For most people – life’s just plain busy. Hectic. And in the middle of that, we can believe in God, but end up wondering where He is. Exactly how do we draw close to God amidst the cut and thrust of life?

REAL LIFE 

Well, we are in the middle of a series that I’ve called ‘How to Get Close to God’. There are two parts to that, I guess, the theory and the practice. The theory of some of the things that we have to know about God – if you can call that theory and we looked at that a couple of weeks ago on the programme and the most important thing is: is that He has this amazing passion to be close to you and me – to be close to us.

We can have things not going so well and we slip into this thinking which is quite wrong – very wrong – that ‘God just wants to punish me. God could never be interested in me.’ God’s Word says this:

God yearns jealously for the Spirit that He has made to dwell in us. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Humble yourself before the Lord and He will exalt you. (You can read that in James chapter 4, verses 5 to 10)

I want to encourage you to remember that verse every time things are tough and out there in the cut and thrust of life, because that’s the reality – not some quiet super spiritual existence. We all have a life – I have one, you have one – and out there in this thing we call ‘life’, that’s where we forget about the heart of God and we revert back to this vague notion of some distant and disinterested God.

For most people these days, life is pretty hectic – family and work and mobile phones and email and taking the kids here and running them there and … somehow we just seem to be working longer and playing less. And while life can be filled with possibilities and opportunities, some days there are tensions and stresses – there just are.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, we get to wondering, ‘Well, where is God today? I wonder if He is going to show up.’ But it’s only a fleeting thought because we are so busy – running late at work again we wonder, ‘Will I make it home in time to get the kids off to football practice?’ Our minds are so focussed on this stuff that we are involved in, here and now, then you get to the end of the day and you feel drained and you wonder, ‘How come God didn’t show up today? What’s the matter with me, isn’t He interested? What do I have to do to get close to God?

Ever been there? I have, in fact, I used to be there almost every day and when that’s the reality of our lives, we can get to thinking, ‘Well, that’s just the way it’s going to be.’ We accept this distant, fleeting, every now and then kind of relationship with God, forgetting completely, the words that Jesus prayed for you and me, just before He was crucified. Words that tell us what lay behind His decision to take that road of crucifixion.

You can read this in John’s Gospel chapter 17, beginning at verse 20 – so grab a Bible if you have one. He says:

My prayer, Father isn’t for them alone, I pray for all those who will believe in me through their message, (In fact, Jesus is talking about you and me.) that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Father, I want those whom You have given me to be with me where I am, to see my glory – the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. (John 17:20-24)

You see that’s why Jesus went to the cross – so that He could be one with you and me – so that we could be with Him where He is. Can there be any greater love than that? Jesus has a passion for closeness and when we look at Jesus we see God – that’s what He said. You look at Him there in that garden, just before the cross and you know all about His heart. Look at this heart: “Father, I want those whom you have given to me to be with me where I am and to see my glory.”

But then there is just this hectic reality of life, isn’t there? And then there is that prayer that Jesus prayed for you and I in those dark hours seem such an incredibly long way off. Maybe you are a mother and you are changing dirty nappies or your child has nappy rash and she is teething and you haven’t had any sleep and you are wondering, ‘Whatever happened to being able to go to work? Whatever happened to intelligent adult conversation? Where’s God?’ and you feel like your world is falling apart.

Let me ask you something – is God in that place with you? Let me make it more personal than that – is Jesus … the same Jesus who prayed that prayer in that dark and lonely garden that night – is that Jesus there with you? Or maybe you are at work and you are going to go to a tough meeting and the politics is running rife and you are under threat and you are so tense you could cut the air with a knife, you are tired, you’re threatened, you are at risk. Let me ask you something – is Jesus in that place with you?

Whatever your place, whatever your circumstances, whatever your routine is today, tomorrow and the next day, do you believe that Jesus is God and that He is in that place with you?

See, this is a conundrum that everyone who sets their heart on Christ will face at some point. We can step out and believe in Jesus – we can decide that we are going to bow every part of our lives down to Him but then … then life just gets busy; very busy and we have an amazing propensity to focus on just the here and now; the things that we have to deal with today and all that Jesus stuff, well, that has to wait.

Somehow we separate our walk with Jesus from our walk through life. We westerners in particular, are very good at that – spirituality in one box, life in another – Jesus over there and life over here. And so we don’t experience that intimacy, that closeness with the One whom we call Lord. It frustrates the living daylights out of us and before we know it we are saying ‘Oh, it’s just all too hard’ and we acquiesce; we accept this poverty of relationship as being, well, somehow the normative Christian life.

What an utter tragedy! Put yourself in Jesus shoes for a moment. In that time leading up to His crucifixion – that dreadful, fearful, painful time – knowing what was about to happen and the ache in His heart and that heartfelt prayer: “Father I want those whom you have given to me to be with me where I am and to see my glory – the glory that you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.”

