Season 2, Episode 3
All true relationship with God is experiential.
You cannot even begin to know God without personally experiencing Him. You cannot live in an ongoing relationship with God unless you are experiencing Him. And unless you are experiencing God you cannot effectively speak about Him or represent Him in any way.
God is love – therefore love is the very essence of His being. Not as a concept. Not as a feeling, but as something so wonderfully indescribable, it can only be real to those who experience Him.
God is the source of all life – the Living God who created the entire Universe out of nothing. You cannot know Him for who He really is without experiencing His life within you.
That’s how I know Him – and it’s also how I know that I know Him! He is the One I first experienced when I opened my heart to Him at the age of 17, and He is the One I have continued to experience ever since.
Just before He left His disciples to go and be with His Father, Jesus gave them one final promise: “…surely I will be with you always…” And He meant it.
Some have a concept of God and Jesus being somewhere ‘up there’ in a kind of grandstand seat with a great view of everything going on down here. From that vantage point they can zoom in on events on earth, and even on you and your life. If you really need them and make the right approaches with prayer and faith, they will likely respond. Though you also have to remember that God does have a lot going on and can at times be a bit unaware of your everyday life – so, you may need to make a point of getting His attention.
Nothing could be further from the truth! Not only is God totally engaged with this world and all that takes place in it, but He is also totally focused on your life to a degree you can hardly comprehend!
Having created this world and everything in it, God did not then put it all on autopilot and go off to do something else, leaving things down here to just tick along. Ever since Creation, God has been intricately involved in everything that takes place on this Globe … from the most enormous world-scale events to the finest details of our lives.
At the beginning of John’s gospel, Jesus is introduced with these words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.”
Jesus is the Living Word of God who was with God in the beginning. Words are personal expressions, and there is no greater living expression of God than His Son Jesus. When He came into this world as a man, and people met Him in person, they were face-to-face with ‘God’s Word made flesh’. Those with eyes to see, ears to hear and hearts open to receive Him, recognised who He was … though none of them could explain it. Some who encountered Jesus – hearing Him preach or seeing Him perform miracles – tried to figure Him out, to get some sort of handle on who and what He was. Yet to everybody – both those who ‘got it’ and those who didn’t – He was “the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us”.
But that was just the start. After Jesus left this world and returned to His Father, He sent His Spirit to fill His followers who were still in this world. To their amazement, those ordinary people discovered that they were now empowered by the same Spirit who was in Jesus. That happened in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, and among those who were filled with God’s Spirit was Peter. Coming out of the house in which they had all been praying, Peter addressed a crowd of thousands, who had gathered to see what was causing all the commotion inside.
What was the magic in what Peter said? No magic. What was the brilliance in what he said? No brilliance. What was it that had such a dramatic effect upon so many? Peter was now a man filled with God’s Spirit, and the power behind his words was not due to his eloquence or any natural ability. It was the expression of God pouring out of his innermost being. So powerful was it that 3,000 of those who heard him “were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’”
Jesus said that rivers of living water would flow from those who believe in Him. Christians have often likened themselves to a pipe. The water goes in at one end and comes out the other. They humbly declare themselves to be no more than channels for God to flow through. But that’s not how Jesus put it. He did not say God’s Spirit would flow through us. He said the Spirit would pour out from within us like rivers of living water!
When you are filled with God's Spirit, rather than being a pipe or a channel you become a source – because the Source of Life Himself dwells within you! Don't even try to get your mind around how God, whom the entire Universe cannot contain, is able to fill you with Himself. Believe it … because it’s true!
Jesus promised to send His Spirit – and He did. Ever since then, if you believe in Jesus and open your heart to Him, not only do you receive His forgiveness and are born-again. You are also one of those God wants to fill with His Spirit, giving you the power to express Him through your life. You can with confidence come to God with an open heart and say to Him: “Fill me, fill me, fill me, and keep on filling me – so that your rivers of living water will flow out from the depths of my being!”
