 Ever wondered if it was possible to have such intimacy with God that you could literally commune with Him every day? Eg: What if you could talk to Him everyday like as if He were right next to you and you could ask Him for guidance? What if you could be really intimate with Him and nothing in this world would ever matter anymore? You would say, that you probably are already doing that. But truly, IF we were enjoying such intimacy with God, then we wouldn’t be worried, or feeling depressed or asking God for a miracle or a healing for ourselves, etc. When you know someone so closely, then you don’t need to ask for something again and again right? Eg: My wife and I are really close to each other and we live together every day. It would be weird for me not to know her and keep checking on her or for her to keep checking on me. We instinctively know that certain things will just happen. If we could have a similar relationship with God, then it would change our Christian life completely. Our prayer life would be very different and faith would never be an issue. Do you think God wants such intimacy with us or do you think He prefers to maintain the distance? Do you think He prefers to be the all-powerful God and you be the lowly sinner crying out to Him for grace and mercy? Surely He desires intimacy with His children. The bible says “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you”. James 4:8. Additionally, the entire story of the gospel, the very reason for Jesus to lay down His life, was because He seeks intimacy with us. But then, look around you. Majority of Christians do not have such a relationship with God. It’s easy to know if someone is intimate with God or not. Just listen in to their prayers. Prayers that are mostly for themselves seeking provision, seeking healing, seeking breakthrough’s and frequent repetitions of the same prayer is a clear indication of lack of intimacy. If they really knew how much God loved them and if they knew they were one with Him, it would change their prayers. How do we get to such a level of intimacy with God? Is it even possible? Well, there is nothing for us to DO to get to a level of such intimacy with God. Jesus has done it all. We only need to understand the gospel and walk in it. Someone said “Biblical knowledge is far better than gold when it fuels our trust in God. Otherwise, it only fuels our pride.” My intention is to expound the gospel to you to such an extent that it impacts your walk with God, it impacts your prayer life and makes you realize that you are one with Him. You are not separate to God. You are one with Him. Before Adam and Eve sinned, they did have such intimacy. God spoke with Adam and Adam responded. There was a dialogue. Do you think Adam needed to cry and pray and plead before God for things he needed or for a breakthrough in something, etc? No, he didn’t, because intimacy with God brought all sufficiency. It is essential to rewind and see what exactly separated God and us from such intimacy. Back in the beginning, it was SIN that separated us from such intimacy with God. Ever since then, Gods plan was to redeem us and reconcile us. Even today, it is the same SIN that separates us from Him. And its not just the unsaved world. It is also us Christians. We know Jesus died for our sins, but we still carry a consciousness of sin. This is the real reason for a lack of intimacy with God. Hebrews 10:2 This does not mean that all Christians who do not enjoy intimacy with God are living sinful lives. No, No, No…a thousand times No. It’s just that their own “consciousness of sin” and their knowledge of the immense holiness of God keeps them from such intimacy. Yet, God longs for intimacy. He wants us to be anxiety free, sickness free, worry free and living lives that are joyful and victorious. This is the message all through the New Testament. Ideally, no Christian, no born again child of God should have any personal prayer requests. Ooh! That’s bold. But yes, every child of God should have such intimacy with Him that all their personal requests are handled individually by themselves between them and God. United prayers by a group of believers should be intercessory in nature. This is only an ideal situation which is never the reality because different Christians are at different levels of faith. Some are mature, some others are children and babes in Christ. So group prayers, praying for each other is definitely recommended. But when you are mature and are enjoying such intimacy with the Lord, then Prayers for lost people, prayers for protection during persecution, prayers for wisdom or guidance and a lot of praise and worship are usually the norm. That’s what a Christians life who is very intimate with God would look like. But this is obviously not the case. We get people wanting prayers for money, for broken relationships, people wanting to get married, people always wanting something or the other… It’s the same old issue of sin or consciousness of sin that separates people from such intimacy with Him. The truth is that God doesn’t recognize sin in us believers anymore, but we do and we lose confidence to enter into Gods presence. Hebrews 4:16, 10:19 We are all born again believers here. We’ve been Christians for a few years now, some more than others. But am sure you all will agree that though we are Christians, we have been sinful at some point in time or the other. It’s not like we suddenly became holy and pious people. We too struggle with many ungodly thoughts and desires, which we call temptations and trials and the world calls normal and being human. When we sinned, we prayed and sought forgiveness from the Lord and it took a while (sometimes a few days) to get that confidence back to feel that we are accepted by God again. At other times, we remind ourselves, we are righteous, there is now no condemnation, etc…but still when we pray, we are kind of doubtful if God heard us because we are wondering if God is upset with us or not. So as Christians we have been taught to resist temptations and wilfully make a choice to obey God. To help us with this, we learn that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. We are righteous now because of what Christ our Lord did for us. We are not under law but under grace. The blood of Jesus Christ continually washes us from every sin. We are taught to just seek forgiveness and continue our walk with the Lord, etc. All of this is true, but by nature it doesn’t make us very different to the lost world. We are just behaving differently and seem to have better control. They also have similar issues, but they don’t care to resist. They have accepted it as part of being human and carry on with their lives, but we as Christians feel convicted and find the need to be forgiven. And that’s the right feeling to have. That is evidence that we are not of this world. In fact, the bible teaches that we are indeed NOT of this world. All of this battle, though very real, is a ploy of the enemy to keep us from intimacy with God. The devil has successfully managed to keep Christians very busy in this personal battle of watching over their lives, that they never have freedom from consciousness of sin. Our internal struggles keep us focused on watching over ourselves and our thoughts and actions, ensuring we are doing the “Christian” things and living the “Christian” life. But our minds/souls are a different story. Does that make us a less of a Christian? No. It doesn’t affect our salvation either. But it does keep us from intimacy with God and therefore keeps us from hearing His voice for ourselves. That explains why our prayers always sound like God is separate to us and He holds all the power to do something about our situation and we are helpless unless He does something. But the truth is He and us are one. This constant strenous effort to walk the Christian walk either draw weak people away from God because they wear out or causes them to always be crying out to God for help and always depending on other people with prayer requests. When such people come to you and ask you for prayer, now you are obligated to pray for them because you feel they are looking up to you. You can’t let them down now by telling them you also have similar issues. That will affect their faith. So you pray with them, but quietly thinking to yourself, you need help too. Ultimate outcome is that the prayer didn’t get answered and it went nowhere. Both of you were in doubt with zero faith involved. In your heart, you are keenly desiring for intimacy with God, and the ability to hear His voice everyday and simply walking with Him every day, but you just can’t seem to know how to get there.
