I want to have a deep intimacy with God. I want to have visions like Peter or John or Joseph or Ezekiel or Daniel. I want to see His face. Jesus tore the veil. Our High Priest in the order of Melchizedek has made it so that we can boldly come into the presence of God. There is nothing and no one greater than Him. We are made to enjoy God and His presence. We are made to worship Him. We have all heard that God loves us. We are also all aware that sin exists. Our world is full of problems and sorrow. It makes our hearts far from Him. I don’t want to be someone who honors God with my lips but not with my heart. I want to be someone whose heart is like David’s and after God’s own heart. I want to be obedient to what God wants for me because what He wants is best, even if it hurts. If it hurts I want to be someone who rejoices because I’m closer to Christ in suffering. If it doesn’t hurt, I’ll be thankful to Him, but I don’t want to settle and offer to God what costs me nothing. Despite this posture, I still struggle with a measure of unbelief. There is a hardening of the heart. There is what feels like hypocrisy in me. I think God can use me, and I can do this or that for God, but does He really want to connect with me? Who am I anyway — what qualifies me to know God or claim to have a relationship with the maker of everything? If I turn inward, I can feel stuck in that place. Nothing makes me worthy that comes from me alone. Jesus is the only answer. He is the one who gives me a new heart. A new life. He is my salvation. He is my truth. My peace. My weapon. My protection. My faith. My righteousness. If I am unfaithful, God is faithful. If I am weak God is strong. It’s because of Jesus that I experience God. He’s called me into His Kingdom, and He’s drawing more in. It’s a long hard road to the cross where Jesus has us follow Him on this side of heaven, but the resurrection is always worth it. So let’s lay aside every sin and unbelief in our hearts that could trap us and keep us from deepening intimacy with God. Let’s climb the Holy Mount, and praise the King among all our brothers and sisters. Let’s join the Angels and sing. Let’s dance. Let’s have joy. Let’s feast at the table of our God. Let’s enjoy the green pasture He leads us to. Let’s realize the greater reality of the Spiritual and fix our eyes on what’s to come. Let’s not be people distracted with the worries of this life. Let’s push onward. Persevere. Persevere. Persevere.
“But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 3:7?-?14 NIV
