Aren’t You Hungry…
This is the first teaching of the series entitled “Do You REALLY Want Him?”
Giving all Glory and Honor unto the one who all Glory belongs; I would simply like to begin by saying THANK YOU GOD! Thank You for affording me the time and opportunity to seek after your presence and to realize your Glory being revealed in my own life.
As I pondered about a few things, I became aware of just a few things, however, the primary & prevailing question that kept arising was “Do I TRULY know who God is?”
I realized that we know about the things of God and we practice those things that we believe to be true about God. We say we know where God lives and say we know what God likes, accepts and what God disapproves of. We know all about God and His things that He manifests for our benefit just because we ask for them. We even know that the Bible is right which means that somebody obviously got it all wrong. We’ve studied the love letters that God has written to man throughout the centuries and so we claim with righteous indignation that we know everything there is to know ABOUT God.
But my question is not what do we know ABOUT God but do we TRULY know the Lord God?
We go to Church and speak in other tongues and quicken in the Spirit, lay hands and prophesy. We see people “delivered” from their ailments and diseases: and we say that’s ALL God has to offer. We say that is the FULLNESS of the Lord God. I say to that, if that’s all God has to offer, I want a refund!
Do you really want to know God? Do you really want God or are you happy with the things that God has to offer?
There is very little difference for us preachers. We think because we can call Bishops and Prophets nationwide on their personal lines and go out to lunch with the Evangelists and Prophets we find on television we think we got it all figured out because after all, that is the Will of God for us to find favor before men while neglecting God’s Glory is it not?
We’ve had the opportunity to “start” churches and every church proves to be successful based on how many people came instead of being based upon how many people have an experience with the manifest presence of the most High God.
So now is that the success that you wanted when you first began preaching or did your passion for experiencing the manifest presence of God diminish with everyday of seeking to please people while ignoring God?
DON’T YOU FEEL HUNGRY? Don’t you hunger and thirst for Gods Glory to reclaim your spirit. As the song says as the deep panteth for the water so my soul longs after you. When was the last time your soul longed for God? When was the last time, you had to pant or you had the desire to pant after God and was willing to go after God at ALL costs? When was the last time your soul LONGED after God that nothing would do but the presence of God?
As I speak to so many in the church, it dawns on me how tired we are of the fake. We something real to hold onto and stake our claim! Personally, I’m tired of “church as usual!”
Every week we go through the same thing! We sing, we dance, we prophesy, we dance, we speak in tongues, we dance, we lay hands, we dance, we listen to the preacher not because we’re gonna get something out of the message instead, we’re waiting for a chance to break out in a dance. You ought to be danced out!
We haven’t experienced but a smidgen of God, not what God has to offer but a smidgen of ALL that God is and we want to claim His Glory as our own. I’m tired of it and church folk! We thing we have God down to a science and then we have the unmitigated gall to give the science of God a name: Theology. We CONSTANTLY put God in some box and pray that God doesn’t come out because that would completely mess up our study that we KNOW cannot be flawed.
I’m tired because I’m hungry, you’re tired because you’re hungry but we keep on trying to fulfill our hungry in all the wrong places.
The whole truth is that the Church made itself look like the end all of all our problems and we aren’t getting the pie that everybody promised! We want to truly know God and that deep hunger isn’t being satiated by today’s Church of popular theology and prosperity indoctrination.
This is the same hunger that had me take a ministerial hiatus of five years. This the same hunger that drug addicts are seeking to feed while they are getting high. This is the same hunger that we seek to fulfill while we got out having sex with every Tom, Sean and Erica we see walking down the street. Ironically, this is the same hunger we are trying to fill when we go to all these mega conferences and convocations! We go to church wanting an experience but all we get is a quick shout and a moment of satisfaction which soon fades when we leave the confines of our quickie! All we’re left with are those moments that we were fulfilled but really it was an illusion of our perception.
I don’t care how much you know about someone, that doesn’t mean you know that person. You can know someone’s height, weight, marital status, history, eating habits, address and everything else but none of those things imply an INTIMATE relationship! It doesn’t mean that you know them! All you know are some facts mixed in with some hearsay about that individual but you do NOT know them.
