Don't Let Jesus Become An Incidental: Make Time to Enter into the Presence of God

Pr Malcolm Dennis
24-05-2019

Psalm 72:18-19 New King James Version (NKJV)
_18 Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel,_
_Who only does wondrous things!_
_19 And blessed be His glorious name forever!_
_And let the whole earth be filled with His glory._
_Amen and Amen._

The Book of Psalm is divided into five books. At the end of each book, you will find this: "Blessed be the Lord God" or "Blessed be God" or "Blessed be His glorious name" or something like this. That will signify the end of the book. Each of the five books is summed up that way.

Psalm is a very interesting book because the psalm is written with a lot of emotions and feelings. You cannot read it intellectually. You cannot read it with your mind and leave out your emotions and your heart. You have to use your feelings and your emotions as well as your imagination to read Psalm. That idea applies to all of the Bible as well.

In the Psalm you will also see a lot of lamenting. Lamenting is where the psalmist will project his discontentment, his heartache, his disappointments or his pain when he is grieving the loss of the Lord's presence or he is grieving because his enemies have ravished and destroyed God's temple or land or the psalmist is grieving because his enemies are prospering. In a sense, lamenting is complaining and murmuring but all his complaining and murmuring are legitimised because they are done in the presence of God in the form of a prayer as well.

Everything that the Hebrew believer in the Old Testament goes through, whether in the form of a question or in an expression of anger, is expressed in the form of a prayer. It is always directed towards God. That's how central God is in their lives and that's how prominently God is featured in their whole existence. So you cannot take God out of their system, no matter what they're going through.

Sadly, today when you go to Israel, there are unbelieving Jews and there are Jews who are atheist who do not believe in God.

It is often very hard for us to believe that God has good intentions and good things for our lives and it is hard to see the goodness of God in all circumstances of our lives, especially the painful ones. 

It is hard to belief that God is in difficult, negative and disappointing circumstances and that He is using these circumstances to work in our lives even though we are feeling unhappy about our circumstances.

The different between our God and the feng shui god is that God is at work doing wondrous things all the time in our lives. God has no ups and downs.

The Christian God is consistently good and everything that He does all the time is good. That's what the psalmist is trying to say. God only does wondrous things.

But when life is contradictory and painful, how can God be doing wondrous things that the whole earth be filled with His glory? 

Many Christians have difficulty understanding how God works and the way God works because of our faulty lens of our expectations. Often a time we expect God to work in ways that fit in our expectations. We are unconscious of our expectations of how God should work in our lives. Because of this lens, we want God to fit into our expectations on our terms. We may not verbalise it but our unconscious and conscious expectations are there.

If we don't understand how God works and the way He works, it will lead to frustration, disappointment, disillusionment and despair in our Christian lives. When the church disappoints us, when life disappoints us, when circumstances at work disappoint us even though we pray very hard, we read the Bible, we walk with God, it shocks us and comes against our expectations, and we find it very hard to understand what God is doing in our lives.

We need to understand that we have to orientate our heart and mind to fit into the kind of God that He is. We have to fit our expectations to fit into the kind of God that He is and the way He works in our lives. The God that we are believing and the God that we are following is a cross-carrying God. Jesus didn't just take up the cross and die at the end of His life. Physically Jesus died. But inherently in His nature and being, He lived a crucified life. Every moment and every day He died to His own will to live and to do the Father's work.

Jesus obeyed the Father's will and purpose and came down and became human. God became man. The eternal glory of God came down in the form of Jesus, who is infinitely one with the glory of the Father. Jesus came down in obedience to God and took the form of a human being. The eternal God, who has no beginning and no end and who is infinitely pure and perfect in holiness, suddenly becomes so human and so ordinary that He is no different from any other human being. So people didn't see God in Jesus at least for the first 30 years.

They said, "Isn't the son of Joseph and Mary the son of a carpenter?" That's what they see in Him because He was so ordinarily human.

