Following Jesus Son of God …

If you haven’t tried Google Chrome yet, you may want to take a little time and drive it around the block.  Some of the web apps are pretty impressive.  Chrome is highly rated.  I was hesitant to leave Firefox but Chrome seems to be faster and more powerful.  Firefox was starting to frustrate me; had read good reviews about Chrome, even rated above Safari.  I don’t have Internet Explorer option as “I am a Mac.”  🙂

As I study my Bible, worship, serve, cultivate relationships with the people around me …

Where is my heart?

Near to God or far from God?  It’s a good question for me to ask myself.  And a good question for you also in case you wondered.

Because …
Because we can mistake a type of nearness to God with heart-to-heart intimacy.  That being, our hearts intimate with God’s heart.  Now that is such a cool and powerful concept in itself that we can share this amazing intimacy with our Creator and Redeemer, but I will try to stay the course.  But now as I think about it as I think and type at the same time, it is part of this track that I’ve taken this morning.

Let’s look at our Bible study.
The intellectual stimulus of studying the words of God is very powerful.  So powerful, in fact, to make us believe that we are near to God.  And we are near, as in so close yet so far away.  We are right there but our heart is still distant, still refusing to bow before God’s throne, or as Isaiah simply puts it “far from me [God].”  The land of religion and the land of rebellion can be one and the same.  Often, if not usually, in fact.

And you say, “Not so.”  But let’s listen to Isaiah for a moment.  God’s speaker, his prophet, his mouthpiece says this.

• Isaiah 29:13 (NIV84)
  The Lord says:  “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.  Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.”

Did you catch that?  
The telling sign is in whose “rules” do we buy into.  Do we come close to God with our hearts bowing before him?  Or do we come close to God only with our words so we can make up the game plan, establish the rules, i.e. stay in control.

Again, I think I hear a protest, “But we are studying God’s word.  And we love our Bible study, and we have learned so much about God.  There’s no way we can be this involved in the Word and be far from God.”

But we can.  I can.  You can.  Here I ask, “Are we going to listen to God’s words as spoken through Isaiah, or are we going to dismiss them as applying to someone else?”

If we can draw near to God in worship, that which is highest and holiest, and stay far from God, why is it such a stretch to believe that this doesn’t apply to our Bible study?

Near with the mouth, honor with the lips, far from God – that is Isaiah’s punchline.

• “What a great discussion we had today!”
• “Isn’t God amazing, his word so powerful.”
• “How intriguing was our study!  Really gives me something to think about.”

The study of God’s word can be intellectually and emotionally intoxicating and still leave us short of the King’s throne room.

Living by the words …
The plain stuff is usually the food.  The complexity is often the playground.  Have we been eating or playing?

• Deuteronomy 8:3 (ESV)
  And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

Too harsh, too critical?
Maybe for you.  Maybe you don’t need to hear this.  Maybe you are not keeping your heart from God while you study and enjoy the intellectual soundness and validity of his word of truth.  But for many it is the word that needs to be heard.

You may be intoxicated.
You have quite possibly been intoxicated by the powerful nature of the words that have been spoken from heaven and written  by the prophets.  And by your rules, you are doing just fine.  Thank you very much.

“Your lips are moving, but your heart is not.”
First, I will say that I love Bible study.  Bible study can be a good thing but making too much of the fact that you study the Bible can be a deadly assumption.  “I love Bible study” has for too long been used as a strong criterion for proof of belief in and devotion to God. Isaiah seems to be telling us, “Your lips are moving, but your heart is not.”  The words have failed to bring your heart to God.  You have made up religious rules that allow you to add just enough God to your life for his blessing.  Not going to happen.  Your heart is far from God.

So then what does God want?
What is the opposite of a heart far from God?  Let’s look at his self-proclaimed number one statement in all of Scripture?

• Matthew 22:36–38 (ESV)
  “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” ³⁷ And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ³⁸ This is the great and first commandment.”

A heart close to God  …
He wants us to love him.  Yes, love him in obedience and love him in service.  Love him by loving others.  But first and foremost – love him.  God wants my heart.  And now the tears come, and I praise him.  And I shut up amazement!

Whatever you are passionate about is what you will build your life toward.  So it’s a good thing to ponder.  What do we have when we are finished building?
Does my passion determine my reality?

