God’s favorite house!!!
Part 2
The Cost of Intimacy
INTRO:
Over and Over I have tried to bring us to a newness of God. I have tried to bring us to an overwhelming experience, the likes of which we have heard about in such stories as, the great Asuzu street revival. The great revivals in Toronto, Missouri, and Pensacola.
I have compel us to regain the “old anointing” to recapture the essence of God and His power. What happened to the anointing? Where did it go? Why did it go? How do we get it back? Why did it leave?
I don’t know about you but I am sick of the same old church services, I am sick of the same old songs, I am sick of the same old way of worshiping God.
Please don’t think I am sacrilegious, but I need something new, something different. There has got to be more. Are we sure we are not stopping on the doorstep of God’s house and walking off the porch thinking there is nothing else?
I am sick of quote “good church services”. Good just isn’t enough any more. God is more than Good.
If I ask you to try something that I told you would be very good, but there was something better on the stove and if you would just wait, you wouldn’t have to settle for second best you could have absolutely the best there was and ever would be. What would be the answer?
Would you simply say naaaa that’s ok, I will take the “good” that is ok with me it is what we have had for many many years.
Or would you say I am very hungry and that looks good but I am going to wait for the best.
I know this may sound extreme, I know it is different than what Grandma and grandpa did and taught but, God is doing something different and He wants us to be apart of it.
He wants you… and me… and us…
Listen to what God says through His prophet Isaiah.
Isa 43:18 Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old.
Isa 43:19 Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.
Shall we know it????????
I know it sounds extreme but I want God to show up with His shekinah Glory.
We as a church forget that God wants to share with us He wants to share with us. He wants to play with us. He wants to be with us.
I am afraid church that we have got so caught up in the appetizers that we are not remembering that there is a main course and that main course is God.
Everything else other than God is simply a warm up an appetizer.
Do we want God?
Church get ready cause He is on His way.
I. The Cost of Intimacy
It is no longer acceptable to come a good church, to good services, to good preaching, to good music.
It is no longer acceptable to come to an almost service.
When we proclaim that God has shown up, when He starts to move we feel His glory and power for only a brief moment and then we are satisfied.
We draw back…
Song 5:2 I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.
Song 5:3 I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?
Song 5:4 My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him.
Is Jesus knocking on our church doors trying to get in and we are standing on the inside saying “…I have already laid down for the night I have already washed my feet, do you want me to get up again and get myself dirty?…”
The latch is on our side…
The doors lock from the inside…
And God is looking for a person, a church, and a city that will open to Him that will not try and count the cost of intimacy with Him.
Comfortable…
Caught up in our programs, our tradition, our status.
We refuse to open the door because it is not convenient
The cost of intimacy seems to high
We have been burnt in the past and we set around and say I am not going to be burnt again.
WE HAVE LOST OUR VISION.
And to loose ones vision is to perish.
In last weeks sermon I spoke about the way that that Mical the wife of David the great king was upset upon the entrance of the ark of the Covenant
Lets read what the word says about this instance
1 Chr 15:29 And it came to pass, as the ark of the covenant of the LORD came to the city of David, that Michal the daughter of Saul looking out at a window saw king David dancing and playing: and she despised him in her heart.
Michal was so used to living without the King in the house that when He came home from Battle she did not even want him to be there.
It could be suggested that David was never again intimate with his wife Michal.
The disgust she had for him locked the door to intimacy.
She was then labeled barren
Our church’s around us have locked the door to intimacy with GOD.
The bride of Christ {the church} has grown so accustom to the King being away fighting battles and doing other kingly works that we get disgusted when He shows up to be intimate with us.
IT MESSES UP OUR PLANNED SERVICES.
If we would just turn away from our lust and programs and stop with all the preliminary junk God may just say Hey I am going to be with my children today.
Instead we as the modern church say “No Lord, not right now, I am already in bed half asleep come back when we have you in the agenda.”
II. When the Knocking Stops
Song 5:5 I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.
Song 5:6 I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer.
Many times in our services we come to a place when God wants to move and we wait and wait and wait and finally we concede and let God have His way.
Well I will tell you that one of these times we may wait until it is too late, We concede and let God move and He is already gone and all that is left is the scent of where He used to be.
