Jehovah-Tsidkenu, God Our Righteousness Series

What does it feel like to be in God’s presence? Have you ever felt his presence in a moment in time?

It’s royal, God’s presence. Like royalty is present.

It’s soft, like a whisper.

It’s like a cloud comes over you, a cloud of God’s presence.

It’s like the moment in time slows down.

You become more aware of everything around you.

You’re encountering a different dimension, a heavenly dimension intersects Earth for a moment.

You feel a love come over you.

And you feel like you don’t want to move. You don’t want to leave.

It gets bright, even though I don’t see any light. I can tell with my eyes closed that it’s bright in here… there’s a brightness I can’t see visually, but it’s there.

It’s also intimidating, dare I say terrifying, when I realize, the environment has shifted, God is here.

For I know God is a consuming fire.

It’s also a burning, a burning light, a roaring blue flame, God’s Holy Spirit being present.

And it’s perfect love, a savior, who wants me and calls me. Like a voice.. calling me from far away. His presence draws me in.

Have you felt it? I have. And whenever I do, it makes life complete, brokenness, for a moment, becomes completeness.

That’s what we all long for, something better. A better country. A better place. Something beyond all this. We all long for it. This world doesn’t quite satisfy.

Never full enough, never happy enough, never high enough, never drunk enough, never quite enough… it’s just beyond us. Just beyond this planet.

The Infinite Creator, the living God is the only solution to the completeness we seek. He is our only hope, for the hunger and thirst we have for something greater.

We resist that. We struggle with that. And that’s ok. Because did you know, all the great heroes of faith, wrestled with God? When we struggle with who God is, when we struggle with what it means, and who Jesus is, that’s wrestling with God. It’s OK to wrestle, to struggle, to strive to understand. We struggle.

We struggle with holiness, with righteousness, with comprehending what a world without sin could look like. When we see God’s holiness, his righteous standards, we get upset. We get angry. Because we know we can’t reach it, we can’t touch it, we can’t climb to it, so we feel like a man in a hole 20 feet deep without a ladder to climb out.

We get confused, we think well, I have to try to make myself good enough to be with God. We try to do good stuff, to outweigh the bad stuff we’ve done. We try to climb the walls of the hole we find ourselves in but just keep sliding down in the mud.

But God says stop! Stop! Stop striving.

God says, “I have done it myself.” Instead of striving to do good deeds, to climb the walls of the pit to escape from sin, we must recognize our own inability. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23).

Even Job said, weary and afraid, wondering, “How shall anyone be made righteous with God?” (Job 9:2).

The Apostle Paul, before he became a follower of Jesus, was so proud of his self-righteous practices as a Jew, as a Pharisee, he did everything right, followed the law, fasted and prayed, memorized the Torah, and yet when he saw Jesus, he realized, all his efforts were dirty rags, like manure, filthy.

So we find ourselves lacking righteousness, don’t we? And God will by no means clear the guilty. In fact he says time and again in His word that we are found guilty before him, guilty of sin. If Jesus isn’t your savior today, you are still guilty, and you face a punishment more severe than you could possibly imagine.

Even the punishment for murder in this life is life in prison. But the punishment for our many sins, is permanent imprisonment in a place called hell, a place where we are tortured without end, day and night, without rest, without food, without water, and without any hope. Indeed, there is not a single positive emotion to be experienced in hell. Some of you are headed there today and I’m pleading with you, stop your march to hell, and turn to the narrow road to eternal life.

God’s word says the soul that sins shall die; and the wages of sin are death. (Ezekiel 18:20, Romans 6:23).

You can pay for your sins with your own blood, in hell, but the life of the body is in the blood, and there is no life in hell, so there is no blood in hell either, be aware, you’ll have no blood there. Only sand. And it’s quite real. Quite real indeed. I’m sorry I’m just telling you what the Bible says.