Living With God

Galatians 2:20

When Galileo discovered the truth of earth's center, it caused all science to make some revisions.
All that had been previously believed had to be adjusted to this new fact.
When we begin to see that the true center of life is in God, then all the rest of our lives
must be adjusted to that new and true fact.

Someone once said that the most fundamental thing anyone can do is to bring a person to God
and leave that person there.
That's my desire!
I want to get to God and stay there, and I want this also for each one of you.

Thomas Kelly wrote, "We are unhappy, uneasy, strained, oppressed, and fearful we shall be shallow.
Over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living
which we know we are passing by…
We have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence;
a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power.
If only we could step over to that Center!
If only we could find the Silence which is the source of sound!"

We must be aware of the centrality of God.
To find that those who talk about the techniques of living consciously "in God,"
we must go back to the old church fathers – someone like Brother Lawrence
– of whom we can read about in the book "Practicing the Presence of God."

Today we are activists.
We love Christ, but we don't stay close to Him.
We gladly receive God's forgiveness, but we don't take the time to wait on God,
or for God, or with God.
We are on the move.
We rush into prayer, and then we say, "I've got to get on with life – on with real life."
We are so unaware of what the "real" really is.

In the fall, flocks of geese head south.
They may land on a pond and feed for a while; but soon, however pleasant that surrounding may be,
there is an instinct that calls them out into the blue sky and on down to the South.
They have an instinct that calls them to their home.

Christian, do you feel in your heart a new tugging toward God?
Do you feel that longing instinct that you are not – in your day-by-day experience all the way home yet?
Are you restless?
God is stirring you up!
God is moving you.
He is moving you up out of the pond!

Some years ago Frank Laubach, a missionary in the Philippines, wrote a little book
called "Letters by a Modern Mystic."
He wrote, "For the past few days I have been experimenting in a more complete surrender than ever before.
I am taking by a deliberate act of the will enough time from each hour to give God much thought.
Yesterday and today I have made a new adventure, which is not easy to express.
I am feeling God in each movement of my life.

I am disgusted with the pettiness of futility of my unled self…
I am trying to be utterly free from everybody, free from my own self, but completely enslaved
to the will of God every moment of this day."

It would be good for all of us if we wore a wristwatch and set it to chime on the hour just to remind us
that it is time to reach up to heaven and draw near to the presence of God and enjoy our time with Him.
We must not get bogged down with everything here.
We should not need the hourly alarm, and we should look to the Holy Spirit who will help us
to be aware of God presence in us and with us.

There are those who have certain sins in their life, and in their own strength cannot break loose from them,
and those sins are mastering and controlling them.
But when they find themselves in the presence of God, they know that those sins
do not belong in their lives.

It is amazing what the presence of God does.
He makes those things incompatible with Himself not important anymore,
and they will lose their hold on us when we are in the presence of God.

Sin will keep us from God's presence, or God's presence will keep us from sin.

Through Jesus God promised that He would always be with us.
In Matthew 28 Jesus said, "Lo, I am with you."
This is our promise of the presence of God always being with us.

And not just the Presence with, but the Presence within.
As the infant Savior was placed into Mary and formed in her womb, so Paul cries out in Colossians:
"Oh, I travail so that Christ may be formed in you!"

You commit your body to Him and you become His Temple, the housing of God Himself
– "Christ in you, the hope of glory."
That is so rich!
I feel as though I'm barely touching on it, but God calls us to live with Him.

The omniscience of God is wonderful, but that is not what we are talking about today.
I'm talking about consciously, continually, living in the presence of God.
I'm talking about going in and going out and finding pasture, as it were.
I'm talking about speaking with Him.
I'm talking about enjoying Him.
I'm talking about walking with Him.
I'm talking about rejoicing with Him.
I'm talking about praising Him.
I'm talking about crying with Him.
I'm talking about doing all those things in the presence of God.

Strong makes this comment in his commentary:
"The majority of Christians much more frequently think of Christ as a Savior outside of them
than as a Savior who dwells within."
Many think of Christ as in heaven – way up there.

Now imagine looking at your desk with a pile of papers that you are trying to go through,
and the phone is ringing off the hook.
Or imagine that the kitchen has to be cleaned for somebody just spilled orange juice on the floor,
and you have to go and get groceries.
Or imagine yourself in the classroom, and there is a paper due tomorrow,
and, if not done, you will get a bad grade.

