Okay.
You know, I am always afraid to sing. But I am going to read out of 1 John, chapter 1, starting with verse 1.
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life—
the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us—
that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.
And these things we write to you that your joy may be full.—1 John 1:1-4
Let us pray.
Lord, we do want to thank You this morning again for the forgiveness of our sins. Lord, sometimes we are just so burdened with our own unworthiness. Just to hear that You have forgiven our sins means so much to us, and we want to give You our thanks and praise.
And Lord, we want to be free from those things. We want to have that truth forever seared into us, so that we are never doubting the great work that You have done in Your great love for us.
Now, Lord, we come to You as Your children, wanting to hear from You and asking, Lord, that You will speak to us from Your Word. Lord, Your Holy Spirit needs to speak to us. They do not need to hear Jim; they need to hear You. We need to hear You. I need to hear You. So, Lord, we commit Your Word to You. In Jesus’ name, amen.
I have been speaking, the last few times, on the last epistles of the apostles who wrote the epistles: Paul and Peter, and this time John. You are probably thinking, “Well, 1 John, that is not his last epistle.” Well, it is now. No—one of his last epistles.
The reason I started thinking about this was as we considered, “Is the Lord coming back? Is He coming back in our generation?” I wondered: What was important to these brothers? What were the last things they wanted to say to people before they went to be with the Lord? What was the thing they wanted us to know more than anything?
Because, when you think about it, if it is the last thing you can say to somebody, what would be the last thing you would say? Would it be some instruction? Would it be, perhaps, saying, “Forgive me”? Or would you say, “I love you”? What would be the last things you would say to your children or your wife?
Well, what were the last things these apostles said to the flock that the Lord had given them? What did they think was the important thing they had to pass on and make sure people knew?
So we come to John. Again, I am not going to do a study on John. I am just going to mention the things that struck me out of what he had written—the things that made me say, “Wow, I did not realize that this meant so much.”
Before I do this, I want to talk a little bit about John and a little bit about this letter. What do we know about the apostle John? Basically, we know that he was the son of Zebedee, and his brother was James. As a matter of fact, his brother was the first of the twelve apostles to be martyred.
We know that John was some type of fisherman or businessman in a fishing business. He worked with his dad; maybe it was his dad’s business. He had a nickname: “Son of Thunder.”
You might say, “Well, what does that mean?” There was one time, if you read Luke, when Jesus was going through Samaria, and they would not let Him pass through because He was heading toward Jerusalem. John said, “Should we call down fire on these people?”
What do you think “Son of Thunder” means? The guy had a temper. The guy thought he was more righteous than others, and those who did not go along with him should be destroyed. That was the personality.
We know John as the apostle of love, right? All these apostles were transformed. He was transformed into the apostle of love. In his natural self, he was a son of thunder. That is who he was.
Even when John refers to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” it was not “the disciple who loved Jesus”; it was “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” We find him writing that when he is old, because as he became old, he began to realize how much the Lord had loved him.
He was ambitious. We know from the Gospels that he was a little bit like Jacob, in the sense that he wanted to sit at the right and left hand of the Lord in His kingdom. So he sent his mom up to ask if they could do that. Sent Mom—ambitious, but sneaky. This is John when he was young.
Commentators often think that whatever you are doing when you are called is significant. We find that John was mending nets when the Lord called him. Many people say that his ministry was that of mending nets—keeping things from being broken.
When you read Acts, you do not hear very much about John. At first, you see Peter and John, Peter and John; then, after a while, it is just Peter, and John disappears. Even his writings were not written right away. They were toward the end of his life. We do not have any letters from him until near the end, and even his Gospel came toward the end.
I believe that is true because he was mending nets, making sure that things would not slip away from the truth. That was his ministry.
Who is John writing to? They say that John was headquartered in Ephesus; that was his main stomping ground. We know from Revelation that he must have had contact with some of the churches in the southwest part of Asia, which today is Turkey: Smyrna, Sardis, and the churches you read about in the first chapters of Revelation.
This was probably after he had been exiled on Patmos when he wrote these letters. Tradition says that John was sent to Patmos and was also going to be executed. They dipped him in boiling oil, and he survived.
