Latest / The OneCry Podcast / #152 The Presence Centered Life (4 - An Unbroken Relationship)

Transcript

#152 The Presence Centered Life (4 - An Unbroken Relationship) · The OneCry Podcast

• 0:01
  God desires an unbroken, daily, personal relationship with us, but we must cooperate.
• 0:14
  Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening.
• 0:19
  The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and reports.
• 0:30
  Hey, well, welcome to the OneCry
• 0:31
  podcast. I'm Kyle Reno, back with Bill Eliff here on the other side.
• 0:37
  And we are humbled to have a few minutes of your time to just let the Lord stir
• 0:43
  our heart for prayer, revival, awakening, really all centered around the presence of God.
• 0:49
  So I know y'all started a series a couple of weeks ago, you and Jordan,
• 0:52
  Bill, really about that.
• 0:54
  And we did on the essential presence. Good to have you back, my friend.
• 1:00
  And to be with you, I feel like, you know, I had the A team in there with Jordan,
• 1:05
  but I kind of bring it in the B string now.
• 1:09
  But it makes you more dependent on the Lord, bro. It just makes it.
• 1:13
  Well, it does. It makes me.
• 1:16
  Upon Jesus. There's so much in me that makes me dependent on Jesus.
• 1:20
  I don't need you to have to need that.
• 1:23
  Ditto. But, you know, Kyle, I don't think I could be more excited about a series
• 1:30
  that we're doing and of conversations here about the essential presence of God, because everything,
• 1:39
  everything really flows from his presence. I've had a thought about this.
• 1:44
  I'm going to ask you a question to get us going here.
• 1:47
  If you could think back just to all of human history, and you could spend a
• 1:54
  day with one or two people, and you'd spend all day with them, who would you pick?
• 2:01
  I don't know. I'm just throwing that on you. All right. Okay.
• 2:04
  Okay. Well, I mean, I got thoughts biblically around that, but I'm going to
• 2:08
  be real with you and go the sports way.
• 2:11
  All right. Don't say, you're not going to say Saban, please. Are you? No.
• 2:16
  I won't say saving now, but I would say instead of that, for the sake of listeners
• 2:23
  that are not Alabama fans, it wouldn't be saving. It'd probably be Paul Bear Bryant.
• 2:28
  Oh, yeah. Just sit down with him. I'd love to have that conversation together
• 2:33
  because, you know, and you do know this,
• 2:37
  that Bear Bryant and I were born in the same little railroad town in South Arkansas,
• 2:46
  Fort Ice, Arkansas, where he really wrestled a bear.
• 2:49
  There's a plaque where he wrestled a traveling company that brought in a bear.
• 2:54
  I know. I mean, just imagine.
• 2:56
  If that conversation ever happens, I'll make sure you're there.
• 2:59
  Okay. Yeah. Well, I appreciate that.
• 3:01
  Who would be yours? Who would you spend the night with?
• 3:06
  You know, Moses. Yeah. Trump carded me.
• 3:12
  I just, yeah, I'd go spiritual. But, I mean, you just think about it.
• 3:20
  I've thought about this a good bit.
• 3:23
  You know, you just think about David. David, man, just spending a day with David who wrote the Psalms.
• 3:30
  Or I was thinking about in the New Testament, you know, Paul,
• 3:35
  but Paul's a little intense.
• 3:38
  Maybe John, just think about the apostle who leaned on Jesus' breast,
• 3:45
  the apostle who Jesus loved.
• 3:46
  What a day. And just think how beneficial that would be.
• 3:50
  And then think about this. And I want our listeners to think about this.
• 3:54
  What if I told you you could do that?
• 3:57
  Would it be beneficial to you? Would one day would that person be beneficial?
• 4:02
  Of course, the answer would be you would never be the same.
• 4:07
  You would remember it the rest of your life. Here's the follow up question,
• 4:11
  Kyle. What if I told you you could spend a day with God?
• 4:15
  Just God, all of his wisdom, all of his understanding.
• 4:20
  He knows the answer to every question. He has a solution to every problem.
• 4:25
  And of course, you know where I'm going is we can't, you know, we can do that.
• 4:32
  And not only can we do it, but God wants us to do that.
• 4:37
  And that's what we're going to talk about here for just a few minutes.
• 4:42
  I want us to, if you have a Bible where you don't do this if you're in the car,
• 4:47
  but if you're at home and you can pull out your Bible to Exodus 32 and 33,
• 4:53
  there's an incredible passage about the presence of God.
