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I love to spend time with people. And in most cases I receive life-giving encouragement and am built up by people. But they cannot sustain my life, and my life can function without them (though not very well, since we were created to be in relationship with people).
Not so with God. Jesus said in John 15:5, "Apart from Me you can do nothing." He is not overstating His case here. Moses understood the gravity of God's presence as well. In Exodus 33:15-16, Moses said to God, "If Your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in Your sight, I and Your people? Is it not in Your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and Your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?" Moses knew that if the real presence of God did not go with the people of Israel, they were doomed. And he knew that the only distinctive characteristic between Israel and the rest of the world was God's presence and covenant love. So he was desperate to stay with God and not move until God moved.
So why, today, do we go on about our lives and our ministries without stopping to consider whether God's manifest presence is with us or not? Why do we barge ahead without first praying and searching God's Word to determine His will? And here's the problem: we're good at manufacturing a pseudo-presence of God that looks and feels very similar. Few know the difference, yet after a while we start to see nothing of eternal substance happen and people begin to get run over by the enemy. But we're "doing church!" That's the problem. We have played some game without expressing our dependence on God to move then joining Him where He is moving.
Let's be a people who desperately waits for God and His presence to move before we move, who expresses that dependence in wholehearted devotion and radical prayer, and who walks in the power of His real presence in us as we live for His global mission. Apart from Him we are victims of the enemy, but with Him we are victorious over the enemy.
Not so with God. Jesus said in John 15:5, "Apart from Me you can do nothing." He is not overstating His case here. Moses understood the gravity of God's presence as well. In Exodus 33:15-16, Moses said to God, "If Your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in Your sight, I and Your people? Is it not in Your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and Your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?" Moses knew that if the real presence of God did not go with the people of Israel, they were doomed. And he knew that the only distinctive characteristic between Israel and the rest of the world was God's presence and covenant love. So he was desperate to stay with God and not move until God moved.
So why, today, do we go on about our lives and our ministries without stopping to consider whether God's manifest presence is with us or not? Why do we barge ahead without first praying and searching God's Word to determine His will? And here's the problem: we're good at manufacturing a pseudo-presence of God that looks and feels very similar. Few know the difference, yet after a while we start to see nothing of eternal substance happen and people begin to get run over by the enemy. But we're "doing church!" That's the problem. We have played some game without expressing our dependence on God to move then joining Him where He is moving.
Let's be a people who desperately waits for God and His presence to move before we move, who expresses that dependence in wholehearted devotion and radical prayer, and who walks in the power of His real presence in us as we live for His global mission. Apart from Him we are victims of the enemy, but with Him we are victorious over the enemy.
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