students of jesus

It’s so much easier to study about about Jesus than to be a student of Jesus. We face the constant temptation to fill our heads with the details of his life and ministry. Pastors and college professors emphasize the need to memorize Bible verses or learn Greek and Hebrew. Publishers produce massive volumes of systematic theology. Popular Christian books suggest Biblical “keys to success” for our finances, healing, and any other human need. But Jesus is not a system, he is a person.

Perhaps we should give ourselves first to filling our hearts and lives with his presence. An omniscient God is not impressed with the size of our intellect, but he is impressed with the size of our heart. How can a finite human mind grasp an infinite God? St. Augustine, one of the greatest intellectuals in history, lamented that the “mansion of his heart” was too small and asked God to graciously enlarge his heart, not his mind. The Holy Spirit, who breathed out every word of the scripture, is not impressed with how many verses we have committed to memory, but he is impressed with how many verses have found their way into our everyday lives. Jesus didn't care much for religious knowledge, but he was astonished by the faith of simple people like widows and gentile soldiers.

Even though the Scripture encourages us, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding,” we are constantly tempted to pursue human understanding regarding the words of Jesus when we should pursue his living presence. Trust is all about relationship, understanding is all about intellect. In Jesus, God chose to become a man. The infinite stooped down and clothed himself in humanity. In Jesus, God did not pretend to become a man, God became a man. In his earthly ministry Jesus did not reveal all the secrets of knowledge and learning in human history. He chose instead to reveal how it was possible to enter into relationship with the creator. Jesus chose to reveal the Kingdom of God. By his actions, Jesus teaches us that relationship is more important than understanding. We know this intuitively. We tend to forget it when it comes to our faith.

Faith does not require us to throw our brains into the trash. It does, however, require us to order our lives around what is most important, and relationship comes first. Jesus opened the way back to relationship with the creator. The good news of the gospel is that the Father has gone after the very children who have rejected him. He refuses to leave us alone. He will pay any price--even the life of son--in order to win us back again. That's a committed relationship in action. By contrast, in so much of our Christian fellowship with one another we require intellectual agreement with our favorite doctrines.

Some of us have busied ourselves with developing human descriptions of God’s action. We discuss words like justification or sanctification. We try to present the legal reasons Christians can expect to go to heaven when they die. When Jesus paid the price for reconciliation, I do not believe he was thinking in terms of “going to heaven when we die.” I believe his focus was on demonstrating God’s irrepressible love. Jesus described eternal life in terms of relationship with God: “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (John 17: 3) Of course it’s true that we have the hope of going to heaven. It’s only natural. Since God is eternal, he will naturally bring his friends with him into eternity. It's where he lives. “In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” (John 14: 2 - 3) I suspect that when Augustine prayed the mansions of his heart would be enlarged, he was asking for the work of heaven to begin in in his heart then and there.

God is the creator and sustainer of everything. He is certainly not against the use of our intellect. In fact, in Jesus are "hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." (Colossians 2:3) We are commanded to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, mind, and strength, so we can confidently apply our intellect in the love of God. As we give ourselves to study, we should also remember that the countless of number of people from every tribe, tongue, and nation who will worship him in heaven will certainly include the unlearned and the illiterate--and they may have a thing or two to teach us about a loving relationship with Jesus.

The challenge for us as Students of Jesus, then, is to know him, and not settle for knowing about him.

We’ve talked about the presence of God for the last two weeks, not as some theological idea, but as a living reality. (You can read those two posts here and here.) Let’s go after it! I’d like to suggest at least five ways to encounter God’s presence.

The first step in experiencing the presence of God is to take the Biblical witness seriously. For example, consider this list:

• Then Moses said to him, "If your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?" (Exodus 33: 15-16)
• Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. (Psalm 139: 7 – 8)
• For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them. (Matthew 18: 20)

These passages are well known, and that’s dangerous: it becomes easy for us to dismiss them as inspirational thoughts rather than receive them as a description of reality. If we choose to acknowledge the reality of his presence we must honestly evaluate whether our experience matches God’s statement of the way things really are. Will we allow these passages (and many others) to become normative for us? The plain message of scripture is that God is highly relational and desires us to experience an awareness of him daily. Do we really believe this?

Second, we should order our lives in ways that allow us to experience his presence. The spiritual disciplines of silence and solitude stand in the forefront here. In our day, more than any other time in history, there are distractions from the moment we wake until we fall asleep. Elijah found the presence of God in a “still small voice,” or as another translation pus it, “a gentle whisper.” (I Kings 19: 12) Or take the example of Jacob, while fleeing for his life, who learned a similar lesson only after God spoke to him in a dream: "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it." Jacob’s experience is instructive: he was unaware that God’s presence was all around him. Like Jacob, we must tune our senses to perceive the presence of God. Why not seriously try silence and solitude for an hour—or a day! This is not mysticism, it is discipleship.