He was writing this letter between A.D. 90 and A.D. 95. They say he died around A.D. 98. At the time he was writing, there was no persecution of the church, though persecution was soon coming.
Another thing that is interesting is that it had been at least sixty years since Pentecost. The Holy Spirit had been in the world, dwelling in man, for sixty years. Peter and Paul had been martyred more than thirty years earlier. There was no more Peter and no more Paul. As a matter of fact, they believe that John was probably the last living apostle who had been with Jesus.
The temple had been destroyed about twenty-five years before. The audience he was writing to included some first-generation Christians because evangelism was still going on, but many were second- and third-generation Christians. That is why he writes to fathers, young men, and little children.
By the end of the first century, we see the condition of the church in the letters to the churches in Revelation. First love was disappearing. Genuine faith was in danger of being replaced by orthodoxy.
Now, I got that from a book: orthodoxy. What does orthodoxy mean? It means just a form of religion—the stuff that we mail in. Cold doctrine: doctrine, but cold, with no life in it. “These are the things we believe.” Then there is lukewarmness because of the world creeping in. My relationship with Christ becomes lukewarm because something else is satisfying me.
So John is mending nets. The question is: What is he trying to keep from getting out of the net? That is what you mend the net for, right? You are trying to keep it so you catch what you want. What is he afraid of escaping?
What struck me is that what is being lost is the subjective aspect of our faith. A lot of people would say that John is a mystic.
If you read the other Gospels, they are very objective. You see something: this is what Jesus said, this is what happened, these are the people who were healed, and so forth. John does not tell everything that happened. He picks certain things, and they all have something to do with who the Lord is.
They talk about the “I am” statements in John. There are seven “I am” statements: “I am the way, the truth, and the life”; “I am the resurrection”; “I am the bread of life.”
What is a mystic? Some of us are afraid of that word because we think it means some dreamy fellow—somebody whose head is in the clouds and whose feet never touch the ground. It is just dreamy stuff that never gets worked out in life. But that is not really what a mystic is.
I looked it up in the dictionary—not a Greek dictionary, just a regular dictionary. It says a mystic is someone who seeks to obtain union with God, or communion with God, by spiritual contemplation and self-surrender. And I added this part: because he believes he can have it.
It is someone seeking after something, not something he thinks he can never attain. He is seeking after it because he believes he can have it.
John lasted the longest of all the disciples without the physical Jesus. How was that? It was because he had union and communion with Christ—with God.
When John records his Gospel, he lets us in on communion with Jesus—very intimate, personal communion. The thing that I think is being lost, and I know it is being lost in my life, is the subjective part of my relationship. I am settling for the objective, the outside things, and not pursuing the things that become real on the inside.
I am being satisfied with the outer shell and not pursuing the deeper thing. And I know we can say, “Oh, we are always talking about deeper things.” But all I am really talking about is that Christ becomes real.
That is what was being lost by the end of the first century. The reality of the relationship was being lost because they were settling for the outer stuff. John says, “This needs to be fixed.”
In the verses we read, the whole thing is subjective: “That which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have handled.” John is saying, “This is what I want to pass on. I do not want to pass on a teaching. I do not want to pass on a doctrine.”
“I want to pass on that God is in a place where you can reach Him, touch Him, feel Him, and He can become yours. He can be in your experience. He can be your life.”
John is not saying, “I studied these things, and this is what I came up with.” John is saying, “This is the experience that I have come into.” It is not an experience for the elite, or just for the twelve apostles. It does not end with John dying so that nobody can have it anymore. This is eternal life.
This is the very thing Christ died for. This is why Christ was sent into the world. Our sins were forgiven so that we could come into this fellowship with Almighty God—with the only God.
John’s whole theme throughout the book is fellowship: what fellowship looks like, and what effect fellowship has on you. If you are really having fellowship with God, what changes?
Living with my wife has changed me because I have been in fellowship with her. There are things in me that have changed just because of that—and I mean changed for the better. I dress much better. I am color coordinated. You are laughing; you should have seen me. I talk better, and I am starting to become sensitive. It is starting to bother me.
Fellowship is the thing that changes you. Fellowship is what transforms you. A teaching cannot transform you, but fellowship will transform you. It is not that it can; it will. When you come into contact with that life, that life gets into you.