And so He went to the cross for you and me. How can we make such a tragic mistake? What’s the answer? How do we solve this dilemma?

THE THING THAT PLEASES GOD MOST

So how … how do we get close to someone we can’t see? It’s bazaar – why didn’t God make Himself visible? If God is God why is it that He has gone and hidden Himself? Well there’s a reason for that – it’s about giving us a free choice to love Him. Imagine if we could see God – imagine if who He is were completely visible to us, would anybody run away from Him? Would anyone turn their backs on this powerful, awesome, mighty, loving God? No, He has hidden Himself and sent us His Son and given us an invitation to believe in Him.

You see, without faith it’s impossible to please God because anyone who comes to Him has to believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. That’s what the Bible says in Hebrews chapter 11, verse 6.

Believe and seek – believe that he is here, believe that he will do what he says he will do and seek him with all our hearts, earnestly.

To tell you the truth, in the early days, I felt a little bit silly, earnestly seeking after someone I couldn’t see. Yet God placed a desire; a yearning in my heart that couldn’t be satisfied by anyone else but God Himself. And when I finally surrendered all to Him; when I finally laid down my life for Him, He filled me with His presence; the Spirit of God just as Jesus promised, with a joy unspeakable. And well meaning friends said to me ‘Berni, you know, you won’t always feel like this – you won’t always experience this sort of joy that you are feeling now.’

I recall being told that one day and going home angry and I said to God ‘Lord, if I can’t have this joy forever then I don’t want this Christianity thing. If I can’t know You intimately all the time then there is no point.’ And ok, there have been some tough times along the way – absolutely, there have. But this so called ‘sophisticated’ man of the world; this business man who had been clawing his way to the top, just decided to believe the promises that Jesus made, like a little child and since that time I have lived my life in the joy of the Lord – a joy unspeakable, a wondrous intimate relationship with Jesus.

Do you feel that desire in your heart – that yearning in your heart today? I believe that that is exactly why we are here together right now – because He wants to fan the flame of your desire for Him today.

This isn’t some complex proposition – sometimes we complicate things too much. Jesus promised to save us from our mess – our sin – with an eternal life, which is all about having an intimate closeness with Him. We receive that by believing in what He did for us on the cross and along with that, He also promises us a new life because the former without the latter just doesn’t make sense. He promised us His Holy Spirit; He promised us an incredibly intimate oneness with Him; He promised to dwell in us, to make His home in us and we make this so complicated.

Matthew chapter 11, verse 25, Jesus said:

I praise you Father, Lord of heaven and earth because you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned and revealed them to little children. Yes Father, for this was your good pleasure.

Wake up! It’s time to believe that this relationship; this beautiful closeness with God is for us, here and now, that’s what it means to live our lives in the promises of God. That’s what we talked about in the first couple of programmes of this series over these last few weeks.

Let me be very plain and direct at this point. It’s not enough just to believe God’s promises from a distance. There can be no closeness at a distance anymore than there can be intimacy between a husband and wife who live under separate roofs.

God wants us to believe in His promises right in the middle of our daily lives. Whatever is going on, He wants us to believe His promises to be with us and to make His home with us no matter what’s going on. He wants us to believe that right now in every circumstance that we walk through in life – good, bad, beautiful, ugly, stressful, peaceful – Jesus is in that place with you just as He is with me. And the thing that pleases God most is when we put our faith in Him and His promises. See the two are inseparable because God and His Word are one.

How do we do that? We behave what we believe! Let me say that again – we behave what we believe. Faith isn’t something we tuck away in a cupboard – pretty useless there actually. ‘Oh, I put it away for a rainy day – kind of like an insurance plan for eternity.’ Well, that makes it useless for here and now. But what if we lived what we believed? What if we change our behaviour and act as though what we believe is truth? There’s a radical thought!

When you are changing the two millionth dirty nappy for the day; when you are facing the fiftieth rejection applying for jobs; when you are feeling lonely and disappointed and under threat and we are tempted to crumble; to lash out, to do the ‘misery guts’ thing, whatever it is – complain – whatever, what if we took that verse

Father, I want those whom you have given to me to be with me where I am and to see my glory, the glory that You have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

What if you and I believed what Jesus prayed for us with the simple faith of a child? Instead of grumbling or complaining or lashing out, we just turn to God and said ‘Thank You God for being here with me – thank You Lord for suffering for me. I don’t know what is going on here, but You do and I am just going to trust in You – I’m just going to hold here and walk with You.’

See, this isn’t some doublethink – this is turning to God because we believe He is there and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him. What if that became our habit of a lifetime? Come on, what if?