There are so many immediate "now" problems, and they get our attention first
because we think they are the closest.
We haven't yet learned that "in Him we live and move and have our being."
We haven't understood that He is closer than our hands or feet.
We haven't understood that He is closer than the breath within us.
We haven't really understood that He really lives within us.
We haven't yet learned to live on the inside out.

Christ in us is far more reality, and far more present in all that is going on around us.

He is closer than our problem.
If you are living moment by moment with this great awareness of God within,
everything else in your life will be truly revolutionized.
He lives within!
Within!
Jesus Christ lives within us!

Many Christians would say, "Of course I know He lives within."
But educators tell us that we really haven't changed until there is a changed behavior.

When Jacob ran from Esau, he was sleeping one night and had a great dream.
When he woke up he exclaimed, "Why the Lord is in this place and I didn't even know it."

Is that really true of us?
Jacob was so engrossed with the problems with his brother, and he was on the run.
Through a dream, God brought him to see Himself.

Maybe today God will do the same for us.
It could be that you are feeling frustrated in your life.
It may be that there are so many demands upon your life pulling at you and tugging at you
that you feel splintered in so many pieces.

Someone has said: "We are trying to be several selves all at once,
and without all of our selves being organized by a single, mastering life within us."

After my heart surgery, my wife asked my heart surgeon what did he do to stay so focused.
He said, "I have many different things demanding my attention, but I focus on a controlling principle
and leave other things alone."
His controlling principle was God.

God calls us first of all to Himself.
That is where we find integration and unity and simplicity.
One Lord, one faith, one work!
There is a singularity about the life that is lived in Him.

I'm talking about a revolutionary way of living.
Life with God is the center of life, and all else is remodeled and integrated by it.
I'm talking about the practical, how-to of the established fact of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
When this is our way of life, we will live from the center out rather than from the outside in.

When we live from the outside in, there are things that happen to us inside.
We get all tense and tied up in knots.
We are like a boxer waiting for the next punch.
We are reacting to one situation and then reacting to the next one, and so on.
We are happy or unhappy depending on each external circumstance.

That is a crying shame!
That is no different from the way an atheist lives.

George Fox was wrote, "it is a wonderful discovery to find that you are temple,
that you have a church inside you for that is where God is.
In hushed silence, attend to Him.
'The Lord is in His holy temple!"

King David said to young Mephibosheth, "You and Ziba divide the land between you."
Mephibosheth answered, "Look, let Ziba take all the land,
let me just live with you, David, and eat at your table.
That is all I want!"

That's the way it should be for us.
Just longing for God Himself.
Wanting and needing nothing but God.

That's why God could use Moses.
Moses cried, "I don't want angels, I don't want substitutes, I just want God."

If you don't know the closeness of God within you Christian, and you haven't begun to find out
how relevant God is for your Christian life.
Psalm 73:28, "But for me, it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge,
that I may tell of all Thy works."

Psalm 16:11: "In thy presence is fullness of joy.
At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore."

God said to Moses, "My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest."

Oh, the joy, and the satisfaction and comfort of living with God.
Don't miss it!
This isn't a single one time commitment.
It is a moment-by-moment commitment.
It calls us from a scattered-mindedness to single-mindedness.

How long will it be before every Christian gets the message?
Many Christians continue to be occupied with their lives living on the fringe, the externals, the side-issues.

God is so patient!
Think of how many times, He has flashed lightning across the sky.
That lightning could splinter huge trees.
The thunder could shake the earth, and we just watched and wondered,
and all the time God was trying to tell us something.

One stormy day, a man went out with a kite and a key.
All heaven was probably bending over saying,
"All these years God has been trying to tell them about electricity.
Look, look, he has got it.
At last, he has finally got it."
And soon thereafter, the world lit up.

How long -- how long have you and I have been vaguely aware – theoretically aware
– of God's presence within us.
I can imagine that all heaven is waiting and perhaps saying, "I think they might get it.
Look, look, maybe at last they are going to get it."

There are Christians here who have been Christians for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, 40 years
– maybe at last we are going to get it.

The Christian life is to be lived from the center out, with God.
How could we have missed it?
Live from the center out?
At the center is Jesus Christ and all His glory in you.

Acknowledge Him.
Live with Him.
Have an ongoing conversation with Him.
Walk and talk with Him.
Rejoice with Him.

Do you get it?
Christ in you!

"I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.

He speaks, and the sound of His voice,
Is so sweet the birds hush their singing,
And the melody that He gave to me
Within my heart is ringing.

Chorus:
And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known."

This sermon was adapted from several sources by Dr. Harold L White