That is what it is all about, and that is what John is after. John is trying to stop the loss of this life. He wants to bring us back into a subjective relationship.
Now, we can get really into subjectivity, but you have to understand: you cannot have subjectivity without objectivity. The objective comes first; the subjective follows.
Sometimes we think subjective people are people who run on feelings. If we run on feelings, we are lost. “Oh, this person does not like me. That person frowned at me this way. I am feeling good today, so the Lord must love me. I am feeling bad today, so the Lord must hate me.” That is the way subjective people are: up and down, up and down.
You have to get the objective to get into the subjective. John says, “You have these things.” If you read the other three Gospels, you have the objective truth. You know all these things about Him. Now let us get it inside.
This is the one thing I want to harp on. Verse 4 says, “These things we write to you.” Some versions say, “that our joy may be full,” and some say, “that your joy may be full.”
I looked in different versions. My interlinear says “our.” The New King James says “your.” J. B. Phillips says “our.” Darby says “your.” Which is it? I think it is both.
Even John says in his second and third epistles, “I have no greater joy than to see my children walking in the truth.” So it is true that his joy was made full by sharing these things. At the same time, what he is after is that our joy may be made full by coming into subjective relationship with Christ.
Really, what we are saying is: What is the source of our joy? What is joy? We do not hear much about joy, do we? Yet joy is one of the fruit of the Spirit, is it not?
What is joy? We always say, “Well, it is not just happiness.” But the definition of joy is deep emotional pleasure. That is subjective, is it not? Joy is subjective. It is deep, emotional, and pleasure.
But what I want to concentrate on is that it is deep. Brothers and sisters, the subjective is deep. Subjective truths run very deep.
We can blow off something objective, but the subjective is hard to get rid of. Do you know what I mean? How many of you have been scarred deeply, subjectively? It was not something you could just blow off. You took it in. You took it personally. It is deep.
Someone mentioned today that you may think you have forgiven someone, but sometimes it is deep. It is something very, very deep. It is not a shallow pleasure. It is not a passing thing.
It does not change because the sun is shining today and therefore I am joyful, or the clouds are out and therefore I am not joyful. It is deeper than that. It is deeper than your surroundings. Just because you lose something does not mean you lose your joy. It is deep.
The fellowship the Lord wants us to have is deep fellowship. Fellowship is a sharing. It is an encounter with another being who can share with you.
I cannot have fellowship with my dog, all right? As much as I like my dog, I cannot have fellowship with her because she just does not get me. We are not the same. She does not have the capacity to interchange and share with me.
If I am talking to Chloe and saying, “You are a good dog,” she is probably thinking, “So, I get food now?” Food. That is all my dog knows. “Are we going outside?” That is about all she knows. She knows she can come up and be petted, and I am sure she receives affection, but other than that, there is nothing there.
My wife is different. We can relate. We are on the same wavelength. We understand each other. That is what fellowship is: an encounter with somebody you can understand and share with—not merely outer things, but deep things.
The closer the relationship, the deeper the fellowship. Some of us, brothers and sisters, do not have very deep fellowship with each other. I am talking about me and you. It is because I do not have a great relationship with you. I am not saying that is good or bad; circumstances have led to that.
But there are those here with whom I have a deeper relationship, and I will share deeper things. The Lord wants a deep relationship. He does not want just the surface. He wants to go beyond.
It is not that He just wants to get into you; He wants you to get into Him. Fellowship is a two-way street. It is not just that we all give, give, give, and the Lord gives. It is giving and taking. It goes both ways.
When I say taking, I am not talking about Him taking things away from you. That skews our idea of what the Lord is after in a relationship: “You give everything to Me, and then I will be your Lord.” That is not it. It is a love relationship, and there are givings and takings in it.
Joy is deep, and fellowship is meant to be deep because our joy comes out of our fellowship. If joy is compared to thirst, then it cannot be quickly quenched. A sip will not do. You have to drink deep.
I have been finding this out in my own habits. I am a soda drinker. I love soda; I love the carbonation. But I do not drink soda when I am thirsty. I drink it for pleasure.
Do you know what I drink when I am thirsty? Water. There is nothing like water. With water, you can just keep drinking. You cannot do that with Coke. The fizz gets in your throat and up your nose. With water, you can just keep going and going and going. You have to drink deep.