Since I was a child, the church has been adept at the things of God. We have learned and perfected the techniques but we don’t talk with God. We know about what He’s done but we neglect and squander the opportunity to develop that intimacy with God. Turn to somebody and ask…“If God was to meet you, would you have to be introduced?” Or would God be running to you with open arms ready to scoop you up to embrace you and welcome you back?
Don’t reflect upon the answer for me…reflect upon the answer for yourself!
We’ve become so sidetracked by life and become so self-righteous and pious that our desires and wants completely diminish our character and thereby mars the character of God.
We have developed not only a religion called “Christian Politics”, we have developed a system of comfort like no other. We have everything we need right at our fingertips. We have the comfortable church, with the comfortable pastor and comfortable ministry associates. We have our comfortable circle of friends in the comfortable church so much so that we forget about the disenfranchised, lonely, depressed, discontented, wounded and dying people who pass by our comfortable selves. We even have the audacity to have comfortable seats to sit on.
Back in the day, they didn’t need the comfortable seating because they were usually on the floor crying out unto God having life changing experiences with the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. They didn’t need the comfort because they wasn’t worried bout sweating and their hair falling and breaking the heels on their shoes and ruining their perfectly applied make-up because they didn’t come to be comfortable, they came for an experience of a lifetime.
They came for a personal encounter with the Most High God and every time God showed His face the people were transformed into the image of His dear son. Some of us ought to get on the bandwagon as in the days past and have that experience and not care about who see us and just go for the gold! Go for the presence of God. There is more to God than a cheap thrill and a momentary satisfaction!
AREN’T YOU HUNGRY? We should just cancel our church agenda, we just need to show up & collectively seek after the face of God. If we seek, it shall be given, if we knock, it shall be open. What if we seek after the face of God and knock upon the open heart of the Lord God, can you imagine the possibilities?
Do you not realize that when God’s presence has been made manifest your worship soars? Where once we were sleepy and didn’t really want to be in a particular place, when God manifests His presence you don’t have a choice but to be in awe and amazement. When we come into the sanctuary and God’s presence is released and realized, the choir can’t sing the deacons can’t pray, the ushers can’t usher, the preachers can’t preach. You just have to be in awe of the presence of God!
In Isaiah 6:1, the scripture speaks about how the Glory of the Lord filled the temple. When we submit ourselves, the Glory of the Lord will the temple of our hearts!
There is a problem that us church folk have and that is when we allow God to fill the temple of our heart we only want to give God what’s comfortable for us. When it gets to a point in service where people are crying before God and truly commune with God, Bishop Big Mouth just has to get up with his big shot self and make the statement “The Lord has truly VISITED us today.” Well don’t take that experience for granted and notice “VISITED” as in the past tense BUT GOD IS STILL SHOWING HIS GLORY and if you will sit down and allow God to manifest His presence in your heart it culd prove to be a lasting visitation.
Whenever God gets outside of our comfortable place, we snatch back and get back into church mode. Has it ever occurred that because a service is not “designed” for prayer doesn’t mean that God would not have us to shut OUR service down just to seek His face. We constantly stop short of GOING IN! The veil has been torn for a reason; so we can ALL go in!!! Yet we stop short because it doesn’t fit in our comfortable theology!
II Chronicles 7: 14
“If my people which are called by My name, shall humble themselves…”
Yes preachers that means US too! We get so puffed up, sticking our chest out and think we are all that! Guess what, you’re NOT and neither am I! We are all seeking to become ONE with the Lord God, don’t hinder my journey just because your journey is not mine!
“…humble themselves, and pray, seek my face (NOT MY HAND), and turn from their wicked ways...”
That must be the most difficult part about this passage, turning from our wicked, deceptive, lying, manipulative, controlling, treacherous, hindering, snaring ways!
When was the last time you hugged someone because you had a God experience? When was the last time you didn’t cuss somebody out when they cut you off in the parking lot? When was the last time you said a kind word to an “enemy?” That’s what this scripture is referring to: Our supposedly “innate” inability to treat our neighbor as we wish to be treated.
Then at that point, God says, THEN after you have fulfilled ALL the prerequisites, I will hear from heaving and I will forgive their sins (their inability to honor me by Loving) and will HEAL THEIR LAND.
Where is your land? What kind of soil is in your land right now? All the sickness, disease and pestilence cannot compare with God coming in and taking over correcting that which has become incorrect and balancing that which has become unbalanced!