Third, we should consider the joyful example of others. Throughout history the witness is consistent, namely, that those who have been most aware of God’s presence have experienced the joy and peace that flow from that relationship. Brother Lawrence, a 17th century Carmelite, discovered that daily activities did not have to block an awareness of God’s presence. He experienced “little reminders” from God that “set him on fire to the point that he felt a great impulse to shout praises, to sing, and to dance before the Lord with joy . . . the worst trial he could imagine was losing his sense of God’s presence, which had been with him for so long a time.” John Wesley, a buttoned-down English cleric, had experiences of God’s presence that changed his life and ministry: his journal describes not only the feeling of his heart being “strangely warmed” but later describes that God sent him “transports of joy” again and again. Wesley’s case is particularly instructive today because in North America many church leaders emphasize scholarship over feelings as the foundation for discipleship, but Wesley had received the finest religious education his country could offer but did not personally experience God’s presence. Those who would dismiss joyful behavior as mere emotionalism somehow fail to brand depression and despair as equally emotional expressions as the lack of God’s presence. The testimony of scripture is “you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” (Psalm 16: 11) Perhaps this is why Richard Foster lists “celebration” as a spiritual discipline: we must teach ourselves how to respond with thankfulness and joy to his presence.

Fourth, we need to consider more than our individual response to the presence of God. His presence has implications for our life together as the church. Together we are the bride of Christ, and he longs to bestow his presence on the assembled church as well. It is popular in our day to embrace Jesus and shun the church. Popular, but incorrect. For example, suppose I were to enter into a relationship with you, but also shun any relationship with your spouse. Would you accept friendship on these terms? “I like you, and I want to be with you, but please keep your spouse far away from me!” Such a friendship would be in peril from the beginning, and we put our relationship with Jesus in peril if we openly reject his bride.

Simply put, if we want to experience the presence of God in every way possible, we must look to encounter his presence within the church. This is a tall order because in our highly individualistic society, church-bashing is fun and easy. We have considered church attendance and membership to be matters of consumer tastes, as accessories to our lives. We assess everything about a church service—the music, the preaching, the seating, the people—everything except whether we met Jesus there.

Finally, there is one more expression of God’s presence available for disciples today—the power of God. John Wimber, founder or the Vineyard movement, said that power of God is in the presence of God. For those Christians who embrace the possibilities of miraculous signs and wonders in ministry, the secret is not to seek some special spiritual empowerment, but rather the tangible presence of God.

The earliest followers of Jesus understood that their beliefs had no authority in the world unless the presence of God was demonstrated after they proclaimed the coming of God’s Kingdom. In addition to forgiveness and reconciliation, the miracles of healing and liberation from demonic oppression regularly authenticated the preaching of the gospel of the Kingdom of God. Those who heard the message of the gospel of the Kingdom of God could also witness the presence of God in their midst.

This list is not complete, but here are five ways to start pursuing his presence: take the witness of the Bible seriously; order our lives in a way to let him in; embrace joyful thanksgiving as a path to his presence; look for him in the church; and understand the connection between his presence and his power. Here ends the “lecture,” let the “lab” begin!

A week ago we considered whether we will settle for merely learning about the presence of God or we will seek to experience his presence. He is available to all who seek him: "The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth." (Psalm 145: 18) We need to call on him; God has designed our hearts to seek after him. Something is released in us as we pursue him. Sadly, there are substitutes for his presence as well. Sometimes we settle for something less, even those of us who want to be his followers. Let me suggest two of these substitutes among Christians. We find them hiding in our everyday lives.

The first is religious activity. Activity is something we control. We can choose when to begin, how much to do, and when to stop. We can look back upon our own efforts and pronounce the pleasure of God. It would not be an exaggeration to say that most “church work” has the character of human activity as opposed to the presence of God. How many of us return home from a church gathering and say, “I encountered the presence of the Living God.” Indeed, how many of us even attend such activities with the expectation that we will encounter him? Our use of business models for marketing and meetings are especially dangerous in this regard. We feel affirmed because we have drawn big crowds for God, even if he declined to attend.

Jesus ministered to crowds of people as well, but he also attended feasts with his friends, who sometimes happened to be tax collectors and sinners. They hung out together with no other objective than simply being with each other. They were people who valued his presence and truly longed to hear his voice. Yet we sometimes confuse work with friendship. Friends may in fact work together, but the difference between professional colleagues and friends is that friends share mutual affection and desire to spend time together apart from any “useful” task. When our religious activity is over, do we leave Jesus at the office?

