be listening and we'll be asking for your help as we go, um, Lord. Because all we want to do is represent you here on the earth, and we're not really great at that. And so we need your help every single day to, to lead us, lead us in that path of righteousness. And, uh, you know, teach us to lie down in those green pastures where we can find peace. But Lord, we trust you to do it because you've done it before, and you're with us when we think about you and when we pray to you. Um, we know when we receive because you, you, you speak to us. Um, and we thank you for that. And Lord, so we, we thank you, we praise you, we love you, and we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.