Of themselves, such things could seem like fanciful ideas or concepts, designed to inspire and motivate. But I tell you absolutely, from my deep personal experience, they are totally true and vividly real.
When I was 17 and first came to know Jesus, I took it seriously and was totally sincere about wanting to live for God. My life had changed, and I knew I had been born-again. Soon after that night at the Billy Graham Crusade, I was followed up by an Anglican church near my home where I got to know others who shared a similar experience. That was the beginning of my ‘Christian life’.
One thing that hadn’t changed was that I was still an apprentice aircraft mechanic, working at our main airport among guys who were not, it must be said, a particularly godly bunch. One day I had been working with them, then that night I went to hear Billy Graham preach. I thought I was there out of sheer curiosity but to my surprise I came face-to-face with Jesus. The men I had worked with that day were the same ones I was back at work with the next day. They hadn't changed. But I had … and I knew it. I really wanted to live for God and no longer had any desire to be the person I used to be. Not because I'd had a change of mind. Not because I’d decided to turn over a new leaf. But because I was changed on the inside in a way I didn't even understand. I couldn't explain it to anybody, but I knew it was real.
During that early part of this new life, I experienced being amongst people who became more to me than the friends I was used to. They knew Jesus in the same way I had come to know Him, and much of our shared lives and activities were centred on our relationship with Him. Yet, at the same time, I also felt limited – even powerless – to live for God and express Him in my life as I really wanted to.
One night, I shared these feelings with my minister and a few others, who had stayed behind after a midweek Bible Study. Then my minister began to tell me about receiving God’s power by being ‘baptised in the Holy Spirit’. Another thing I had never before heard of! He explained it in the simplest terms, concluding with: “Tonight when you go home, get down by your bedside and ask God to fill you with His Spirit. Then don't wait until you feel something before you start thanking Him for giving you His Spirit – because thanking Him is letting Him know that you believe He has answered your prayer.”
So this naïve 17-year-old new Christian went home and did just that. I asked, and God filled me with His Spirit. Not tangibly at first, in fact I felt nothing, but no sooner had I begun to thank Him, than I physically experienced the Holy Spirit like a searing heat that passed right through my body. When I later told my minister about that, he quoted the words of John the Baptist: “He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire”.
That experience was life-changing – not because I got to know Jesus better, but because ever since that night so long ago, His Spirit has enabled me to express Jesus through my life in all sorts of ways that would otherwise have been impossible to me. But I first needed to learn a lesson!
Soon after my Holy Spirit baptism I was asked to lead the singing at a monthly ‘Film Night’ which the youth group ran in the church hall. I had never before done anything like that and, being shy by nature and feeling very inadequate, I flatly refused. Then my minister came up to me and said in no uncertain terms, “What are you going to do with the gift God has given you? Are you going to put it in your back pocket?” His words stung, because they were painfully true. Yes, I was still the same guy I had always been, with the same feelings of shyness and inadequacy. But I also knew God had equipped me to live beyond such limitations. Yet here I was, too scared to even lead the singing at a church movie night! Because of what God had done in my life, my feelings were a lie, my minister’s words were the truth … and I knew it. So, I led the singing.
That was a long, long time ago, but it was a lesson I never forgot. Like all God’s gifts, the infilling of God’s Spirit is intended to be an ongoing reality in our lives. Not an experience to talk about or look back on, but something to live in … and to live by.
Yet no experience with God can be a substitute for you living in faith, obedience and trust. Those three essentials to relationship with God come not from Him, but from you. Believing Him, obeying Him and trusting Him, are yours to do by your choice. Whatever you choose to do with your life will always be in your hands. God cannot, and He will not, compel you to surrender your life to Him. Yet if you do, and if you ask God to make your life an expression of Him in this world, He will surely do it.
But how He does it is then up to Him. Living for God is not a role-play – though it seems many Christians treat it as one. They learn the jargon, they get to know the game and how to play it – what rules to keep, what rules you can bend … and what you can get away with. They learn how to impress others … particularly those they want to think well of them. It’s what Jesus called hypocrisy, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the wonderful life ‘in the Spirit’ that I’m writing about here.
