Do You Think . . . ? (rewind with additions)
But for me, the nearness of God is good to me; I have made the Lord YHWH my refuge that I may declare Your works. Psalm 73:28 (my translation)
God/ Lord/ YHWH – In the movie, Man on Fire, Denzel Washington plays a has-been black-ops expert who struggles with suicide over his past actions. He finds redemption in the life of a little girl, but before his heroism, he asks our fatal question. “Do you think God will forgive us for the things we have done?”
Please don’t jump to theological affirmations. Allow the severity of guilt to penetrate your soul. Consider what you have really done. Is there really any justification for thinking that the holy One, the Sovereign God, has reason to forgive you? If God alone is truly my good, how could I possibly explain all my wasted effort, disobedient acts, mindless fantasies and deliberate rejection of His ways? What kind of fool have I been to think that God should even give me, a great sinner, any thought at all?
What does Asaph say about this one true Elohiym Adonai YHWH? He says something quite remarkable, if we slow down long enough to read it without our added theology. He says that being in the presence of Elohiym Adonai YHWH is all that matters. Asaph is not longing for “heaven.” He is not waiting for the escape hatch or for death to sweep him out of a world of turmoil. He is not looking for blessings from on high or a comfortable ride here below. He wants only one thing: to be where YHWH is. That is enough. That is good.
Step back a moment and reconsider Asaph’s insight in light of your own attitudes and circumstances. Are you able to say with Asaph, “The nearness of God is my good”? It’s a powerful statement. It means that trials and troubles are of no consequence if they bring us near to God. It means that the encounters and experiences of our lives really don’t matter unless they draw us near to Him. It means that we stop looking for a way out and start looking for the Engineer who arranged it for us. It means that we seek Him in everything He brings across our paths. Our lives pursues His presence. Our attitudes adopt contentment. It’s good to be where God is.
Brother Lawrence wrote a tiny book called Practicing The Presence Of God. He lived what Asaph declared. Our good is to be in His presence. Where doesn’t matter. With whom matters. If you and I examined our lives on the basis of this simple distinction, do you think we would need to make some changes? Would our attitudes need correction? Would our “vacation” plans and “retirement” dreams be altered? Would we need to take another look at our current location?
“Nearness” is a very unusual Hebrew word. Qirbah is used only twice in Scripture. It is tied to the verb qareb, to draw near, to approach. The pictograph is quite revealing. It is “the least (or last) person in the house.” Ah, now we see it. Drawing near is a function of humility! The last shall be first. God’s presence is found where we are humbled, and in Scripture, that usually means suffering. So the question really comes down to this: Am I willing to suffer in order to draw near?
The pictograph can also be read, “Behind (future)-person-house-revealed,” or “The future of a person in the house revealed.” In other words, what we become depends on which house we live in. David expressed this in another Psalm (Psalm 27).
Will I give up on my dreams of comfort and ease of life? Will I stop chasing the elusive “success” model? Will I put away all those self-medications that I use to compensate for my troubles? Am I really going to make nearness to Him the singular goal of my life?
Asaph tells me that unless and until I do, life isn’t worth living. I know the “isn’t worth living” part pretty well. It is the nearness that remains distant.
Topical Index: nearness, qirbah, humility, Psalm 73:28
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I often see a distance between desire and doing. My soul cries out, yet my feet shuffle. I desire to love the Lord my God with all my heart soul and mind. Yet my mind wanders, I actually feel bored; my heart is divided, my strength is given to other things. I pursue other lovers, I actually enjoy being numb. Then a mirror is held up and I see, sometimes with great anguish the great distance between the vision in my inner man – the longing, the clarity, the rightness of abandonment to Him; and the present tangible reality of my walk and my ways. I touch a great anguish, I feel a disappointment, I would, unattended, disqualify myself for my utter hypocrisy. Then my soul cries out and I wait and He speaks to my heart and I feel that none of this is a surprise to Him, He is leading me through this process; He has chosen us, He is leading us, He is our Father.
So pass the humility please; it is a gift; remove from us the appetite for shiny things; quicken our slumbering spirits; awaken in us a hope that what you say is true Abba; that what you said Yeshua is true; that you have chosen us; that you know our infirmity and that You are yet our Father. You really love us, don’t You?
You have ruined us for inferior things Father; so please bear with our wobbly walk, bind up our wounds and give us an understanding heart that loves you and brings You pleasure.
Where else would we go? Who else could we go to? You alone are our hope.
What an incredibly beautiful and encouraging article this morning. Thank you Skip. Shared the gist of this on my facebook page this morning crediting you for the reminder that the nearness of our beloved GOD truly is our joy! Hallelujah!
Is nearness to God something I desire? You bet.
I sometimes get confused and lost in the things of daily life. Like, for example: We are in the process of selling our home in Ohio to move to rural Missouri. This is something we have longed to do for years. God has been moving us in that direction and things have basically been going pretty smoothly. Now we have hit a pothole in the selling of our century home. It could be a bad thing but maybe not. The buyers are not pulling out (yet) but of course I immediately want to snatch the whole thing back from God and do it myself! He is not done and yet in my mind I am fighting a battle of trusting Him.
I have trusted Him to this point so why doubt now? Is anything impossible for Y-H?
I already know the answer to that.
So in reading the teaching today and there are others as well, I wonder if any of this “stuff” is supposed to be important to us? Should we forsake all earthly pleasures and simply follow the rabbi? Am I wrong to trust God to work this move out and at the same time really hope that it does happen? Would I be wrong to be sad if this doesn’t work out?
