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One of the comments that I hear the most, as I travel around, is that
many believers struggle with keeping God real in their daily
experience. Have you ever fought that battle? If you have, I have a
suggestion that I think might help…
 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, (John 14:16)
THE KEY TO SUSTAINING A LIFE OF PRAYER AND WORSHIP
I have found that when I am struggling with God being “real” to me, it is often because I have slipped away from “acting” as if He is real. Of course, how I act doesn’t make Him any more or less real, but it does affect how I sense His realness.
It’s not enough for me to pray to God the Father in Heaven. It’s not enough for me to “know” that God the Son is seated on the Throne beside God the Father. Sometime, I just find that I need to be able to sense that God is with me, you know what I mean? I know He is with me, I “know” He will never leave me or forsake me (Heb. 13:5). But sometimes, you know, I need to “feel” something. We don’t walk by feeling, we walk by faith (2 Cor. 5:7). But walking by faith doesn’t mean that we should never have feelings. It just means that feelings aren’t the main thing. God designed it so that when we walk by faith that feelings are the result, the by-product of our walking by faith.
But what about those times when it just seems that I don’t feel anything? What then? That’s when we walk by faith, and keep on keeping on, being doers of the word (James 1:22).
One of the areas that we need to be “doers” of, is acting like God is real. How do we do that? We do that by relating to God with the understanding that He is a Person. He’s not a human, but He is a Person, and we have to treat Him like a Person.
As I mentioned earlier, God the Father is in Heaven, so is Jesus. So who do we fellowship with? The God we fellowship with is the God who dwells in us - God the Spirit. Now I realize that God is Three-in-one, and there really is no separating the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In essence, that is true, but in reality, it is important that we know how to fellowship with the God that swells in us. I have found that fellowshipping with the Holy Spirit is the main key to my sustaining a life of prayer and worship.
The Holy Spirit is the One who influences us at the heart level, and He is the One we can talk with in a very direct and personal way. The Holy Spirit searches the mind of God on our behalf and desires to reveal the mind of the Lord to us.
10 …For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 … So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received…the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. (1 Corinthians 2:10-12)
This text isn’t saying that the Holy Spirit is searching because He doesn’t know. He is God, therefore He is omniscient, He knows everything. What this means is that He is taking the things of God that we need, the things that have been provided through Jesus, and applying them to our lives for, and with, us.
There are things we can’t see, there are things we don’t know – but we need to see and know them! The Holy Spirit takes those things and reveals them to us as we spend time fellowshipping with Him.
THE UNSEEN FOCUS
16 …our inner self is being renewed day by day…18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)
The Holy Spirit is God – living inside of us. We can begin to fellowship with the Holy Spirit simply by giving Him our attention as we would any other person that we were fellowshipping with; asking Him what He is thinking, what He is feeling, and asking Him for revelation, for understanding, as we study the Word. If your mind wanders, ask the Holy Spirit for His help. I have found that if I will ask Him, He will help me to maintain my focus and He will inspire my imagination.
False religions have counterfeited this. Our adversary isn’t a creator, he’s a perverter. He doesn’t come up with ideas, he steals ideas. The reason we look inward is because the Spirit of the living God is dwelling inside of us (1 Cor. 3:16). Those in false religions look inward to their own spirit, or to demons inside them, and they confuse that for God and they mistakenly think that is endless truth.
Some believers live in spiritual dullness out of fear. They do not fellowship with the God that is inside them - God the Holy Spirit - because they are afraid of being deceived as those in false religions have been. Beloved, the Holy Spirit is not going to deceive you. He is going to glorify the Word, and He is always going to glorify Jesus. If we commit to staying in the Word of God, staying in fellowship with believers; if we commit our hearts to holiness and following the guidance of Holy Spirit, we will not be deceived (Luke 11:9-13).
FINDING OUR PRIMARY IDENTITY IN GOD
So many of us put so much energy into trying to find our identity in our jobs or in where we live, or in what we own. Our identity isn’t found in any of those things. We cannot find our primary identity anywhere apart from God. Therefore, we must make God the priority in our lives to which all other things are secondary.
It is not that the secondary things are unimportant – they are. It is just that they are secondary to our identity in God. For example, making an impact on others, leaving a godly legacy behind us is part of our mandate in this life, but making an impact is not our primary, or first, mandate. Our first mandate is to know God.
Many of the secondary things tempt us to place them first. But it is important that we have first things first. We don’t accomplish that by ignoring secondary things, however. We cannot keep God first place in our hearts by trying to ignore the secondary things. Instead, we must confront them when they attempt to usurp God’s rightful place in our lives, and make a choice to say no to them.
ENCOUNTERING THE WORD
In order to successfully deal with the secondary issues in our lives when they cry out to us for our attention is to regularly encounter God the Spirit, the God Who dwells in us through interaction with the Word of God. The Word of God can be compared to a transcript that contains the truths of God’s soul. We need to have access to His thoughts, His feelings.
Thank God that He is not silent. He is desirous to speak to us. One of the primary ways that God speaks to us is through His Word. The many layers of truth in His Word romance our hearts. When our hearts are romanced by the Word, they come alive in love for God. As a result, our hearts are equipped and empowered to live out the first commandment, to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength (Matt. 22:.37-38). The Word gives us a divine perspective, making big things big and small things small. God renews our mind and changes our sense of what is valuable.
Beloved, let me encourage you to schedule time to spend with the God that dwells in you – God the Holy Spirit. Fellowship with Him around the Word of God and you will be amazed how more “real” He will become to you.
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