• 4:58
  Now, to understand this, though, I've got to go back.
• 5:02
  And I've got to go back to the beginning of Exodus. Exodus, and you remember
• 5:06
  that the children of Israel were in bondage in Egypt, and it was horrible,
• 5:13
  the worst kind of slavery you could ever possibly imagine.
• 5:18
  And they cried out to the Lord, and God heard their cry and said,
• 5:22
  I'm going to come down and take you out.
• 5:25
  And in chapter 12, He prepared a man, of course, Moses, and they start this pilgrimage out.
• 5:33
  Now, from chapter 12 to chapter 20, the giving of the Ten Commandments,
• 5:39
  is about a three-month period.
• 5:42
  In fact, scholars think it was probably April, May, June, somewhere around that
• 5:48
  time of the year that they're traveling.
• 5:52
  And so much happens, but it's just in three months. but in those three months,
• 5:57
  Just think about this. They were delivered from 400 years of bondage,
• 6:03
  and this was probably a million and a half to six million people.
• 6:07
  They had direction every day. I mean, all they had to do was follow the fire,
• 6:15
  pillar of fire, or the cloud.
• 6:18
  And they never got up any morning and said, what are we going to do today? Where do we go?
• 6:23
  They always knew. I mean, that'd be wonderful, wouldn't it? just to always know
• 6:27
  exactly where you're going to go.
• 6:30
  They had divine protection. They got their backs up against the Red Sea,
• 6:34
  and here's the Pharaoh and his army, greatest military in the world, bearing down on them.
• 6:39
  And God parted the waters and then closed them back over this military and delivered them.
• 6:46
  And then this is so beautiful.
• 6:49
  They got on the other side of the Red Sea, and they didn't have food.
• 6:53
  They ran out of food, and they cried out.
• 6:56
  And God said, I tell you what I'm going to do. Just walk outside your tent.
• 7:00
  And every morning there's this delicious, it tastes like honey bread.
• 7:07
  And it's going to be sitting on the ground just waiting for you.
• 7:10
  It's going to be exactly how much you need.
• 7:12
  You don't need to take any more than just your daily bread because I'm going
• 7:15
  to give it to you every day.
• 7:19
  That's so endearing to me that the Lord would feed them like that.
• 7:24
  They ran out of water. he provided water.
• 7:27
  And then he also gave them deep intimacy.
• 7:31
  The Bible says Moses set up a tent outside the camp and he would go out there
• 7:35
  and he would talk to God as a man talks to his friend.
• 7:40
  And anyone who had a question could come out there and talk to Moses and hear from God.
• 7:47
  So in this three-month period, just think about this.
• 7:52
  There was deliverance, there was direction, there was divine protection,
• 7:57
  there was daily bread, there was deep love,
• 8:01
  intimacy. Now, what this illustrates is one important truth.
• 8:06
  This is worth writing down. Are you ready?
• 8:10
  God desires an unbroken, daily, personal relationship with us, but we must cooperate.
• 8:23
  Let me say that one more time. God desires an unbroken daily personal relationship
• 8:32
  with him, but we must cooperate.
• 8:36
  And here's a second follow-up sentence. His presence is what we most need,
• 8:44
  and our presence is what God most desires.
• 8:50
  Now, when you have the presence of God, you have everything, right?
• 8:54
  And we need his presence. That's what the children of Israel had in these three months.
• 9:00
  All of this was provided by the presence of God, right?
• 9:04
  But what What we forget is not only do we need his presence,
• 9:08
  God desires our presence with him.
• 9:15
  We saw that a few podcasts ago from Genesis to Revelation.
• 9:20
  This is a whole story of God pursuing us so that we can be with him.
• 9:27
  Now, we don't believe that. We don't believe that he really wants us.
• 9:33
  And the reason is because we believe the big lie. And Satan has been shooting
• 9:38
  this to us ever since the garden and telling us that, number one,
• 9:43
  we're not good enough. We can't possibly be in the presence of God.
• 9:47
  And number two, that we don't think God could possibly be interested in being
• 9:54
  with us. I mean, why would he want to do that?
• 9:57
  You remember when you were a kid and you were in junior high or high school
• 10:02
  and you saw this girl, if you're a guy, and your heart started thumping,
• 10:07
  you know, and you asked your buddy, you said, hey, man.
• 10:14
  You know, do you think she'd go out with me? And your buddy said, no way. It's just no way.