I will trust Him and worship Him even if this means we end up staying in Ohio. He is not limited by location so we can be near Him anywhere but we so want to live elsewhere!
Emotions are not wrong. They just are. What we do with them is determined by bending what we feel to the will of the Father. Emotional theology is the real work of the Spirit. The Greeks feared all emotion because it upset the balance. But God never asked for balance. He asked for intensity.
I am not sure I understand “emotional theology.”
So becoming unbalanced from time to time could be a good thing? LOL
I am a pretty intense person and I think more and more often about bending the Yetser hara towards what pleases God. It is an intense battle at times! The Greek in me is reluctant to give up!
In most Western thought, emotions are suspect, even viewed as defects because they interfere with the rational process of control. Since Greek paradigms are based on the idea that rationality is what makes us human, emotions are viewed as impediments or at least distractions from the completely rational and superior life. Think of Star Trek’s portrayal of Spock. Therefore, in theology emotions tend to be treated as signs of the lack of understanding or as hurdles that need to be overcome. But Hebrew thinking often portrays emotions are essential components of interacting with God. In fact, rather than treat God as an emotionless being (which if pressed would be true of the God of Aquinas), Hebrew views God as very emotional. So I think we need a new theology, one that emphasizes the role of emotions and the necessity of seeing the hand of God through our feelings rather than simply with our thinking.
When I was with people who chose to sing the song Refiner’s Fire, I could not bring myself to sing along. I knew it would not be worship or truth. I could not say that I longed for the furnace of affliction even if it was “God” who through me in. Wasn’t coming to the point where I can resonate with “in faithfulness YHVH has afflicted me” hard enough? I wondered about all those people singing that song. Do they know what they’re singing; are they that much more holy than I am? What you have written today is sublime Skip. Thank you
Another great article! Funny how we want to be filled with Gods Spirit, but don’t want to be emptied (humbled) so we can be filled. Would you ever think of filling a vessel with anything that was not emptied first? God wants purity not a mixture of flesh and His Spirit. This is one of the great values of suffering, and humility is the foundational grace.
Isn’t the real question here: How do I draw near to YHVH? I have noticed in my 25+ years of walking the path of testing the Word against what I am taught, that pontificating can be a real downer. Admittedly, I am not the scholar Skip is, but sometimes, and I mean no disrespect, people can talk themselves in to a hole of despair.
We are brought out of Egypt not to go back. That means leaving the sin we have left off where it is. We do not go back and revisit time and time again. If it continues to crop up, the get to the bottom of it. Ask why the enemy is allowed to continue to plague you even when you have confessed and repented. Where or what is its root or source?
We are given instruction: sin not, thereby giving place/ground/legal right to the evil one. Please, do not go into a dissertation on how YHVH created evil. I have served Him as a minister of healing and deliverance for over 15 years and it is never His intent to inflict pain or suffering on His own. The enemy of our souls is the one who uses our failings against us to stop us from moving forward in the Power and Strength of the One who so graciously redeemed us from this very thing.
We are given clear and plain promises of forgiveness, becoming His righteousness, overcoming, life abundant, victory, shalom, and rest – among a few. How in the world are we supposed to fulfill the purpose we are created for while wallowing in self condemnation? What many do not understand is that the blessings and many of the promises are conditional. And they were intended for the here and now – not some pie in the sky, sometime down the road doctrine of liars. If you . . .then I . . . These are YHVH’s words. We are expected to DO something.
Drawing near is spoken of in James 4:8 – Draw near to Elohim and He will draw near to you. Actually, the whole book needs to be read for context. It is literally a primer of faith with works or how to do your faith. James is repeating a Tanach principle found almost word for word in Zechariah 1:3: Therefore tell them, thus says YHVH of hosts, “Return to me” – it is a declaration of YHVH of hosts – “and I will return to you” and Malachi 3:7: “From the days of your ancestors, you have turned away from My statutes and have not kept them. Return to me and I will return to you,” says YHVH of hosts.
Yeshua did not come to make us miserable, He came to bring restoration as much as possible this side of eternity. Does that mean we will not suffer or that we will not be persecuted? No. It does mean that we can trust what our Creator and Deliverer said – That He will never leave us or forsake us, that His mercies are all new every day, and that His lovingkindness is everlasting.
We most certainly will have issues until Messiah returns. It is called the process of sanctification. Being transformed from one degree of glory to the next into the image of Messiah Yeshua. It is the daily work of dying to self and dealing with the next thing YHVH brings to our attention. Is this pleasant? Far from it, but it brings us nearer to YHVH which is worth it every time! He is about healing and restoring. Yes, we must be sick of sin and aware of it to be able to deal with it through confession, repentance, and ultimately being forgiven – a word that means no going back, but there is no “woe in me” in that – only rejoicing in the One who has the Power to set free, heal, and restore.
I have been pondering if a husbands closeness( i.e. authentic real honest vulnerability intimacy ) to his wife is a direct reflection of the husband’s closeness to God , how there is really no hiding or pretending ….and how obvious who you have been with God or self is reflected in who you are becoming…..
a person can read pray kneel yet not give themselves over in surrender to experience God’s presence – I call this narcissism …..
You just wrote the words so deep in my heart.Not only do they kneel and pray….but they pastor….churches!!!