Enjoying God - Week #4

Chapter Four: The Audience of One

The author begins this chapter with a fable which tells of a spring of pure water with miraculous healing properties, and whoever drank of it was healed instantly. As word got out, people came from near and far to drink of this spring, and eventually, all kinds of businesses and homes were built around this spring to support the multitude of visitors coming. In time an entire city was built.

One day a visitor came looking for the stream; not finding any signs, he asked a resident where the famous stream was, and after hesitating a moment, the resident answered with embarrassment, “I don’t even know. In all of our activity – our building and moving – we’ve somehow lost sight of the healing stream.”

This fable reminds me of the experience I had as a young missionary in Puerto Rico many years ago. In my regular devotional time, I was reading through the Scriptures and was in the book of Judges reading about Samson. When I got to chapter 6, I read of his being seduced by Delilah into telling her the secret of his strength…you know the story.

When I got to Judges 16:20, it was as if the Holy Spirit took out a bright highlighter pen and underscored the words as I read them: “He did not know that the Lord had left him.” A holy fear entered me that morning that has remained with me since. I saw clearly that Samson was anointed and called and chosen by God for a particular purpose in Israel’s life and destiny; he was doing the will of God by defeating the Philistines. But along the way, he allowed himself to slowly be drawn into compromises until one day he woke up from a night’s sleep to find himself stripped of his God-given strength.

What most hit me in that story that day was not the sin and compromises, but the fact that the sin and compromises had so dulled him that when Delilah wakened him to warn him that the Philistines were coming, he jumped out of bed with the same thought he had had the other times she had tried this on him: “I’ll show them…let me at them!” The Holy Spirit’s commentary on Samson at that moment was, “He did not know that the Lord had left him.”

And I realized that the worst part of it all was that this anointed servant of God had reached such a point of dullness in his walk with God that he had no clue that God was not around. I cried out to the Holy Spirit that morning to never allow me to get so engrossed in ministry and doing the work of God that my heart grows cold and hard and dull to the presence of the One I’m serving and I find myself one day unaware that His presence is missing and I’m just going through the religious motions as Samson was doing.

This chapter deals with religious busyness and the spiritual poverty many believers live in because of seeking the approval of men; I hope you can read it for yourself. It’s fairly lengthy and in the interest of keeping this to a reasonable length, I won’t try to cover all of it.

The author says, “Religious busyness drives us to develop programs and machinery that propel an institution rather than promote a relationship with the Lover of our hearts. It takes away the ability to sit at the feet of Jesus. It opens the door to performance-based faith and undermines what Christ did for us on the cross…We then begin developing our own substitutes – settling for good rather than God…We try to satisfy our hearts with the water of obligation and duty, and yet we remain thirsty for something more.”

I’ve spent my entire life within Christian community, particularly within Christian missionary community both as a daughter of missionaries then as an adult missionary among dedicated and genuine followers of Jesus; I count myself one of these. In more recent years, my heart has been given permission (through circumstances the Lord has orchestrated) to run fully with what I was always drawn to as a young woman: a wholehearted, lovesick pursuit of God, and this pursuit has bumped up against human and religious systems that were happier with me being in compliance with them. But the encounters I’ve had with the living God have ruined me for anything less, and I live my days more interested in His praise and affirmation than in that of others around me. (I’m not claiming to do this perfectly, but I’ve lived it enough now to never want to go back to people-pleasing.)

The human heart was made for wholehearted love for God, and I believe the Holy Spirit is stirring desire for God among His people more than ever now. I travel a little to share with different groups about these things, and in the past year or so I’ve seen a marked difference in how God’s people respond to these truths…our desire for Him is overcoming the obstacles that have hindered our seeking him with our whole heart.

The Gospel and the Word of God is given to us to free us to love the Father with all our hearts! That’s what we were created for and that’s why He has given us His Son and the Scriptures.