• 10:22
  And then you took another run at it and you came back and you said,
• 10:25
  well, go ask her best friend.
• 10:28
  So you had your friend ask her friend and she comes back and she says, maybe.
• 10:33
  And you thought, wow. And so you ask her and all of a sudden she went out with
• 10:37
  you. And then you got on the date and to your utter amazement,
• 10:42
  you realized she wanted to be with you.
• 10:46
  And then you had another date and another date. And then you got engaged and
• 10:51
  married and had eight kids and 27 grandkids.
• 10:56
  At least that's what happened to me.
• 10:59
  Right? Now, how tragic if because of a lie, you didn't think she wanted to be
• 11:06
  with you, you would have never approached her, right?
• 11:12
  And so the truth of the matter is that God is constantly calling us back to
• 11:20
  Eden and providing the means for this to happen. Now, let me say this statement again.
• 11:26
  God desires an unbroken, daily, personal relationship with you, but you must cooperate.
• 11:36
  His presence is what we most need, and our presence is what God most desires.
• 11:47
  But let's pick this story back up again.
• 11:51
  So they get to Mount Sinai, and God wants to codify this.
• 11:57
  He wants to write it in stone to help the Israelites understand what's going
• 12:04
  on. So they stop at the bottom of Mount Sinai.
• 12:07
  Moses goes up and he's up there for 40 days.
• 12:11
  And God begins to record this so that they'd forever understand it.
• 12:18
  And he says this, Exodus 20, I am the Lord, your God, verse two,
• 12:24
  who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
• 12:31
  Don't have any other gods besides me.
• 12:34
  In other words, what God is saying is, Moses, I want you to tell them this.
• 12:38
  I want you to write it down.
• 12:40
  Remind them that everything that's happened over the last three months has been because of me.
• 12:47
  I'm the one who delivered. I'm the one who gave you daily bread.
• 12:51
  And I'll keep doing that. I want to have this relationship with you.
• 12:57
  Don't leave me.
• 13:00
  Don't walk away from me. And I will show, he says further in that passage,
• 13:05
  my loving kindness to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments.
• 13:12
  Now, what's tragic about this story is at that exact same moment,
• 13:19
  down at the bottom of the mountain, God is showing us something about ourselves.
• 13:28
  And it's very tragic to illustrate something to us.
• 13:33
  And so we pick the story up in Exodus 32, verse 1.
• 13:38
  When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain,
• 13:44
  the people assembled about Aaron and they said to him,
• 13:49
  come make us a God who will go before us.
• 13:55
  And just, I'm telling you, you read that, it's just hard to fathom that they're doing this.
• 14:02
  Three months of this total presence of God, 24-7, giving them everything they need.
• 14:12
  And in just the absence of Moses for a few days, they say, let's make a new God.
• 14:20
  And so Aaron makes a great leadership fail. He says, well, give me your earrings.
• 14:26
  And they give him their gold, and they fashion this golden calf.
• 14:30
  And then they say, this is your God, O Israel, who brought you out from the land of Egypt.
• 14:38
  Moses and God are still up on the mountain. Of course, Moses doesn't know what's
• 14:43
  going on, but God knows everything.
• 14:46
  And God says in verse 7 of chapter 32, go down at once for your people.
• 14:53
  Doesn't call them his people anymore.
• 14:56
  Your people whom you brought up from the land of Egypt.
• 15:00
  They have corrupted themselves and they have quickly turned aside from the way
• 15:08
  which I've commanded them.
• 15:11
  Now, here's a second truth I just want us to see.
• 15:16
  It's easy to quickly choose a substitute for God's presence.
• 15:26
  It is so easy. There are constant distractions to us,
• 15:34
  constant temptations to us, And it's real easy to choose a substitute for God's presence.
• 15:45
  And God calls them gods, small g gods.
• 15:50
  You say, Bill, what's a small g God? Well,
• 15:54
  it's just any person or thing that we exalt or deify or honor as more valuable
• 16:02
  than anything else, more valuable than God. Anything that we substitute for God.
• 16:08
  Anything that takes the place of my affections for God that I seek to give me
• 16:16
  what only God can give me.
• 16:19
  And we have different kinds of gods, Kyle. We have the gods of reputation.
• 16:26
  You know, we just we want to be liked. We want to be loved. We want to be popular.
• 16:31
  We have a god of possessions. Possessions, you know, somehow we think that money
• 16:37
  and possessions will give us what we need.