Fellowship is not a surface thing. We do things with fellowship that need to be corrected. I am not saying that about this group of people; I am speaking generally about the way we look at fellowship.
A lot of times, we regulate fellowship to something objective—something that can be measured. “I spent an hour with the Lord yesterday.” Okay, I measured an hour with the Lord. What did I do with the other twenty-three? Well, the Lord was not there, I guess.
We are scientific people. Everything has to be measured so that we can see it; otherwise, it is not real. “How do I know I am spiritual? Because I spent an hour with the Lord.” I may not have gotten anything out of it, but I spent an hour.
Or we say, “I had my quiet time.” You can say, “Well, that is my fellowship.” I hope it was fellowship. But just because you have a quiet time does not necessarily mean you have had fellowship, because fellowship is an exchange.
I am not saying that we should enter our times of reading saying, “Oh, I need a feeling, I need a feeling.” I am not saying that. But if we regulate fellowship merely to a set time, we have lost something.
Or we say, “I get fellowship when I go to the meeting.” Well, I hope you do, but that is not always the case. To say fellowship is just a meeting is messed up. Fellowship is an exchange.
It is not just that I listen, hear a good message, go home, and watch football. How deep was that fellowship? Deep enough to get to the parking lot? Once I get home, I have fellowship with Tom Brady. For those of you who do not know—I know we are not all worldly like me—he is a baseball player.
The other thing about surface relationships is that we are easily satisfied with the surface. It is easy because we get what we want. “I got it. I am in and out. Satisfied. I have satisfied my fellowship.”
But if you read the Psalms, part of what is missing in many Christians today is that our hearts do not long for His fellowship. We sing, “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my heart yearns for Thee, Lord.” Yearns.
Do you know what yearning means? It means, “I am so unsatisfied unless You come and meet me.” It means, “I cannot be satisfied without meeting You.”
We come and say, “These things are required,” and then we are satisfied because we met the requirements. But the longing of God’s heart and the longing of our hearts are not met.
God created us for fellowship with Him. His heart longs for us to have fellowship with Him. In our hearts also, if we get beyond the surface, we long for Him.
The question is: How do you get beyond the surface? How do you crack the surface? How do you get past those places?
Another thing that keeps us out of deeper fellowship is that we compartmentalize our lives. To me, this is the Gnosticism John dealt with in the time when he was writing.
Gnosticism can be looked at in a couple of ways. One Gnostic belief was antinomianism. That is a good word, is it not? Antinomianism said that the flesh is evil, and it does not matter what you do with the flesh. The spirit is pure, so you can do whatever you want with your life and still maintain the purity of the spirit. Whatever you do in the flesh does not affect the spirit.
That gives you a dual life, does it not? “I have a spiritual life, and I have the flesh, which I cannot do anything with, so I just do not control it.” We have kind of switched that, but we do the same thing: “I have my spiritual life, and I have my secular life. One does not invade the other.” It is dualistic.
We say, “I met my required times. I went to church today. Of course, we would say I went to the meeting today. I had my fellowship time, and now the rest of the time is mine.” So we have a dual life.
My brothers and sisters, we only have one life. It is one life. It is not split up. I am not saying, “Gee whiz, now Jim is saying we cannot have fun.” What did they say to Jesus? “Why are You out there eating with sinners?”
If the life is guiding you and leading you, it does not mean you have to shut off everything. But when the life says to shut it off, that is when you shut it off. How are you going to know when it does? By having fellowship. It is by that relationship meaning something to you.
I hate to say this about myself, but sometimes I say, “I have to finish studying by nine o’clock because Law & Order is on.” What does that say about my fellowship? Compartmentalized. One life.
Have you ever been reading the Bible or praying, and you do not want to stop? Some of the young kids are going, “No, that is not me.” But you know what I mean. You are there, and you say, “Oh, gee whiz, I have to go to school. My gosh.” You do not want to stop.
That is the life in you. That life is being energized by the fellowship you are having with the Father and the Son, and you do not want to stop.
Lenny brought out something that I thought was really good. We say, “Okay, I have finished my fellowship time. Now I am going to go do this.” But we never leave His presence. Have you thought about that? We never leave His presence. He is with us wherever we go.