The second great competitor to God’s presence is our theology. We often confuse knowing the truth intellectually with encountering the truth experientially. In our day understanding is overrated and personal experience is underrated. Our attempts to honor the Lord with our minds have sometimes caused us to become suspicious of any experience with him in our hearts. Make no mistake: Biblical revelation is important. It should be used to interpret and mediate our personal experience, but in the last two centuries Christian scholars have focused on rational exposition of the scriptures almost to the exclusion of personal experience with God. In the academy, and many pulpits as well, personal experience has been downgraded to anecdotal evidence and treated with suspicion if not outright hostility. Even a useful tool such a Bill Bright’s Four Spiritual Laws suggests that our faith requires only facts and faith, but not feelings. From the very beginning of their new life in Christ, converts are warned about the dangers of emotions. No one shares with babes in Christ that the first and greatest commandment includes loving God with our hearts as well as our minds. This has resulted in Christian congregations who have no real expectation that God himself desires an intimate relationship with them. Just as Thomas a' Kempis said, "I would rather feel contrition than know how to define it," we must not mistake intellectual argument for relationship with God. The man who has experienced the goodness of God is never at the mercy of someone who has an intellectual argument against it. The Apostle Paul warned, “knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” (I Corinthians 8:1 ESV)

Finally, consider these famous verses: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you, to the very end of the age." (Matthew 28: 18 - 20) Jesus never intended for us to be disciples or to make disciples apart from the personal experience of his presence. To make disciples apart from the active presence of Jesus is to make disciples who look like us, not Jesus.

Amazingly, opening ourselves up to the presence of Jesus is not any different from developing a friendship with anyone else. He goes where is welcomed. He stays and develops friendships with those who order their lives around him. What, then, can we do to teach ourselves to recognize and enjoy the presence of God? Check back next Thursday!

One of the shortcomings in the church today is the lack of God’s tangible presence. What good is it to have a theology that asserts God’s presence is everywhere if there is no evidence of it? Has God gone on vacation? Has he left the building? These are important questions for us individually as disciples, corporately as the church, and these questions also go to the heart of whether we can put the wisdom and power of God on display for the world to see.

The Biblical narrative opens and closes with God’s tangible presence in the midst of his creation and his people. The first two chapters of Genesis are marked not only by his creative activity, but his personal presence in those activities: God personally forms humanity from the dust of the ground, kisses the breath of life into the first man, instructs and guides his children as he walks in the garden with them. The final chapters of the book of Revelation depict the restoration of all things and again highlight the intimate nature of God’s personal interaction with his creation. “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” (Revelation 21: 3)

Nor is he absent from the world in the stretch between Genesis and Revelation. God visits Abraham, makes covenant and even eats a meal with him. Jacob finds himself in hand-to-hand combat with none other than the creator of the universe! God talks with Moses face to face the way friends speak to one another. He reveals his presence in the cloud and the fire around the people of Israel. As Solomon dedicates the temple, God manifests in a cloud so thick with his presence that no one can remain standing or perform the duties of worship. Ezekiel saw God’s traveling throne. Isaiah saw the temple filled with God’s presence and glory.

In the New Testament the presence of God becomes something even greater: the Incarnation. From the beginning of John’s gospel we are told, “God arrived and pitched his tent among us.” This marks even greater intimacy and presence: God not only interacted with the world he created, he became part of that world. The reality of his presence also encases Matthew’s gospel like bookends. In the opening verses we learn, “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him ‘Immanuel’--which means, ‘God with us.’” (Matthew 1: 23) The final words of the gospel are: “surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28: 20) Along with instructions to his followers, Jesus gives the promise of his presence. In fact, his instructions require the experience of his presence.

The activity of the Holy Spirit also constitutes God’s living, tangible presence in the world as well. Jesus spent most of the final Passover evening instructing his followers to tune their eyes and ears to his presence mediated through the Spirit. When he tells his disciples, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me,” (John 14: 18 – 19) he is indicating that the presence of the Holy Spirit is equivalent to his personal presence. Even when he was still physically available to be with his disciples in the 40 days after his resurrection, began to give them instructions “through the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 1: 2) After Jesus ascended into heaven he appeared to the Apostle Paul personally, years later. Paul tells us his gospel came by direct revelation from Jesus himself. (Galatians 1: 12)

Unfortunately, scripture also reveals that it has been the habit of God’s people to be afraid of, or unaware of, the presence of God. As the people of Israel followed Moses in the wilderness, the smoke and lightning that accompanied God’s presence caused them to plead with Moses to act as an intermediary (Exodus 20: 18 – 21). The miraculous works of Jesus brought people face-to-face with the reality that something greater than Moses was in their midst, and the reality that God was breaking into their well-ordered world brought alarm instead of acclaim. Religious observance always runs smoothly when divorced from God’s presence. God’s presence, on the other hand, usually upsets the tables, shrines, and instruments we have set in place. As C.S. Lewis remarked about his Christ-figure, Aslan, in the Chronicles of Narnia, “He’s not a tame Lion!”

So the Bible teaches that God is omnipresent, but forget that: do you experience his presence?

If there is any hope for transformation as a follower of Jesus, we must be able to recognize and experience his presence. We must not settle for anything less than the experience of his presence. We must, in the language of advertising, accept no substitutes. Can you think of any substitutes for the presence of God? I can think of at least two big ones, but that's for another day!