The great men and women of God have always understood the priority of loving God above all else, even above ministry to people (Mark 12:29-31; Revelation 2:2-5, etc.). The author quotes Watchman Nee in this chapter:

"Work for the Lord undoubtedly has its attractions for the flesh…you may be thrilled when crowds gather to hear you preach…If you have to stay at home, occupied from morning to night with mundane matters, you think: How meaningless life is…If only I were free to go around preaching…
But that is not spirituality. Oh, if we could only see that very much work done for God is not really ministry to Him!...The thing I fear most is that many of you will go out and win sinners to the Lord and build up believers without ministering to the Lord Himself. Much so-called service for Him is simply following our own natural inclinations. We have such active dispositions that we cannot bear to stay at home, so we run around for our own relief…
Many of us can enjoy working among people, but how many of us can draw near to God in the Holy of Holies?...Ministry that is ‘unto Me’ is in the inner sanctuary, in the hidden place…people may think we are doing nothing, but service to God within the Holy Place far transcends service to the people in the outer court."

Another well-known man of God, Oswald Chambers, said this:

"The only way to keep true to God is by a steady persistent refusal to be interested in
Christian work and to be interested alone in Jesus Christ."

S.J. Hill says that the biblical view of success for humans is the realization that we are loved by God and that we are lovers of God. In other words, our whole identity is wrapped up in God, just as the Apostle John’s was. He never names himself “John” in his gospel, but rather refers to himself always as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” I love that!

The more I believe and receive this truth that my success lies in who I am in Him (dearly beloved) and Who He is in me (my First Love), then I can do what He gives me to do with confidence, because I begin successful before I do anything and don't need to prove anything with what I do...it's simply the overflow of a lovesick heart.

Hill finishes the chapter talking about God the Father’s affirmation and blessing of His Son Jesus and points out five main parts that there are to full blessing that a human father can give to his son or daughter, which is seen in God’s blessing of Jesus at His baptism. (He takes this from Gary Smalley’s book The Blessing.) I will simply list the five components for you:
1. Meaningful touch
2. Affirmation or spoken message
3. Attaching high value to the one being blessed
4. Portraying a specific future for the one being blessed
5. Being actively committed to fulfilling the promise of the blessing.

“Many believers try to serve the Lord without having experienced the Father’s affirmation and blessing.” Our heads may know this but it must be a revelation to our spirit or we serve the Lord with insecurity and in fear of man.

I want to encourage you, as I have done before, to study the emotions of God’s heart in the Scriptures; and then take the time to be with Him without doing anything but having your heart open to Him. Sing to Him and listen for any word He may want to whisper to you or He may simply enjoy being with you in silence. As you give Him the chance to speak, He will affirm you in His love and with His affirmation, you will grow in confidence and minister to others without fear.

This is a life-long process. For some of us the healing that will come by simply being affirmed and blessed by God the Father will take a long time; but even after the healing of past issues, we will always need His affirming words in order to navigate a performance-driven world and church. As an adult woman, my earthly father's affirming words were super important to me; I never outgrew wanting and needing to be affirmed by him.

Living before “an audience of One” (for His praise alone) is only truly possible as we know how ravished He is with us. The Lord bless you and may His bridegroom zeal go after all the obstacles that are in the way of our experiencing His love! I don’t have the energy nor zeal to do this for myself, but I can say “yes” to His doing it on my behalf.

Next week we will cover half of chapter five (to the bottom of page 81): The Affectionate and Approachable Father. We are now a year into this book club, and there are a number of people reading it regularly. Thank you for sharing these books with me. When August comes, I’m going to take a break and not blog about a book but rather make a couple of postings during the month of simple and short words of encouragement. Then in September we’ll go back to a new book.

With this in mind, I’m going to take the remaining three chapters of Enjoying God at a slower pace, spending two weeks on each of these chapters. These chapters are quite lengthy anyway and this topic of the lavish love of God for weak humans deserves to be gone through slowly.

God bless you this week!