The God I never knew
“When the king smiles, there is life; His favour refreshes like a spring rain. ”
I set my eyes upon Him in a room that blazed with light, brilliant white as if it could blind. Jesus was cloaked in Joseph’s technicolour dreamcoat, and He spun around and around as if chasing His tail as the colours of the dreamcoat flayed and spread, a fan of colours now, a blur. He was laughing, roaring, as if a child- fully content. I watched Him, my eyes locked, ears ajar, hearing the sweetness of that laugh and watching His hair buoy and bare feet patter. My colourful Jesus was asking me to be His favourite one, robed in the knowledge that He had always been His Father’s.
And then, I found myself in a different scene. I was a little girl. In my left hand I held a worn brown teddy bear, and in my right, my hand was held by my beautiful Jesus now robed in a long white tunic. This time Jesus ran with me, His laughter as before, never ceasing. My feet barely had the chance to touch the ground as He led me along with Him as He ran; and as He ran I chased Him, dipping and diving through the expanses of the corridors of heaven. He took me to places I’d always asked.
These pictures shattered my theology, I stood dumbfounded as religion was put in the corner. The moment where I understood that God wants friends, not slaves.
Oh, if you’d wanted the books of the Bible, I’d recite them for you, if you wanted the answer to question 24 from the boys and girls catechism: Q: what was the sin of our first parents A: eating the forbidden fruit, I could have told you. If you wanted to know about Esther, David or Daniel I got it. See, I had store houses full of theology, I knew about a God, but actually knew nothing of His nature. I’d built a God that existed between two straight fixed and rigid lines. He hadn’t the slightest clue how to have a good time and what I was being offered was a grey coated, white washed religion. Why was it relevant, if even at all possible to know this God. Didn’t He look at me with eyes of disdain, giving me just deserts for my bad behaviour. Wasn’t He the moody, un-original God who didn’t bid me come, but ‘be gone’. I was being fed that I was loved by a God I never knew, teaching children in a Sunday School class that He was good, with no clue or experience that He actually was. No experience that He’d chosen me, long before I ever knew what it was to choose Him.
It is in the absence of experience that bad theology is formed.
See, our conversion was not God’s ultimate intent for us. It was/is instead, the initial intent that sets us up for the ultimate end, the ultimate fulfillment to be filled with his fullness and His goodness, to know Him and be known by Him, to love Him, and be loved by Him. So many freely claim a salvation, and yes, salvation is free, but it’s not the totality of God’s intent. Salvation is the start. If it was the end then God would have stopped at the cross. There is so much more to see than what we’ve seen already. I remember thinking at sixteen, mouthy and moody, riding my high horse with the belief I ran the joint, that I’d seen God, I’d seen what He offered and I didn’t want it: dried up prayer meetings, false smiles, ankle swingers, pastel coloured clothes and petty prayers; He wouldn’t steal any allegiance of me.
Turns out I was wrong. Turns out I’d not seen Him. Turns out that it’s KNOWING Him that changes everything. If we know Him, how could we not love Him?
The journey of knowing Him for me started with the knowledge that I was known by Him. As He called my name one night in a house in the middle of the tea fields of Limuru, Kenya, I remember face diving in to the hunger of knowing Him. Not knowing about Him, but knowing HIM. I was desperate to soak up every piece of who He was, desperate to really know the One who called me by name. It was the start of intimacy.
He’s called our Father, for He is to be known as a Father more so than our earthly Father’s. I am not going to call someone husband if I don’t speak to them and talk to them. Likewise I would not call God, Daddy or Father, if I had no relationship with Him. We serve a living God, we serve a God who deserves all our attention and praise, we serve a God who sent His Son out of the heavens to meet earth with a kiss, there is nothing distant about that. That was my revelation as God shattered my natural with His supernatural, as the God I always believed to be confined to a cloud in the heaven’s reached down and seated me in heavenly places.
When i first met the Father, and still sometimes now, I expected gifts without intimacy. I almost lived like I was owed something, or deserved something yet barely uttered a word before Him apart from my wants. God is a good God and gives as He pleases, but isn’t it out of intimacy that we are more inclined to give?