Even if we say, “Oh Lord, I have to go to work,” it is not as though the Lord says, “Well, I will see you later.” He says, “Okay, let us get in the car. I will go with you.” He never leaves us. His fellowship is deep.
What enhances our fellowship? A lot of us say, “How do you do this? How do you get this?” We are looking for some kind of three-step program: “This is how you get deeper fellowship.”
What is a mystic? A mystic is somebody who seeks union with God through spiritual contemplation. What does that mean? What is spiritual contemplation?
It is not merely sitting there with your eyes closed. It is thinking about things you have read. It is thinking about what a brother or sister has said to you and letting the Lord use it to speak to you. It is being aware that God is with you and that He can use anything to speak to you.
I remember one time, when I was in one of my downer moods, I was driving and saw a license plate. It was something like “REV 3:06.” So I looked it up in the Scriptures, and the Lord spoke to me:
Because thou hast a little power, and didst keep My word, and didst not deny My name,
behold, I have set before thee a door opened, which none can shut.—Revelation 3:8
That was the way the Lord used it to speak to me. We can blow things off—the things we read in the morning and things like that. But the Lord is saying, “Just give some time and listen to it. Just listen to it.”
Do you have a favorite song? When it finishes on the CD, do you ever say, “Play it again”? Why? Because you like it. Because you like what it says.
It is the same thing when the Lord speaks a word to us, or a brother speaks to us. Instead of just blowing it off and leaving it there, we take it in. We turn it over to the Lord and say, “Lord, I just want to think about this. What does this have to do with me?”
Contemplating is like wrestling with God. We are seeking meaning. We are seeking His fellowship. We are seeking to understand what He means to us by saying this. What meaning does this have for my life? We are wrestling with Him.
Wrestling is not like we are apart from one another. We are in there grappling. We are touching one another. Sometimes, in wrestling, my arm gets twisted. Sometimes I get pinned. Sometimes I hold on and do not let go, like Jacob. But the whole thing is that we wrestle with it.
We relegate fellowship to, “I am going to a Bible study,” or, “I am reading in my quiet time,” and we do not take it any further than that. The Lord is saying, “Take it a step further. If you take it a step further, I will meet you there.”
“You do not even know I am beyond just a quiet time or just a Bible study. Take a chance. See if I am there.”
This has an enlarging effect on our understanding of who He is and what He has done, just by thinking about it.
I have often wondered about John. He is the only one who wrote about the washing of the disciples’ feet. No one else did, but John did.
In John 1, he says:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
—John 1:1
How does the One who was in the beginning, the Word who was God, become the One who washed John’s feet? John says, “We beheld His glory.” He saw that this was God.
Yet, in John 13, he could see the glory being laid aside as a garment. He could see Christ coming down, taking the towel—which we could say was His humanity—and picking up their feet.
Not washing their hair. It would have been much better for us if He had washed hair, because that is the pretty part of us. “I have nice hair. Wash my hair; I do not mind that.” But He took the part that is the dirtiest—the feet.
Who wants to be in the room when I take my shoes off, let alone my socks? Who likes to see men in flip-flops? Why not? Because our feet are ugly.
But to have this One, the Logos, lay aside that glory, take up humanity, and then take your feet in His hands and bathe them until they are clean—what does that do to you?
I think it deepened John’s understanding of who Jesus was. When John the Baptist said, “There is the Lamb of God,” perhaps John thought, “I do not know what it means, but okay, I will go follow Him.”
How much did his understanding increase the more he had fellowship with Him? He came to understand what the Lamb of God was, who He was in relation to the Lamb of God.
Yet, at the same time, John could lean on His breast. The more we think about how filthy, dirty, and unworthy we are, the more we think we could never get close enough to lean on His breast.
Yet here we have John—the manipulator, the angry guy—who could get close enough to Jesus and lean on His breast. Brothers and sisters, that has been purchased for us. That has been purchased for us: to lean on His breast.
That is even more intimate than just walking with Him: sitting there, leaning, putting all my weight on Him, and saying, “I am the disciple whom He loves.” Not that I love Him, but I can lean on Him because I am so confident in His love for me.
Oh, how that has to be mashed into us, to understand that.