When we learn to seek God’s face and not His benefits, God will heal our land!
When we seek the face of God people will be healed, people will be made whole; people will be transformed into the image of His dear son!
When God shows up, God will do it all! You don’t need to ruin God’s presence with your oh so mighty word from on high, the musicians don’t need to play, the choir doesn’t need to sing! When you have an experience with God you’ll say as Isaiah said
“Woe is me! For I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.”
When God shows up all the things we thought about God gets thrown out the window and you’re left with nothing but a thought…“I knew that I knew God but this completely destroys all that I know, oh how I want to really know You OH GOD in a very real way.”
We always want to have church but when God’s presence shows up all the outward signs of “good church” have to be put down.
Our music, buildings and decorations mean nothing to God. You can’t do anything for God that God can’t do! God wants only to know “DO YOU REALLY WANT ME?”
Our churches are so heavily programmed with bulletins and programs that we fail to let God in on the action. Yes we allow God to prophetically speak to us for a little while but if God tries to break out of our set schedule, we get nervous.
Oh no, stay cool God, You are going to ruin our comfortable church service!
Well I’m pleading…GOD BREAK OUT; RUIN OUR CHURCH SERVICE SO WE CAN EXPERIENCE YOU!
We want your presence! We don’t want your power, we don’t want the anointing, we don’t want the things you have to offer, WE WANT YOU OH GOD!
Yet we don’t want to wait because in the back of our minds, we don’t think God will really show up on our behalf, so, we have to have our back up church schedule!
Isaiah 40:31
“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength…”
If only we could learn to wait! That’s why the numbers for church steadily diminish; that’s why we’re weak and diseased. We don’t want to wait for God’s presence for it says if you wait on God’s presence: God will renew, replenish and replace that which was lost! Can you wait on God to show up to empower you; with His presence? If we can wait, God will give us the desires of our heart, yes and He will heal the land!
Aren’t you hungry? God is actively revealing Himself, God wants to permeate every fiber of your existence an show you His full Glory!
When will we get tired of trying to make things happen? Why don’t you stop doing and let God. God is moving and our stuck up self self-righteous selves keep getting in the way! We always think “God hasn’t done that in the past so certainly God won’t do it now!”
When will we become so hungry that we are totally consumed to the point where we don’t care what people think about us? WE ONLY WANT GOD’S PRESENCE!
Matthew 3: 1 – 3
“In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea, And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”
Repentance prepares a road that God could travel down and genuinely show Himself. It builds up all the valleys and casts down every lofty mountain in our lives; this is what prepares us for His presence. Repentance leads to worship leads to God’s presence!
When were you so hungry you said, “I’m going for God, come hell or opposition, I’m going and nobody can dissuade me from it?” How long has it been since you put everything aside that occupied you and ran down hat road of “no turning back” to pursue God’s presence?
This road will completely mess you up! This hunger for God’s presence will have you to say, “I Love you but I Love God more.”
I don’t care what ministers or people think of me, I am after God’s presence. It ain’t about being proud, it’s about being hungry and knowing what replaces the hunger.
When God meets you, you will be ruined for the world! They won’t understand you! You’ve had an encounter and they won’t like you because they don’t know you anymore!
Let God break you out of mediocrity and put you back together in excellence!
Are you hungry? Are you truly hungry for God’s presence? We have constantly allowed things to fill the place that God’s presence can replace!
Yes feeding the hungry, teaching Sunday/Sabbath school, helping HIV patients and visiting the hospice are all good things and they make us feel good to know that we’re DOING the Will of God. Wow, what a feeling! It’s when we get caught up, we continue to do things for God and completely remove God from the picture.
Our “religious selves” rise up and we never become spiritual. I could care less about how many degrees you have, how much scripture you know or even what you know about God. DO YOU KNOW GOD?
Do you have an intimate relationship with God?
Have you repented, worshiped and allowed access to His presence?
We can do stuff for one another and don’t have the Love for one another. All the things we do together but we never enjoy that high level of intimacy! We never see into God! So when God unexpectedly shows up, we are shocked and possibly a little put off sometimes because theology says “that’s not what God does” but God says it’s too late I’m here…BAM, CHECK ME OUT! The whole truth is that we usually are not prepared to see Him “fill the temple.”
Aren’t you hungry? Then go eat of the presence of God and surely you will be filled!