• 16:41
  We have the God of pleasure, comfort, ease, you know, we seek all these kind of things.
• 16:49
  And the fascinating thing is, all of those gods, in essence, are just serving me.
• 16:58
  So who's the real God? Right. It's just me. You know, I have become my own God.
• 17:06
  Yeah. And I want to be served.
• 17:11
  Kyle, as you think about this, what do you think are some of the gods that we deal with?
• 17:17
  Yeah. Small g gods.
• 17:20
  Yeah. One. Let me say this.
• 17:24
  That's the clearest I've ever heard it stated about God's desire for us relationally
• 17:30
  in experiencing his presence. So we could go right back to the beginning of
• 17:34
  this and lay that out again, Bill.
• 17:36
  And I honestly think by the end, you need to share those statements again because
• 17:40
  it rung true in my spirit to just say, hey, one,
• 17:44
  it's the greatest longing of your heart is the experience of God's presence,
• 17:48
  getting us back to the garden. That God is saying, I want relationship.
• 17:52
  I paid the ultimate price through the gospel of Jesus to bring you home,
• 17:57
  to let us experience him again.
• 18:00
  And God desires that. It's our greatest joy. It's God's greatest desire.
• 18:05
  And all that is you're tracking along through there. I'm just thinking.
• 18:10
  But the experience of God's presence in the past does not promise us the sustained
• 18:17
  desire for his presence like that. We have to cultivate that.
• 18:21
  We have to. And if you just miss a season spiritually, that might be a day.
• 18:26
  That might be a week or might be a dry or hard season.
• 18:30
  We need to understand the tendency in us to grab on to a counterfeit.
• 18:37
  There's just counterfeits for God's presence.
• 18:40
  And we can try to find, try to suck the life out of a sport,
• 18:45
  you know, or a hobby, you know, or money.
• 18:49
  Yeah, right. Or this person, you know, I remember vividly when the Lord shared
• 18:54
  with me in a marriage counseling with somebody is that they're trying to find
• 18:57
  in their spouse what they were, God intended for them to find in their Savior.
• 19:01
  If you're, you know, like we often try to make a God that will bring about the
• 19:08
  hunger, that satisfy the hunger that they are incapable of doing.
• 19:12
  And in that moment is they lost patience and waiting just for a moment.
• 19:16
  Just wait for Moses to come down.
• 19:21
  It leads to another statement, really important statement I want to make, Kyle, and that's this.
• 19:27
  Is God's greatest grief and our greatest loss comes when we settle for anything
• 19:37
  less than God's presence.
• 19:39
  Yeah, right. Let me say that again. God's greatest grief, it grieves him.
• 19:45
  Yeah. And our greatest loss comes when we settle for anything less than God's
• 19:52
  presence. I know in this passage, when this happened up on the mountain,
• 19:58
  God was grieved. He was angry.
• 20:00
  And it was a righteous indignation because he knew what was happening to his
• 20:05
  people that he had so tenderly taken care of and provided for.
• 20:10
  And Kyle, what they lost was his presence. Yeah.
• 20:15
  And, you know, I don't, I started to say I don't know about you,
• 20:20
  but I do know about you and all of us.
• 20:22
  The deadly price of choosing any substitute God anytime in any way is losing
• 20:32
  the conscious awareness of the presence of the only one who can give us life.
• 20:38
  And I know what this is like. I started thinking about this when I choose other
• 20:44
  gods, when I start substituting.
• 20:48
  I feel it. I'm out of sync.
• 20:53
  There's something wrong a whole
• 20:56
  string of worthless things start coming out of my life i start sinning and i
• 21:03
  keep sinning and sin always brings death i miss the best part of life because
• 21:10
  god's presence is the best part in his presence it's fullness of joy i start chasing
• 21:16
  trinkets, earrings,
• 21:18
  you know, these, I mean, they, they chased earrings, you know,
• 21:24
  taped into a golden calf.
• 21:26
  I want to be entertained.
• 21:29
  I want an experience. I want to gain recognition.
• 21:32
  And, and, and here's the other thing I lose power and everyone around me is
• 21:41
  affected. I hurt people when I walk away from the presence of God.
• 21:48
  And Kyle, I think I want us just to pause right here for this podcast and come back.
• 21:55
  And we're going to look next time at how do we regain that presence?
• 22:02
  But let me just reaffirm these statements again that we made in the beginning.
• 22:08
  And just two or three statements.