John says, “I want that fellowship.” This is what needs to be saved: this type of relationship.
There is one other verse I want to talk about, and then I will close. At the end of the book, in 1 John 5:13, it says:
These things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God.
—1 John 5:13
Some versions also say, “that ye may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.” Some versions do not say that, and in some it is in italics, but I think it is in the Textus Receptus.
The other thing about fellowship and joy is this: for joy to continue, fellowship has to continue. If you do not continue in fellowship, time will wear away the joy. But if you continue in fellowship, the joy will be kept burning.
We have a tendency to settle in a certain place in our spiritual life. We go back to experiences and say, “Oh yeah, I remember that experience.” We start remembering a lot, but we do not take it forward.
Think about when the Lord took John, James, and Peter up to the Mount of Transfiguration. There He was transfigured, and Moses and Elijah were there. Peter said, “Let us build tabernacles. Let us stay here.”
Why not? We have Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. It cannot get any better than this. Then the Father broke in and said, “This is My Son. Hear Him.” Then they went down the hill.
We are not called to build tabernacles. We are not called to build monuments to our spiritual peaks. We are to continue. We are to come down the mountain and face everyday life with whatever it was that we saw up on the mountain.
We are not meant to just stay there. The vision we have on the mountain is to come down and be incorporated into life. What was it that was on the mountain? You can say, “Jesus was transfigured.” But what happened was that the Lord said, “Hear Him.”
In other words, when you go down the mountain, keep in that relationship with Him where you hear Him. That is so important—that we do not just say, “Oh yeah, I have been there before.” No. Are we hearing Him today?
“Oh, I heard Him back then. I remember the first time Lance came out to California and gave seven messages on Jacob. I remember that. It was a life-changing experience.” Am I going to stay there? Am I just going to replay the tapes?
No. Am I going on with what I received from that? Am I going further? Is my fellowship deepening because of that?
When they came down the mountain, they met real life. They met a demoniac, and the other disciples could not cast it out. Sometimes we think that when we go to the Lord and have our quiet times or fellowship times, He is going to give us magic words. Then, when we come into a problem, we say the magic word and it is gone.
That is not it. “We cannot cast this out. This thing has come upon us. What do we do?” After the Lord cast out the demon, He came to the disciples. Do you remember what He said?
This kind can come out by nothing, save by prayer.
—Mark 9:29
What does that mean? If you want to meet the troubles of life, you have to meet them by prayer and fasting. To stay in relationship with God takes prayer. Prayer means communication with God. The communication lines are open.
They do not get lost up there on the mountain. You continue to keep that line of communication open. It is not that we are just praying prayers; where is the return? Remember, fellowship is a two-way street. Where is the return?
Maybe it is a quickened Scripture. Maybe it is something you see as you walk down the street, and the Lord quickens something from a word you received before. I do not know. But the communication lines are open because you have not left the Lord in the quiet time. You have not left the Lord in the meeting. He has come with you.
The communication lines are always open because the fellowship is there. The life is coming. Those things quicken us.
Then there is fasting. How many here like to fast? Do not be shy. That is what I thought. Why do we not like to fast? We enjoy food. In other words, fasting asks us to give up something.
But the question is: What are you giving it up for? Is it to get closer? If fasting is just a fast, it is just a religious duty. What good is that? It might keep the pounds off. It might keep your cholesterol down. You might live a couple more years because of it. But that is not eternal life.
Fasting is giving up something to be with Somebody. “You are worth this to me.”
Sometimes we get on the wrong wavelength and think the Lord wants us to live an ascetic life—give up everything, have nothing else, and all we do is read the Bible and pray. It is not so.
The Lord has called us to fellowship. He has not called us merely to self-denial. But in order to have closer fellowship, there will be self-denial.
There will be self-denial because you want to get close. How many of you men, in your relationship with your wife—or you ladies, in your relationship with your husband—have given something up to maintain that relationship? We all have.
It is the same thing with the Lord. If we want a closer relationship, there are things we will have to give up. Not things we pick out: “I will give this up. I will give that up.” But as we go on with Him, we will find that something is getting in the way.
We will know it. I am not going to say, “You have to get rid of this, and you have to get rid of that.” No, the Lord will show you. For me to tell you that takes you out of relationship. You have to be in that relationship to see the things that mess up the relationship.
