He Is Real

"Our assumption should always be that we need to learn."

A YOUNG MAN got lost in the church, amidst all its programs and outreaches. Despite evangelism services and well-meant advice, he fell apart again and again, unable to hold onto his faith for very long. It was, to me, like a spinning top and every toss pointed him outward at another process toward healing. I admire his courage in telling his testimony but still marvel that between all the places and teachings and humanism, “move here,” “join this,” no one pointed out the answer. He’s found himself now. He’s a wonderful source of worship. I’ve found many young people his age who share their intimacy with the Lord in a similar manner. But where in all he heard and a destroyed marriage and “Christian teaching,” was teaching on the Spirit of God? Where was his foundation?

In my youth, I performed in a church play that told a similar story. Though it was fiction, there was a young man who couldn’t see heaven, distracted by so many things along the roadway. We made it local, changing the locations to cities along I-4 in Florida, which had people laughing, but that set aside, here was someone searching for a secure foundation on every aisle, at every split in the road, and not until they met Jesus was anything solved. And no work was required to receive salvation, not moving to another state, nor joining some man’s organization.

The church is meant to be a source of truth, a light of love that encourages hearts and draws pictures of Jesus, yet I hear so many sermons that don’t even mention Him, past the song service. This isn’t another whine about the state of the church, but a promise you will not hear an empty sermon here. There is no faith minus Jesus, no love minus the Father, no power of God without the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. They are complete unity – in joy, in thought, in action. John 16:13 says the Spirit never speaks on His own. By this, NOT meaning, He is an automaton, but instead, that He never speaks separate thoughts from the Father and the Son. Their unity is that complete. And yet, He does speak singular, as does the Father and Jesus. Intimacy with them differentiates their voices. But there is no argument between them, though I have joked about it.

I will always send you to the Word of God, to time spent in worship where the presence of God works in you, and to a consistent prayer life. It is by knowing the character of God, that He is endless love and everlasting mercy, that He is always good and He delights in you, that you gain trust in Him. Minister Michael Todd of Transformation Church adds that our discipline brings us to delight. The more he took the time to go to the gym, the more he enjoyed being there, and when he didn’t go, he missed it. This is like our prayer life, he pointed out. When we spend time with God, more and more, we will crave to be with Him. I cannot echo this strongly-enough. I did not understand this when I began it, but it is my every breath now. Jesus is my every breath now.

The church is not a brochure nor a flyer of available programs. Nor a ten-step path toward healing. Though it often has groups dedicated to common studies, it is not a social center nor a separate society. The church was not meant to become inward, locked into buildings and seating spaces, but Jesus sent us out into all the world to be all the parts of God that joined are God. We are a revelation to the earth of a loving God who has a face and a name. A personality. We show Him as rescue, as healing, as the miraculous. We paint Him as real and caring and incredible.

We do not make Him revenge, nor hatred, nor a condemning voice of strife and division. All these things are the devil, WHO HAS BEEN JUDGED AND FOUND GUILTY, CONDEMNED AND EXPOSED FOR THE THIEF AND DESTROYER HE CHOSE TO BECOME. God – our Father, our Savior, and our Spirit – are not in league with the devil. Ever. And if anyone preaches this, they are wrong. A misunderstanding of God and a misreading of the Scripture, without the wisdom of God, has caused this error in thinking. If 10,000 people told me God made me sick because Paul’s thorn, because Job, because suffering, even if it looked that way in my poor human brain, my heart knows otherwise.

Our assumption should always be that we need to learn.

What that young man needed instead of a new home in another country, or a new job, or a career change, was what rescued him, finding Jesus, learning to worship and read the Word. When he saw God as human, he stopped wandering. A song I came across on social media speaks of Him as living water. Jesus made this statement to the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob. But the song paints in two other images, the water at the pool of Bethesda which when stirred healed many (John 5:5), and the blood and water which flowed from Jesus’ side. It is such a powerful thought that a man who’d been sick for 38 years found living water in the love of God who commanded him to walk, and a soldier saw it when he “pierced his Maker.” We wonder what Jesus thinks of His crucifixion, and in that moment, hearing that song one day, I knew the answer.

LISTEN TO “Deeper Water” by Ry Cox.

This is my point. He is real. God came to earth to live and die as a man and do something only God could do. He revealed the plan of God for our salvation, and all the mystery of prophecies for thousands of years. But greatest of all, He revealed Himself, He showed us the Father in a complete image and poured into us the same Spirit that raised Him from the dead. We are not believing in abstract ideas in order to obtain something, nor mental reasonings and education so that we can dress others up like disciples. When we stop turning our sermons into seminars, our services into entertainment, we will see the heart of God, which looks a lot like us. And we are supposed to look exactly like Him.

“The responsibility of making clear the mystery of God’s true nature, character, and government; the mystery that was hidden for generations by Satan’s lies about God but is now fully revealed by Christ—and all those who love Jesus see it.” (Colossians 1:26)

“For God did not make us to let us go and be separated from him, but to be his—united to him in love through our Lord Jesus Christ who died to heal and restore us, so that those who are currently alive and those asleep in death will live together with him.” (1 Thessalonians 5:9-10, Remedy)

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com