• 22:11
  Number one, and that is that God desires an unbroken, daily,
• 22:19
  we could even add intimate, personal relationship with us. But we must cooperate.
• 22:26
  And his presence is what we most need.
• 22:30
  And our presence is what God most desires.
• 22:35
  He longs to be with us. But then when we, like the Israelites,
• 22:40
  we began to walk away, it's easy.
• 22:44
  It says they quickly chose another God.
• 22:47
  It's easy to quickly choose a substitute for God's presence.
• 22:55
  And God's greatest grief and our greatest loss comes when we settle for anything
• 23:02
  less than the presence of God. Hmm.
• 23:09
  Kyle, I wonder if you would lead us in just a season of prayer,
• 23:14
  all of us that are listening right now.
• 23:16
  And maybe help us just pause and identify what's going on with us.
• 23:23
  Where are we in this? Are we with him or without him? Have we walked away?
• 23:30
  Have we turned away? Why don't you lead us? Yeah, well, let's just do this together.
• 23:36
  So if you're driving down the road or if you're in an office or just listening
• 23:39
  to the podcast on a run or walk, let's acknowledge first the presence of God.
• 23:46
  That the truth of his word has walked us into the throne room of grace and mercy.
• 23:52
  And why don't you do this? One, thank him that we can be with him.
• 23:59
  Thank him that he wants us. He wants us to abide in him, to be with him.
• 24:10
  And then just take a second there and say, Lord, show me the areas of my life
• 24:15
  where I'm making a terrible trade.
• 24:19
  That I'm trading this pursuit or this person or this object or whatever it is
• 24:26
  in my life for the experience of your presence.
• 24:30
  Ask him to show you ask him to cross examine you.
• 24:36
  And as he does repent turn from those things confess those things,
• 24:47
  ask him to cleanse us.
• 24:53
  Take a moment and ask him to refresh us in his presence,
• 25:02
  so lord i just thank you for every listener
• 25:05
  and for this podcast that i believe lord
• 25:08
  had truth that would should permeate our lives and lord i just thank you that
• 25:13
  you want us that you long for us that you made us for you for the experience
• 25:18
  of relationship with you and so god i pray now that you would show us in every
• 25:24
  way we're making just a terrible trade,
• 25:27
  that we're laying hold of things
• 25:30
  that can never satisfy and awaken in us a desire for more of you, Lord.
• 25:35
  So I pray that decisions in your presence are made today that will be met,
• 25:40
  Lord God, with an experience of relationship with you like never before.
• 25:44
  God, so I pray that adjustments are made today.
• 25:47
  Lord, we love you. We entrust this time to you, Lord, that you just started
• 25:53
  something. something, and I pray that it would sustain and help us to keep walking
• 25:56
  in it in deeper ways. In Jesus' name, amen.
• 26:00
  Well, Bill, bro, that was awesome truth.
• 26:04
  And I'd encourage our listeners, here's the deal, that we're walking through
• 26:09
  God's Word and we're seeing, honestly, the narrative of God, the desire of God.
• 26:15
  And Bill just laid it out in Exodus. But just honestly, I think this was a glimpse.
• 26:19
  A really good sight line into the heart of God around experiencing His presence. Share it with somebody.
• 26:26
  I mean, share it with somebody. Have a conversation. If you're a pastor,
• 26:30
  maybe let your staff, y'all sit down together and listen to it or small group and others.
• 26:34
  And I think I picked up where you were there, Bill. I think we're going to continue
• 26:38
  this conversation a little bit more in the next podcast.
• 26:42
  Yeah, next time I would love to talk. We'll just stay right in this passage.
• 26:47
  And so you'll want to pick up the next podcast. And what did they do?
• 26:53
  How did they get out? And there's some astounding twists in this that happen
• 27:00
  at the foot of the mountain and that get them back on track.
• 27:05
  But for a while there, it looked pretty iffy.
• 27:08
  And we need to understand those because it's our story. Exodus is our story.
• 27:15
  It's not just something for the past. It's our story. It's where we live.
• 27:20
  That's why God took such intentionality to write it down. So we look forward
• 27:24
  to having everybody join us.
• 27:28
  We pray you'll check out our OneCry website.
• 27:33
  And also we're featuring in these days the book, the little book, Essential Presence.
• 27:42
  And it's a 40-day book that will help just set your mind there,
• 27:47
  take you into his presence every day.
• 27:50
  So thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.
• 27:54
  Music.