Then again, He obeys the Father. At the age of 30, He comes out to do ministry for three years and then He dies on the cross like a common criminal at the time of the Roman empire. It was the most humiliating form of death. There was no dignity in His death.

Revelation 5:5-6 New King James Version (NKJV)
_5 But one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the scroll and [a]to loose its seven seals.”_

_6 And I looked, [b]and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent out into all the earth._

When John saw Jesus on the throne, he described Jesus as not only the Lion of Judah but also as a Lamb that was slain.

Jesus was a cruficied Lamb as well as a glorified Lamb from eternity to eternity.

Jesus calls us to follow Him. He's a cross-carrying Lord. He is not a Santa Claus carrying a goody bag going around answering all our prayers and distributing goodies to us. He is not that kind of God. If the gospel is presented that way to people, it's a faulty and truncated gospel.

Luke 9:23 New King James Version (NKJV)
_Take Up the Cross and Follow Him_
_23 Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross [a]daily, and follow Me._

Jesus was the embodiment of the crucified life--the life at the cross. He was also the embodiment of the resurrection at the same time. When Jesus died a very gory and bloody death at the cross, that was the climax of the revelation of God. The heart of God was revelation of the crucified Lamb.

Central to the Christian salvation is the cross. It was a symbol of shame during the time of the Romans. For the first few hundred years, they never wore a cross like we wear a cross in the form of a gold chain today. At that time, it was a symbol of shame, humiliation and defeat.

How can a victorious God, a God of salvation, be associated with the cross? That's why the gospel was hard to preach--that Jesus died for your sins and rose again from the dead--and hard to accept at that time.

When Jesus did that, He redeemed the negativity of the Cross. From a symbol of shame, it became a symbol of salvation and redemption. That's how powerful God is. God can take something that is so shameful, degraded and has no meaning and purpose that they spit upon and God can make it and use it for His purpose and His glory.

The crucified life and the glorified life coexist. Death and resurrection coexist. Suffering that leads to glory coexist.

2 Corinthians 4:12 New King James Version (NKJV)
_12 So then death is working in us, but life in you._

2 Corinthians 6:9 New King James Version (NKJV)
_9 as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and yet not killed;_

The work of the Holy Spirit is to lead us and bring us through the cross to experience a dying to ourselves and our old nature continuously. This is what water baptism means. Water baptism is not telling the world that you're a Christian.

Romans 6:3-5 New King James Version (NKJV)
_3 Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life._

_5 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection,_

Baptism into the life of Jesus is not the problem or the issue. It is baptism into His death and identifying the death to our old lives with the death of Jesus for us. 

Jesus' dying must become our own. The Holy Spirit takes the death of Jesus which He suffered and died on the cross and makes it ours but by the grace of God. As we seek to obey God, it becomes a reality in our lives.

When the dying is the work of the Spirit in us, naturally the life of the Spirit will flow out. If the dying is of the Spirit and is the work of God, then the automatic fruit is the life of God. New life is a natural process. It is the dying that is difficult and hard to understand.

This whole idea of dying and rising to a newness of life coexist. 

When we follow Jesus, it means putting to death our old life continuously.

Without a life of prayer, it won't happen. 

If we don't understand that this is central to the Christian life, we will never understand why there is suffering in the world and why the righteous suffer. "Why when I choose to obey God and lay down my life, why is it that life becomes more difficult sometimes?" "Why isn't it smooth and prosperous?" 

God is after raising of a new life that is called His glory. His glory comes out of dying, suffering and out of putting to death our own will and desires to live the kind of life that we want to live--an easy and comfortable life with no suffering, pain and commitment so much so that everything is discounted. 

Today, Christianity is a discounted gospel. That's why Christianity is not impressive. There is no suffering. When it doesn't cause us anything, we have nothing to give and nothing to say. Preaching, worship, song-leading, sharing and teaching the Word of God have no life in it. This life is the zoe life that Paul calls the life of the Spirit.