The Solution: As always the answers to all things pertaining to life is in His Word. The whole issue is lack of understanding of the gospel. So what exactly did Jesus’s death and resurrection do? Jesus’s lashings and wounds – Isaiah 53:5, 1 Peter 2:21-25 – By His wounds, we were healed. So he took away all our sickness. If this is the “truth”, then it impossible for us to be sick. Don’t go by experience, but simply by what the “truth” is. It is impossible for us to be sick if He took it all away. Right? Jesus Death – The sin that separated us from God was imputed to Jesus. Even God turned His back on Him when He was on the cross. He died our death. This means we died with Him. Matthew 27:46, 2 Cor 5:21, Romans 5:19 – So then, the sin that separated us from God is no longer an issue, correct? Born again – John 3:3. To be born again, you must first die. Else “again” is not possible. So if you died already and now are a born again person, who gave birth to you? You are no longer a descendant of Adam, but a descendant of God. The bible says you were born of the Word. This means, God gave birth to you when you were born again. Born of the word – 1 Peter 1:23, 1 John 4:4 Our old self, was born sinful because sin was transmitted to us from Adam through generations after generations. We couldn’t help but sin. We were all born separated from God. But what happened when we were born again? In the beginning was the Word, the Word was God and the Word was with God. If we were born of the word, then God gave birth this new born again person. Therefore, He couldn’t have transmitted sin to us. Ooh! Therefore, it is “impossible” for us to sin. We “cannot” sin. We cannot be sick, we cannot be in bondage, we cannot be in sin, we cannot be a failure, etc. Christ won the victory for us in such a way that He made it impossible for us to fail, if we believe. We Cannot sin. Is that shocking to hear? Read 1 John 3:9 When we understand this truth, we begin to realize that we “really” are not of this world because we are no longer a descendant of Adam or sinful man. We don’t have a past though we remember our previous life. This is why we are a NEW creation. Now when you call God “Father” in prayer, you will realize He really IS your Father because He literally gave birth to you. This is why the bible says “As He is, so are we in this world”. Just like Jesus is, so are we. We are family. He is our Father. When we walk in this consciousness, we begin to experience a new level of intimacy with Him. Your prayer life will change. You begin to speak to Him and you begin to hear Him speak back to you. Your prayers are more for others than for yourselves. Your day is full of communications with Him. About everything, the good, the bad and the uglies. Now having understood this, read the following verses and see if it reveals something new to you.
From God’s view point, when we keep crying out to Him for things we need, then fast and pray for answers to our personal prayers, (almost as if like trying to coerce Him into taking action), these are signs of immaturity. Like stubborn children in a shopping mall trying to manipulate parents into buying something they want. A mature child who is walking with God intimately, asks once. Thereafter there may be communications regarding that thing, but not a repetitive prayer. The devil has kept us busy being “sin conscious” so we can be ineffective in our Christian walk, but the truth is “We CANNOT Sin” because God gave birth to us and we have no sin in us. Therefore, there is nothing separating us from God our Father. Once we know this, then the devil is not even a factor. He is a defeated powerless useless nothing. He can only access your life if you let him. “He roams around seeking whom he may devour”, “Do not give the devil a foothold”, “submit to God and resist the devil and he will flee” . He is not a factor. Ignore him. Focus on intimacy with God through Christ. Walk in maturity. Have God communications everyday. Let God find you as a mature child with whom He can talk man to man/man to woman and give guidance and direction in your everyday life. Once you experience this, you will learn to be gracious to others. Nobody’s words will hurt you. You will not feel less about yourself. You will enjoy that feeling of contentment and also be godly in your daily walk. The bible says “Godliness with contentment is great gain.” Additionally, since God Himself gave birth to you, you have His life in you. His DNA is in you, not Adam’s. God is a God of love. So you have His love in you too. You will find it a lot easier to walk in love, loving everybody and being patient with everybody, once you know that you are His child. Walk in love because love is the most powerful spiritual weapon you can have. Jesus said, “By this the world will know that you are my disciples, if you have LOVE for one another”. Blessings in abundance to you all.
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