This is all about you belonging to God on His terms – surrendering your life to Him and asking Him to fill you with His Spirit so that you can be the unique expression of God He created you to be.
Which brings us to the term ‘Christian Life’ – often used by Christians but rarely by anybody else – which implies that there are many different kinds of life, one of them being the Christian life. Yet the truth is, there is only one life for which we were all created: the life that comes from God, the source of all life.
When God created Adam in the Garden of Eden, He “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being”.That perfect man, created by God out of the dust of the ground, had no life until God breathed His own life into him. That’s the only life for which Adam was made … and it is the only life for which you were made!
We are all Adam's children. Yes, he turned his back on God and brought sin and destruction on the whole human race, but Jesus has undone all that. When you come to Jesus, you don't just change your lifestyle and live some sort of ‘Christian life’. You are transformed into the person God always intended you to be … the person Adam was at the beginning … the person Jesus was when He walked this earth as a man. You are made in God’s image with the intention that you will not only know Him but that He will also fill your life. And, not only that, but that you will be a source of life with rivers of living water flowing out of you!
And it will cost you everything … just like it did Jesus.
Those who believe in Jesus, who have experienced God’s forgiveness and know what it is to be born-again, are rightly thankful that He was so single-hearted in all He said and did. From the depth of His being Jesus was motivated by just one desire – a desire that caused Him to be focused, not on Himself as the Eternal Son of God, who He surely was, but on Himself as ‘the son of man’ who had been born into this world. The one who had laid aside every advantage of being God and “made Himself nothing”so as to identify with you in every way … making it possible for you, in turn, to identify with Him in every way.
At a tremendous cost, through horrific suffering, Jesus took all your sins upon Himself. He paid the full penalty in your place so that you in turn could receive God’s gift of eternal life – not when you get to Heaven, but from the very moment you come to Him right here on earth. That eternal life is the life of God, which Jesus spoke about when He said He had come that we might have life in abundance.
By its very nature, eternal life is unlimited life. You might say: “Sure, but we all live in a world full of limitations, we have our human limitations, and we live in bodies beset with limitations”. True, but that only serves to make it all the more miraculous that God’s gift of eternal life really does begin right here, and then seamlessly continues beyond this life into Eternity!
But beware of seeing this wonderful gift from God to you, as something for you to indulge in for your own benefit! Treat it like that, and you will come dangerously close to the slippery slope that leads to Adam’s sin!
Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth and the life”. He did not say “I know…”. He did not say “I will tell you about…”. He said: “Iam…”. That's the Jesus who has come to dwell within you. The Jesus who has not only given you life, but the Jesus who is your life. And He alone is the only life for which you and every person ever born was created.
We all have biological life and share it in common with every living thing in God’s Creation. Their life came from God, but only Adam received the life of God. Only then did he become a living soul, in God’s own image. That’s what set him apart from every other creature, and it should be what sets us apart. For we alone, out of all God’s Creation, are partakers of His life! That is God’s desire, it is our destiny and, because of that, any other life, so-called, is no life at all … it is merely existence.
The only life for which you were created is the life God breathed into Adam, the life that was embodied in Jesus, and the life He freely gives to all who receive Him. When that life is in you and is expressed through you, you then become a source of life to others.
When Jesus said that rivers of living water would flow out of your innermost being, He was not talking about spurts or trickles. Not even one river. He said rivers would flow out of those who have His Spirit within them! Can you picture that? Jesus was not exaggerating. He spoke the truth about what takes place when we are filled with God’s Spirit and His life flows out from us!
You must never limit what God can do in your own life or how He expresses Himself through you. But beware of implementing your own ideas and plans. Belonging to God means placing yourself under His lordship and submitting all that you are and all that you have to Him. It means giving up your right to yourself so that you can say: “I give myself to you unconditionally for your glory alone. Express your life through Me in any way you wish, so that you alone may be seen and known through me.”
Having done that, you can then leave the outworking of it all to God, while you simply keep responding to Him in love, faith and obedience.