Over the last many years, I have been coming round and round seeking to better live a life that honors God. Sometimes the religious expectations of honoring God have gotten in the way, as much as the worldly distractions for honoring God. Personally, I’ve become exhausted running programming for the church. Some days it feels like but a substructure of man-made creation to maintain relevancy and dole out accolades.
23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. John 4:23
Some days I go to church and feel like I miss God through it all. The truth is I can connect with God at all moments, and seeing his reality as the ultimate is such a better experience than thinking I need to do something to be with him. The satisfaction of going to church and inserting myself into some shape cut out for me by the ministerial staff is pale in comparison to communing with him personally. Why do we push so hard to be “proper” and attend a church if we do not even encounter God there?
I think the church has failed by taking the approach to life that Jesus taught us that was to be applied personally and has instead institutionalized it as the process of relationship with Christ itself.
Please do not misunderstand me. Of course, people can be at church and have an encounter with God. Many people find God for the first time in church. Feeling convicted for living a life apart from God and turning their hearts back to his forgiving grace. Unfortunately, that is often where the development ends. New believers mistakenly begin to believe the church had something to do with it. That to be without the church is to also be without this miraculous change within them. We should recognize that a church is not needed for such an encounter. Most people have had more powerful encounters with God while lost on the byways than they ever have during an alter call. Truthfully this is where most people who God is desiring to reach are found.
Has the modern religious methodology of having a campus, a staff, and a business plan actually gotten in the way of us actually having an intimate relationship with God? We have replaced the solitary one-on-one relationship with a scheduled calendar of activities that we require God to fit within. As a result, we fail to worship God in Spirit and Truth and we are left wanting after the emotional music and dimmed lights fade away.
What is Truth? This very moment in time and space is Truth. What you feel, see, hear, and smell. This is truth, this is God’s ultimate reality that which he created for us to reside within. God is a spirit, here his Spirit resides with you. You worship God in Spirit and Truth as you sit here reading this short message.
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Psalm 46: 1
When David was writing this he was writing it at the moment, in the now. The New Age meditative philosophies have made Christians afraid to exist in the present moment. I know it had me. I became nearly nuts coming out of the New Age trying to avoid the now like the plague. They focus so much on experiencing the moment as the ultimate reality (but they do not have the power to deal with the demons and sin). So we can try to do a lot of things to completely be different than that. Instead, we can be driven to go on massive crusades that appear to be in the service of God (which they can be). But are actually a counterfeit of living in communion with God. We can convince a whole lot of people that to be part of a certain ministry is to be in the worship of God. These ministries can be biblical and share the word, but where they miss is never teaching how to live worshiping God in Spirit and Truth singularly. We end up misleading and taking the worship intended for God and turning it towards worldly manifestations instead.
Hebrews 10:19-22
Therefore, brethren, since we have the confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
If anything Christians have the ability to access the eternal now moment or Glory of God in an unprecedented way compared to the New/Old Age religions. For Jesus Christ dying for our sins enables us an unobstructed path to God’s throne. By the renewing and purification of our consciousness, we are able to see all that God has for us in the most glorious of ways. This Glory lives within and around us as part and partial of God’s Radiant Truth.
Good thing God is not found in any worldly thing we establish he is rather ever-present. He is always with us. There are other verses in the bible that tells us that God is always present with us.
Joshua 1:9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”
God’s presence was given to us freely once having experienced his saving grace. Plain and simple. That is it, there is nothing more that needs to be known for application. It simply is; never changing and always accessible to you for all eternity. It is free, you owe him nothing, and your only desire becomes to commune with him every moment of every day.
Matthew 10: 8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, and drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.
Worship God in your prayer and in every moment. He will lead you into all truth. Nothing else is needed, for all power comes through him and he lacks nothing to give to you. Prayer and praise become a natural condition of living in his presence.
Manifold Mountain 