Longing For Home

Carly had a call from her district manager on Friday morning. He wanted to come to her office to talk. "Hmm?" thought Carly. "He must want to go over this month’s numbers."

When her boss came in and sat down, he started right in. "There’s no way that I can soften this, Carly, so I might as well be blunt. We don’t need you any more. You’re job is finished."
The only thing that she could think of was, "Will I be able to come to the staff BBQ tonight?" The answer, of course, was "No."

She hoped that there was a back way out of the office. But no, she had to be escorted with her garbage bag full of the contents of her desk. The long walk down past her staring former subordinates seemed endless.

You know what? I’ve found out that something happens when I come into those places and situations where I finally realize how really frail and weak I am. I finally do what I should've done in the beginning. I lift my heart to God and say, "God, I need You. I desperately need Your fullness in my life. I long for you to make your home in my life."

Do you know what else I’ve discovered? Position and status work against my relationship with God. For reasons best known to God, from time to time I’ve been in positions of influence and power. I served for a time on Simcoe Town Council and on Haldimand Norfolk Regional Council. I sat for a term in the mayor’s chair in Simcoe. For some years, I owned businesses that employed 150 people. Then, Sharon and I were persuaded that maybe God, for his own reasons, might want us to come here to serve this congregation. That's a far greater honour than all of the others. But through it all, I keep sensing that if I'm not careful, I'll think I'm big enough for this. I mean, after all, look at my academic credentials, look at the million dollar budgets I’ve managed and all that. It’s seductive. Self-delusion about position and status easily swamps us. The delusion is that "you're strong enough for this. You're big enough to do this." It’s a snare.

Maybe you’ve been entrusted with lots of money. Do you find school work and academic challenges a piece of cake? Maybe you have great musical ability that comes to you easily. Are you exceptionally gifted in athletic prowess? The deceit will swamp us and bend our minds as we kid ourselves with thoughts like, "I have all that I need. And I don't need God." You may be handsome and the girls may fawn over you. You may be pretty, and the guys are chasing you. God may have given you an IQ that's on its way to Mars. And you think, "Well, there it is. I'm smart enough. I don't need God." But that’s self- deceit. Every one of us is frail and weak and desperately in need of the fullness of God. When we get to the point where we recognize our frailty, like Enosh and Seth, then we begin to call upon the name of the Lord, and to pursue Him. Because we need Him. We need Him.

All through Old Testament history, just a handful of people spent their lives calling on the name of the Lord. There was Noah mocked for building his boat on dry land. There was stuttering Moses, and Joseph with the dysfunctional family. There was stunningly beautiful Sarah, Esther, disillusioned Job, philandering King David. There was intellectually and politically brilliant Solomon, a strong woman leader like Deborah. They are sprinkled throughout the Bible as deeply gifted, highly talented, well- positioned people. Buy they never forgot their frailty or their striking flaws. They recognized their steep need of God. And because of that, though they were without exception deeply flawed, they were also quality people marked by focus on God. Their every day lives were brilliant with qualities like worship, service, and perseverance in the toughest of times. When did their lives resonate with these qualities? When they were men and women of God, not men and women of themselves.

Do you know what's important to note? It’s true that they sought God. But what’s more important than all of that is this: God met them right where they were. God didn’t have to do it, but once-in-a-while, God met them in dramatic ways. God was always, always quietly there, sometimes unnamed. But God was not spectacular every hour. There weren’t goose bumps every moment. But they glimpsed God just enough to be reminded that God was with them. They didn’t always feel God, but they knew God’s promises would not be broken. And they experienced periodic brushes with the pleasure of the presence of God showing up in their lives.
But isn’t that where we often choke? Do we think thoughts like, "If God would be to me what He was to Abraham, I could get along." Because didn’t God keep showing up to Abraham?
Well, not really! Did you ever take the years of Abraham's life and divide them by the number of times God shows up? It's like every seven years, every ten years God shows up. The rest of his story was the tale of one frail man knowing how much he longed for God. Abraham discovered that it was in his longing for God, in his shadowed days and years when God seemed so far away, - it was in those bad days that Abraham came to know the fulness of God.
We’ve been talking about what we expect of God, and how sometimes our failed expectations dump us in the ditch. Now, are we starting to understand a more biblical expectation? We flip over into the New Testament, and we have the story of Jesus, who is God in a human skin. We can look through the rearview mirror and see God intercepting life in the real person of Christ. We can see what intimacy with God was like as people related to the real Jesus. Intimacy with the real Christ on this planet was a pleasurable possibility and a very real experience when Jesus was here.

But Jesus has left the building. What then? Remember what Jesus said as went away? "But it's going to be better for you, because I'm going to give the Holy Spirit to you." And now God dwells in us. We have the Word of God, where we meet God on a regular basis. We have the privilege of all of this background in our day. But it is still not heaven. For even the New Testament told us that today, we see through a glass darkly, we peer out through a thick fog. But the future holds, what? Well, we don’t know exactly what we’ll be. But we do know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him "Face- to-face."

Paul wrote to his struggling friends, "We walk not by sight." He means that this walk with Christ is not a sensual thing. Don’t expect to see a vision of Jesus. Don’t expect to touch his body. Don’t expect to hear voices. Don’t expect some permanent religious thrill. No. We walk by faith. We trust God. We are people who need God and the fullness of what He offers to us.

As we track like that, we find ourselves in a worship service, and suddenly it's like . . . Have you had this happen to you? . . . It's like, every now and then, the whole presence of God fills our soul with His pleasure in that moment. We get a foretaste of heaven right here. Maybe it’s a hymn, or a Scripture reading, or a prayer. Maybe it’s a moment in the sermon. It could be the touch of a friend’s hand in the Coffee Hour, or the listening of an understanding ear. Maybe it’s a time of prayer after the service in that vestibule.

But then the worship service is over and I have to go back to work. I have to get across Grand River St. to the parking lot. I have to pull into the gas station and pay 86 cents a litre for gas. As if that’s not bad enough, the clod who came in after I did, edges his car into the line ahead of me. We labour in prayer. On our knees in the darkness of the room, we seek God. Every once in a long while God comes and fills us. We have those wonderful, periodic brushes with the pleasure of His presence in the quietness on our knees. God fills our souls, and we say, "God, thank You for this moment of intimacy. Thank You."

Then the light dawns, and the day begins, and we get up. It's business as usual, us frail ones seeking His fullness. Why do I seek God in my frailty? Not for the reward of intimacy, not for the reward of my own pleasure, my own joy. But I seek God because of His fullness in my desperate need. And sometimes He brings the reward of intimacy in periodic brushes with His pleasure.
That’s what we can expect of God. If you're seeking God because you want to feel the excitement of His presence all the time, you'll be dreadfully disappointed. If you pursue Him because of how much you need the fullness of Him, God will meet you there in your need. And you will feel His touch often enough to keep you tracking toward home.

Think about the majesty of God. Think about his brilliance, his awesome holiness. And in the midst of that majesty is this mystery: that even though He is the King, He is our friend. Think of that stunning truth that the God of the universe longs for an intimate relationship with you and with me. Think of the mystery that God in Jesus came. He took a human body just like yours. He did it to seek and to save those of us who are lost. Because of the cross of Jesus, the awesome God of the universe is wonderfully accessible. He is the rewarder of those of us who diligently seek Him. Come to the King. Find Him to be your friend. Let Him satisfy your soul.