WE HAVE GOT TO OPEN THE DOOR WHEN HE KNOCKS
Don’t wait in a service for someone to make a move if God directs you a certain way then move that way.
Now I know that some are happy or content just to smell the fragrance to where He used to be.
Or to live off of the blessing of Yesterday’s revival.
But I tell you what I am sick and tired of reading about a revival of yesterday, yea they were good but I wan to meet the reviver.
I don’t want a second had experience I want a first hand encounter.
To equate that in the physical we see a wife or husband that grieves a spouse that has passed. They grab the pillows and smell the fragrance of the departed.
Even in the natural we must at one point or another stop the greiving process and go on with our lives.
How much more should we do that in the Spiritual
Yea it was a good service, yea he was a good preacher, yea they lead singing very nicely, yea there were nice songs,
But the key thing here is that the were’s and was’s refer to the past.
We have got to quit living on a touch from yesterday.
God would that you would fill up every day.
We have got to get up out of our beds no matter how weary and no matter if we have washed our feet already no matter if we have laid down to sleep, we have got to rise up and get closer to God before He leaves us and all that remains is the fragrance of God.
I’m sorry but I refuse to cuddle up to a hollow memory of what it used to be.
What it was before is not indicative of what it can be.
We must pray seek His face and cry to Him “SHOW YOUR FACE LORD”
III. Dignity or Deity
Mark 10:46 And they came to Jericho: and as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway side begging.
Mark 10:47 And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me.
Mark 10:48 And many charged him that he should hold his peace: but he cried the more a great deal, Thou son of David, have mercy on me.
Mark 10:49 And Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called. And they call the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good comfort, rise; he calleth thee.
Mark 10:50 And he, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus.
Mark 10:51 And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight.
Mark 10:52 And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way.
Here we find a man that was not worried about his DIGNITY he was more concerned with His (Jesus’) DEITY.
As Jesus passed through the gate on His way out of the city of Jericho, there was a man that was blind standing nearby somewhere close to the gates.
He heard the commotion and asked the question.
“Is it Him?” No one answered him again he said
“IS IT HIM?” Someone said yes now be quiet before you disturb Him
I believe old blind Bartimaeus said, “be quiet? You have mistaken me for someone who can’t see. Be quiet? Honey you better look out because I am fixing to lose my dignity. I am fixing to get His attention.”
You can’t preserve your dignity and seek His deity.
You can’t save your face and seek His face.
We have got to loose this Pentecostalism and Baptistism and Presbyterianism and any other isms that we can think of and Get with Godism
We must cry as Bartimaeus did “Jesus thou son of David have mercy on me.”
Well some people get that stuffy attitude that Jesus is Love. Which is categorically true however.
Don’t be lulled into a false sense of reality.
Don’t think within yourselves that Jesus would not pass on by.
Yes if Bartimaeus did not cry out Jesus would have kept on walking.
Do you really think that there were people that Jesus passed by that did not receive a healing or deliverance?
Yes, in fact if the woman with the issue of blood had not touched the hem of His garment. She would have never received her healing.
She had to loose her dignity to receive His deity.
If there was a little baby in this room right now that needed a bottle, and we had some big shot preacher up here preaching to us. Do you think that baby would hesitate on crying when it was hungry?
Do you think that it would worry what the other babies might think about him if he cried to get fed?
“Well what would the other babies think about me crying out?”
“Would the get upset or embarrassed by my hunger pains?”
We should answer that a resounding no we understand that babies need something and when the need they cry out.
“WAAAAAAA WAAAAAA WAAAAAAA”
We as parents know how to translate that. We know what it means.
They loose their dignity to get what they need yet we sit here all stiff-necked and proud thinking I would never do anything like that.
Well then you are never going to get the goods. You are never going to get the bottle of food that God has prepared for you.
It’s time to put your hunger on display, everyone else is hungry too. Don’t think you’re the only one.
GOD will feed you if you will open you mouth to cry out and forget about dignity and seek His deity.
Conclusion:
There is a cost for intimacy with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Are we willing to pay that price?
I am I will I refuse to let God get close to me and not cry out to Him.