You can pray in tongues but if there is no dying and experiencing the power of God and seeing it work in us, there will be no life.

If we don't understand this, then Christianity becomes more and more an intellectual kind where we have all the right words, all the Bible verses, all the right quotations from books, all the right programmes etc, but no life of the Spirit.

When we respond to God's calling, God has respond to my response to His calling. God has to do something by responding to my response to His calling to show that I have responded rightly to Him that I have met up to the requirements of the way He wants me to respond to His calling so that He put a stamp and approves the fact that I have responded correctly. If there is no seal of approval or no evidence or proof that heaven has sanctioned my calling, it is only my word. When we respond to God's calling or direction, God has to do something to show something to approve and sanction the fact that we have responded rightly to His voice or to His calling. One of the signs is the presence of the Spirit on the person - the gifting or the fruit or the change in his character or a transformation in his life. He can hear from God. He has got revelations and insights from God. And there are many other things as well. But material blessings is the last one. 

How does our contradictory circumstances (our hardships, injustices) lead to God's glory?

God is sovereign over everything. If I am in a boat facing a thunderstorm in the middle of the Indian Ocean, God is still sovereign over my life. Thunderstorm or tornado is not outside of God's rule. Everything we go through in life is under the rule and covering of God.

For God to show His glory in our lives, we have to put all of our lives into the Hands of God.

When Jesus prayed, He committed Himself to God.

Luke 23:46 New King James Version (NKJV)
_46 And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, “Father, ‘into Your hands I commit My spirit.’ ” Having said this, He breathed His last._

Right to the very end, Jesus was still committing Himself to the Father even though He was nailed on the cross and suffered a very humiliating kind of death. Jesus committed His life and His spirit into the Hands of the Father.

Luke 23:34 New King James Version (NKJV)
_34 [a]Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”_

_And they divided His garments and cast lots._

Matthew 27:46 New King James Version (NKJV)
_46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”_

Jesus was constantly in communion with the Father. Even when He called out to God, it was in the form of a prayer in the midst of being forsaken by the Father. Right from the beginning to the very end, we see that Jesus was in communion with the Father and He committed to the Father's will in that He was obedient.

Luke 22:42 New King James Version (NKJV)
_42 saying, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.”_

And He was in union with the Father. Jesus' life was saturated with prayer and with communion with the Father. Right to the very end of the cross, His communion and dialogue with the Father shows that His intimacy with the Father determines His direction, choices, goals and pace in His life. God was so central to Jesus' life that God was foremost in His heart and mind.

This idea of communion and this whole idea of prayer is only possible if there is a yearning in our hearts for God.

Today the way we pray and the way we seek God is determined, most of all, by what is foremost in your heart and mine. The thing that you and I are most concerned about will tell us a lot about ourselves and our faith. It would show us where we are in our closeness or distance with God.

From time to time, we need to be alone with God. It is good to be silent and to search our hearts and to ask ourselves, "What is the greatest concern in my heart?" "Is God the foremost person that my heart is longing after?" 

Most of the time it is not God. Most of the time our concern is about our future, our next paycheck, our finance, our material things, our children and their education and our earthly stuff. These are very natural. Jesus didn't condemn us. We are broken people living earthly lives and these are natural concerns.

Because we are like this, we need to come before God constantly. 

We need to cultivate a stronger awareness or consciousness of God in ourselves because if left to ourselves, God will very quickly deteriorate down to the bottom of the list. 

If we don't have a prayer life, our Christian life cannot go anywhere. There would be no life and no meaning.

The only thing that would make our Christianity real is Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately the presence of God has become less and less real not just in times of corporate worship but also in personal devotion times. Why? Because it is not being prioritised; it is not being cultivated. 

Learn to experience the reality of Jesus Christ personally in our own hearts and in our own lives.

