Do you remember when movies and Facebook was a very, very little thing? Do you remember when your great desire was to read the Word and your great desire was to pray and your great desire was to be like him? And your great desire was to just be before him and somehow he would have noticed you? The greatest desire as a young believer, maybe was just to be in his presence?
Something has happened. We have left our first love.
Someone asked me, “Well Jonathan, what if I don’t want to pray? What if I want other things of this world rather than Jesus?” I put my knees on the floor in the night. When I glance towards heaven the heart of God beats faster.
At times I am walking with my wife in the park. I can just give her a glance. A single glance and her heart will beat faster because she is mine and I am hers. Just a glance up at heaven and the very heart of God beats faster.
When you bow your knee to pray and you look up to heaven, an amazing thing. Why wouldn’t you want to pray? Doesn’t that make you want to pray? This is not work.
“People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the undisciplined of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.” – D.A. Carson
There is also communion, walking, breathing God. Laughing, joy with God.
His love is so great it really does cover a multitude of sins. Isn’t it amazing that we talk about the presence of God? How beautiful is the presence of God, the fragrance of God’s presence, how much it is just… it has so much worth? It is so wondrous. It is beyond words to describe. The presence of God is such a joy and here we have God speaking the same thing about our presence to him.
My little girl one time just drove me to tears. I walked into the bedroom and the moment she saw me she just opened her arms. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that her father was going to receive her, that her father was going to love her, that her father was full of joy to see her.
“Well, I don’t know if I am worthy to be received.” You are not. You never will be, but that is not the point. Your unworthiness is swallowed up by his love. This is all about him. You have finally walked through a door where all that stuff doesn’t matter anymore. It has been taken care of. It is over now. When it is finished like he said on the cross, when it was finished like our Savior said it was really finished. It was a done deal. Love was opened up. Mercy was opened up. A fountain was opened up. And not all the powers of hell could close it down.
There is a place for you now. And it is not for you just part-time and it is not for you just when you get it right and it is not for you just because you are really dedicated and it is not for you just because you are involved in missions and do ministry and have sort of title in the church. It is for you because Christ Jesus made it for you. And it is always yours and you can always go there. And you don’t have to go far. You never have to go far, not when your love is omnipresent, not when he is everywhere all the time in his fulness. You do not have to go far.
Grace connects us with our inability to save ourselves, with God’s gracious willingness to do so, with the enormous price that had to be paid in order to do so, and with the gratitude that should flow as a result.