As I wrote in my first series of posts, there is an inherent short coming in the solely intellectual pursuit of God. If rely only upon our minds for interaction with and understanding of God, we are missing a whole side of God that he is calling us to.
I'd like to call that side "Living in the Glory". The physical, tangible manifestation of God's glory. The glory that made the psalmist say
"One thing I ask of the LORD,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
and to seek him in his temple."
We need to learn a pursuit of God that goes beyond a simply intellectual approach into a way of interacting with God that is beyond understanding and reason. Our pursuit of God needs to go beyond good doctrine. Sure, good doctrine is a necessity, but it necessarily needs to be formed out of more than writings in some old book, or in a blog post, or what our pastor tries to convey with broken metaphors. Our doctrine must be formed out of a real relationship with a real God.
Doctrine has no power to transform a mind, but God does.
Our relationship and interaction with God shouldn't "make sense". He is too big, too glorious to fit into our tiny, broken schemata of how God functions. As Paul says, "If I am beside myself (crazy) it is for God, but if I am in my right mind, it is for you". He is too good to comprehend. His very nature is that of giving of himself unto the point of death only to bring blessing and joy into our lives.
Our God is so good that he died for us.
I won't even begin to pretend that I comprehend the magnitude of that love. It is not something to be comprehended, but experienced.
Somehow we as Christians substituted goosebumps during worship for an experience with God. Our sites are set too low. The bible calls us to set out minds of Heaven, on Jesus, on His love.
We were made to live in the glorious, weighty presence of YHWH. We were meant to feel of the weight of his love crushing down upon us, to the point sheer bliss and utter fear of his goodness.
There is a story about Smith Wigglesworth, a great revivalist from the past. God's weighty presence showed up so thick in a prayer meeting he attended that people began to leave the room in fear of being crushed to death. One by one, they left the weighty glory.
But Smith remained. The weight of His glory was so heavy that there was a literal fear that he might die, but he resolved not to leave. If God was going to kill Him by revealing His goodness so purely and tangibly, Smith decided there was no better way to go.
That is the kind of transformation of the mind I am talking about. The kind where Heaven invades earth and there is now to turning back, no denying the reality, the tangible presence of YHWH, our God. I am convinced that we worship a shadow of what we are meant to because we haven't pressed in to the point of being willing to die just to experience even a second more of His weighty glory.
We must resolve to live for nothing else. Nothing else will satisfy. Nothing else is worth living for. It is questionable whether life outside His weighty glory is actually life at all.
I pray that this is cry of all our hearts. Everything else will fall into place, if only this would be all that we live for:
"One thing I ask of the LORD,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
and to seek him in his temple."
And
"My soul yearns, even faints,
for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and my flesh cry out
for the living God."
And
"Better is one day in your courts
than a thousand elsewhere;
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of the wicked."
Let us live in your glory.
Amen.
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