Our prayer time tells us a lot. 

Self-examination must always be done in the context of the presence of God. It cannot be done by ourselves mechanically. The Bible talks about healthy introspection and healthy self-examination that is done after a time of prayer, after a time of dwelling in the presence of God, after a time of communion with God, after a time of connecting with Him, after a time of allowing His presence to fill our hearts.

And when there is a sense of God that fills our hearts and our consciousness, then we approach God and allow God to examine our hearts. 

2 Corinthians 13:5 New King James Version (NKJV)
_5 Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you [a]are disqualified._

Ask, "God, where are you in my life right now? Am I searching for You with all my heart? Are there areas in my life where I am strained and where I have left You out? Is my Christian life dying of becoming a form?"

As we approach God, very often the Holy Spirit will help us and make us aware of us. We cannot do this flippantly. If we do it flippantly, then our experience of God will be shallow. 

Our hearts are not only deceitful but also prone to wonder. We experience all kinds of temptations that tempt us very easily. We have all kinds of greed in various forms. These are the darkness that is inside us. 

When we search our hearts in the presence of God, do we really want God to show us the sinful things inside us?

1 John 1:5 New King James Version (NKJV)
_Fellowship with Him and One Another_
_5 This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all._

There is so many layers of darkness inside us.

John 1:4 New King James Version (NKJV)
_4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men._

Jesus brought the life of God to us. Jesus also brought the light of God into our lives.

John 8:12 New King James Version (NKJV)
_12 Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”_

Matthew 5:14-16 New King James Version (NKJV)
_14 “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven._

Loving the light also means loving God.

John 3:19 New King James Version (NKJV)
_19 And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil._

Shunning the light is not a good sign of our love for God.

The moment we come into His presence, there is a consciousness of darkness in our lives. That consciousness is a healthy thing. It is not a condemning consciousness. 

We are most conscious of God when we are in prayer, when we are in worship, when we are reading the Bible.

The consciousness of God is stimulated inside us. It shows that the consciousness of God can become cultivated. As we regulate regularly our time with God alone, we have a human consciousness that is like a vacuum. The Holy Spirit will fill the vacuum of our human consciousness and saturate this consciousness with the consciousness of God. Only the Holy Spirit can make you and I aware of God and conscious of it.  This consciousness can be cultivated by regularity, by taking God seriously, by reading His Word and really seeking after God. When you start doing it, the inspiration will come. If you wait for inspiration, it will never come. 

1 John 1:3 New King James Version (NKJV)
_3 that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ._

1 John 1:7 New King James Version (NKJV)
_7 But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin._

Our hearts' spiritual condition has to conform with the nature of God in order for us to have fellowship with Him. The remedy is made in the light of God's presence as we enter into the presence of God and into His light through prayer. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us.

The Holy Spirit shows us places in us that have got darkness, hidden and unconfessed sins, reactions and attitudes towards friends and neighbours, relatives and people who have crossed our paths and have hurt or disappointed us. 

There are all kinds of darkness inside us and all kinds of motives that are wrong and intentions that are hidden and are justified and rationalised by our own reasoning to cover up our sinfulness. 

When we take time and make time to come into the presence of God unhurriedly, the Spirit of God will gently show us so that He can bring us further into the light further and as we acknowledge and confess the sin in us, we are practising repentence which means turning our hearts towards God. And being honest and acknowledging it, we allow God to come inside our hearts to cleanse us, to heal us, to make us whole and to fill us with His Spirit and His grace that lead to a transformed heart. 

When the heart is made right, then it is ready to be filled with the Holy Spirit in a deeper way. When our heart is cleansed, our awareness of God and His Holiness is being felt by us. We experience the purity of God and His light.

Making time in prayer to God is the central thing. If we take this out, we can't carry the cross. To cleanse hearts, we need the grace of God and the infilling of God's Spirit.

Don't let Jesus become an incidental.