LET’S GET REAL

 I want to share a practical reality with you from my life. In my life I am basically involved in full time ministry, doing what I am doing right here and now with you. But I also still do a little bit of Information Technology consulting work – that’s the background that I have come from. Some of the organisations that I have worked with can be tough places – the pressure is really on. I can be sitting in a meeting in some big board room, looking out over Sydney Harbour and the city and you press a button on the wall and they bring in the coffee and there are two million dollar paintings hanging on the walls and you are dealing with tough complex corporate issues and it’s brutal. And if you ask me, ‘Berni, does your wife still love you while you are in there?’ – my answer is ‘Well, of course she does!’

I mean, I may only be able to give her a fleeting thought in the middle of that cut and thrust but in a split second, I can picture her and think of her and the knowledge of her love just warms my heart. You know I can be cold and lonely but I just get that sense that, tonight, I am going home to my Jacqui. It’s a joy; it’s a delight – just to give her a quick call on the mobile phone during a break. Just to hear her voice and connect with her, with a quick chat is awesome.

It might only be thirty seconds but out there in the cut and thrust of life, I can do that. I can connect with her even though she is not sitting there in that boardroom with me at that same meeting. And even if I can’t call her; even if I don’t have time to think about her for five minutes, I can remember her love in a split second and it’s fantastic. We can be close when we are apart.

Well, it’s exactly the same with God, only God goes one step further. Jacqui can’t be with me in that meeting but God can and He is, because that’s His promise – a promise I believe with all my heart. Sometimes if you are a mum changing a dirty nappy and your husband is off at work, he can’t be there in the middle of that day when you are dealing with all that stuff but God can and God is. God is there in the same way that God is sitting with me in that board room, in that meeting

In fact, God is one big step closer than Jacqui can ever be to me because sometimes I am physically not with her but He is always there in that room with me. And He’s there, not just in that room but remember what Jesus prayed? “Father, I want them to be one with us, just like you and I are one. We will go and make our home with them.” He is there in me and when I am sitting in that meeting and it’s tough and my mind is working at a million miles an hour and I’m trying to help my clients and maybe the politics is difficult, in a split second; in a quick fleeting moment, I can turn my heart towards Christ and just know that He’s my Saviour.

Can I tell you, that brings the most incredible, indescribable joy and peace? His Holy Spirit floods over me and fills me and God is in that place. And because I am walking in His promises, because I can recall that He is with me, it’s awesome! It’s a simple faith in Him, nothing more, nothing less.

Now I don’t need a mobile phone to talk to God, I can have a quick prayer in an instant anywhere that I am. I can just say ‘Aw, thank You Lord, that’s awesome.’ Or sometimes I am in a meeting and I go ‘God help!’ or ‘Lord, I just don’t know what to say now. What should I say?’ And in a split second I feel Him in there with me – His gentle voice speaks in my heart.

God talks differently to each one of us but for me He guides me in this way, He leads me that way. And whatever your situation is, whether its nappies or business meeting – whatever it is – God is in that place with you. It’s a promise – it’s His unbreakable promise. He will never leave you or forsake you if you have placed your faith in His Son Jesus Christ.

Listen to me, when we start walking in those promises – WOW – what a radical transformation in life it is. Something that was once just a distant, head knowledge now becomes real – the frustration is gone. Because, you know something? God is in this place; right now, in this instant – God is in this place.

Do you get it? In this place – and that – well, I don’t know about you, but that’s utterly awesome for me. Because as we sit in the middle of what we sit in; as we stand in the middle of what we stand in; as we walk in the middle of what we walk in, we can just know that Jesus Christ is with us in every place and every circumstance and He is.

For me it’s a habit. You know, habits are easy to form. Sometimes a husband and wife stop thinking about each other – it’s a bad habit. When we start thinking about each other – that’s a good habit. And I have more stuff to do in my day than I can fit in and I have every excuse under the sun why I shouldn’t stop and just pause for an instant and look with the eyes of my soul at Jesus. Right there in the cut and thrust of life we can experience a joy, a comfort, an intimacy and a help that words simply cannot describe because God is there.

Is this maybe a habit that you have to form? Is this maybe something that God is speaking to you about today? Remember that prayer of Jesus in that garden before He was crucified? He, in effect was saying, “Dad, you know the reason I’m going to the cross is because I want them to know the intimacy that You and I have. I want them to be part of that; I want to be in them and have them in us, that’s why I’m going to the cross.”

Come on – that’s why Jesus did what He did – to purchase that wondrous, intimate close relationship with Him and then He sends His Spirit to dwell in each one of us who believes. It doesn’t get any more intimate than that! He is here – not somewhere out on the other side of the universe – not a million miles away – not down the street or around the corner – right here, always. That’s the promise!

And to enter this promise we need only the smallest amount of faith; not a mountain of faith – just a mustard seed of faith – a tiny amount of faith – that’s all it takes to draw close to Jesus in the middle of life.

Father, I just pray that You would write this reality on our hearts. Father, get through our thick skulls that we don’t have to sit out there and be afraid and feel lonely because You purchased this intimacy for us on the cross and You are here in this place and You are here with us always – day after day, minute by minute, second by second and we thank You for that, in Jesus name.