That was the problem with Judas. The disciple, who wanted the benefits without covenant. While John is reclining on Jesus’ breast, Judas is condemning Mary’s offering like He has the right to. A thief, and a deceiver condemning one of the most monumental and beautiful exchanges in history. While Mary breaks the law, in a time where a woman’s touch was taboo, she dares to cradle the feet of the one she adores. She dares to take a 12 ounce jar of the sweetest perfume, a perfume that would have bought her a way out the town, and rubs it in to the well trod feet of Jesus. 30,000 pounds or so poured out before Jesus. Mary, the one who was all in, without reserve, the one maybe wished she could have even offered more.
See, Judas, just like the Pharisees had missed the picture, missed that nothing was required of them but to sit at His feet, just like Mary’s sister had. ‘Doing’ or ‘action’, won’t get us anywhere if it doesn’t come from the place of intimacy and love. People who are in love see things differently. It’s our love for Him that changes how we read the bible, and what we see when we read the bible. It changes the tone of voice we use to speak about Him, and how we hear His voice. If we don’t know the love of God or feel the love for Him we will continue to read His bible like a rule book and see His testing and stretching as if we are on trial.
The Pharisees and the religious will forever be on the sidelines as long as they don’t understand that Jesus bids them come. Drop the books, drop the pretence, the pretty face the striving and straining and come. Stop striving to create what you think I want and Come to me and be transformed, come to me and have life. Don’t come to me and go, come to me and stay; stay in my presence.
Brennan Manning, author of the Ragamuffin Gospel writes:
‘The confessing church of American ragamuffins needs to join Magdalene and Peter in witnessing that Christianity is not primarily a moral code but a grace laden mystery; it is not essentially a philosophy of love, but a love affair; it is not keeping rules with clenched fists, but receiving gifts with open hands’
We have to cultivate intimacy with Him, it won’t fall into our laps. Though I know Him more today than five, three or two years ago, I actually know Him less. The Kingdom of God is upside down. The more I know about Him the more I see how much I don’t know. This isn’t to deter, it’s to propel us. We combat ineffectiveness by eating; As Bill Johnson says, ‘we get hungry by eating’.
Prayer is an expression of relationship; we must talk to Him. He longs for his children to search Him out. It is being in that intimacy that will change me, that makes my heart swell with love for Him. We can pray our whole lives without being in the presence. We must get to that place. It’s intimacy that means that songs written about Him aren’t enough. To suit my praise for Him, I need songs I sing to Him. It’s intimacy that means human dreams are diminished in light of dreaming with the Father. It’s intimacy that means that human words aren’t enough to tell Him how much I love Him. I’m not saying my intimacy with Him is dependable on a tangible experience with Him, but if He is closer than a brother, does He not long to show that He can be in this way.
It brings me to tears to think of John, the ‘disciple whom God loved’, the one who rested upon Jesus’s breast all his life, the one who was there, the only one who was there with Jesus from the start and with Him till the end, is the one when He sees Him in Revelation is overcome. And if John, the one who knew Jesus all His life in great intimacy was overcome, how even more so will we be.
There is nothing but goodness to be gained in His presence.
We must cease striving for a pursuit of Him without actually pursuing Him. The idea of God will not do. The majority of the church’s problems are because we don’t see Him for who He is. We put a voice to God from our own knowledge without taking time to hear God on it, we read the bible without a love for Him, or without Holy Spirit. We act without a love for Him, and we pray as routine. Put down the book about Him, turn off the CD about Him, turn down whatever atmosphere around you, and feel Him, feel the living God. Feel His breath and hear His whisper; Child and Father intimacy. We need the loyalty to the throne room as John had to Jesus in his lifetime, that is not out of routine, but out of love for the very nature of God. This isn’t optional, it’s essential.
Without intimacy, we are religious, without action we are just theology. Religion creates a taste in our mouth that cannot be satisfied. But Jesus!!!!!!! He alone can satisfy. God doesn’t want fan boys and girls or a number on a tally chart, He’s asking for people who will be in Covenant with Him. He doesn’t want our lists of excuses, or righteous prayers, He doesn’t even want our money cast at His feet. Child, He wants you. He wants you in His presence. He’s asking for people who will continually build His kingdom through praises to let him ride upon and the intimacy that changes everything, the intimacy He lives for.