•  2 Timothy 4:3–4 (ESV) For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

• Myth – n. 1. a. A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society. (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/myth)

What are you passionate about?
Is this too cliche for you?   Maybe, maybe not?  Let’s say we step up the discussion to
God’s world and God’s word, projecting the question onto the big screen of forever.  Now let’s look at our lives as projected on the big screen through the lens of the Bible.  Do you see where I am going with this?  I am attempting to move our perspective past now to forever and past our speculation to specific words of God.

Maybe now not so cliche.
Could it be that this question has only been rendered trifling because we haven’t really ever asked ourselves the question?  In other words, we have maybe played with the question but have never let the question penetrate the surface of our psyche leaving our soul untouched and unexamined, and the question unanswered.  And leaving the question unanswered is a big deal.

I will in fact say that many of us do not dare to ask the question because we fear the answer.  We cannot bring ourselves to look inside.  And now we are past irony to tragedy.

So we do need to ask the question again:  What are you passionate about?
Whatever you are passionate about is what you will build your life toward.  If you build to suit your desires, then your desires, your passions, will be your goal.  You may say it is God and religion and spirituality, but it is really all about you.  And what you pursue, what you focus your life on, sets your ceiling on fulfillment.  If you are passionate about the things of this world, then there you find your ceiling, maybe even extending to the uppermost regions of life on the planet, but still losing your own soul.

If your passion is God, then God is your ceiling, God is your limit.  And he has none.  And there you are, finite touching the infinite, temporal experiencing the eternal.

Look again at what Paul writes to Timothy in relation to passion.

• 2 Timothy 4:3–4 (ESV) For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

The hard words are often the good words.
After Paul’s exhortation to Timothy to “preach the word,” he informed Timothy that everyone would not be listening.  And here is the thought that grabbed me.  They will not endure or put up with the words of God because they are not passionate about knowing God.  They have “an interest” in spiritual things but are not passionate about God.  They still in fact desire spiritual teaching as they build a database of teachers to feed them information about God that fits the myth they have chosen to live.

The people that Paul describes here are people who will build an alternate reality which uses the words of God to actually help them avoid listening to God.  And they will wander off into myths.

They are seeking to be passionate about their spirituality without being passionate about God.  They cannot take, endure, put up with the very words that directed them to a passionate relationship with the King of all creation.

The hard words are often the good words. The words that we sometimes refuse to “put up with” are the very words that fire our passion for God and for life.

The great and sad irony.
They are pursuing spirituality but not pursuing God even as they seek to learn more about God and the Bible.

The dangerous irony.
Our desire to merely know about God snugly fits our myth, and we willingly confuse a pursuit of biblical knowledge with a pursuit of God and never come to discover the rationalization until standing before God in judgment.

If we are passionate for God, then the question may not be “What would we do for God?” but “What wouldn’t we do for God?”

Maybe even die?

• Matthew 16:24–25 (ESV) Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. ²⁵ For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Maybe you haven’t tried Twitter yet thinking that Twitter is only for teenage girls or millionaire athletes.  I know, you probably realize that Twitter is more than that, but Twitter is extremely helpful in very practical ways that you may not have realized.

For instance think of Twitter as an information feed from businesses or interests you are associated with.

I follow very few people, but I follow several tech companies, e.g. magazines and software providers.

I follow:

• Crashplan – my online backup service.
• Logos Bible software, sales updates, new version notification
• MacWorld, MacFormat and others – tech software, hardware, hints, reviews
• …

Some examples:

• I receive notifications when a company’s servers might be experiencing trouble or when they will be down for maintenance.
• I receive notices of app and software special deals.
• I receive links to use cases of software I use from other people who obviously use the same software.
• I receive notices of trends in the tech world … When is the iPhone 5 going to be out?
• Sometimes just interesting or humorous articles.
• Links to hardware and software and app reviews.
• Info about features of software I use.
• …

Maybe you need a better app for your iPhone or app for your computer.

I didn’t use Twitter for some time, not only because I didn’t realize the benefits, but also because my apps (phone and computer) were so clumsy and poorly designed.

Suggestion:  Try more than one; really makes a difference when you can actually find your information and easily navigate your page.