It is something lived. This is all about life. It is not about compartmentalizing and saying, “These are the duties we have.” No, it is life. You find out by doing. You find out by experiencing as you go on.
You find out what He is like, what He desires from you, and He knows what you desire from Him. There is that giving and taking to maintain the relationship.
Abraham was given the whole land, right? But he paid for part of it. Do you know what part he paid for? A burial ground. He bought Hebron, a cave at Machpelah, which was in Hebron.
What does Hebron mean? It is Hebrew for fellowship. This is the part he bought. It cost him something. Yes, it cost him money, but what really brought him to that place was that it cost someone he loved. It came at the death of Sarah. Otherwise, he would not have bought it.
The things that make our relationship precious to God are often the things where He asks something and something has to die. He does not ask for peripheral things. He goes for the heart.
It is like the rich young ruler: “I have done all these things.” The Lord says, “Well, if you really want to, sell all you have.” He touched him right at the heart.
It is the same with our relationship with the Lord. He touches the heart. He does not want the shell. He wants the soft inner part.
Because when He touches the soft inner part, that part responds. We can tense up so much. Have you ever noticed how we tense up when we do not like something? When I go to the dentist, I think I leave finger holes in the armrest because I am afraid he is going to poke something that really hurts.
But your organs, if you pull off the skin, are soft. You can touch them. Doctor Boyer probably played with them in her anatomy class; I do not know.
But He wants the soft part, because it is the soft part that responds. It is pliable.
I did a study on “Delight thyself also in the Lord; and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” Boy, do you remember using that Scripture? “Oh Lord, I delight in You. I sure would like that car.”
As a young Christian, you think that is what it means. But the word “delight” also has something to do with being pliable. If you make yourself pliable to the Lord, you will have the desires of your heart because your desires will begin to change as He is able to touch you.
So, in closing, it does cost. I will leave you with this Scripture because I think it is appropriate. In Revelation 3, beginning with verse 14, it says:
And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write:
These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God:
I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.—Revelation 3:14-15
Many of us, because we have the surface, are really indifferent to Him. I am not saying that as a judgment. I am saying it as an observation because I see it in my own life.
Sometimes I have gone to bed saying, “Lord, I am living as if You do not exist.” When you get to the place where you cry out—that is the place we often never get to—where you begin crying out and saying, “God, I am just miserable.”
“I am not miserable with what I have. I am miserable because I do not have You in the way that I really want You.”
Because thou sayest, I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing;
and knowest not that thou art the wretched one and miserable and poor and blind and naked:
I counsel thee to buy of Me gold refined by fire, that thou mayest become rich;
and white garments, that thou mayest clothe thyself, and that the shame of thy nakedness be not made manifest;
and eye-salve to anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see.
As many as I love, I reprove and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear My voice and open the door,
I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.
He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with Me in My throne,
as I also overcame, and sat down with My Father in His throne.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.—Revelation 3:17-22
This was written to a church—to believers. Historically, this is supposedly the church of the last age. Is this the last stage we are in? I do not know. I am not an eschatologist.
But the thing is this: God wants, more than anything, this subjective relationship with you. This is His desire. He does not want this loss. I think that in these days, this is one thing He is seeking to recover from His people.
“I want you. I died for you. I am waiting for you because I love you.”
Let us pray.
Lord, we want to thank You that, in loving us, You want to be loved back. As You say, “I have given you an open door,” I know, Lord, in my heart, You say, “Where is My open door? Can I have an open door too?”
Oh Lord, I pray that we might desire fellowship with You—a fellowship that is deep. Lord, we may not be there yet, but I pray that by Your Spirit, in us, that desire You have for fellowship will begin rising up.
Lord, may we begin responding to that desire and have the fellowship that You want. Please, I pray, let nobody feel condemned about having a quiet time or this or that. But Lord, enrich that quiet time with Your presence.
Speak to Your children through Your Word. Lord, ravish them. Take them out. Lure them to Yourself. Bring them to Yourself, I pray, through their quiet times. Make it so that they say, “Oh, that is what it is.”
Lord, help us not to be satisfied with just the surface, but with a deep relationship, that our joy, Lord, might be full. We pray in Jesus’ name.