What Can Be Better Than a Dream Chocolate Bar?
View all responsesWhat can be better than intimately savoring a dream chocolate bar? Heart-proximity to God!
Without heart-proximity to God, Christianity’s just a religious fling. (Matthew 15:8) Ministry that doesn’t lead to heart-proximity to God is only empty words. (James 1:22) When your heart is truly close to God, your life will radiate His presence and demonstrate His character everywhere you go. (Galatians 5:22-23)
Heart-proximity with God is incompatible with intentional wrongdoing and unrepented sin. (Romans 6:23) Our rebellion pulls our heart away from God. God’s forgiveness draws our heart near to Him. (Mark 1:15) The first step to being truly forgiven for your sin is deep, gut-level honesty with yourself and with God that leads you to real remorse, radical repentance, and full surrender to God’s presence and mercy through Christ. (Acts 3:19)
Heart-proximity with God is the fruit produced by continually surrendering to the promptings and revelations of the Holy Spirit — those directly spoken to your heart and those revealed to you through Scripture. To overflow with the power and presence of the Spirit (John 7:37-39) and be led by the Spirit (Romans 8:15) we must follow and obey God’s desires while denying our own. (Luke 9:23)
Wrongdoing will wreck your heart-proximity with God. Even the smallest sin makes you want to hide your heart from Him. Repentance, forgiveness, and humility will cause your heart to unfold like a flower before Him.
The Bible talks about the fruit of the Spirit, not about the formalities of the Spirit. Christianity is about godly character that is produced by heart-proximity with God. It’s not about religious rituals.
Heart-to-heart communication with God isn’t tied to a cell tower. It’s tied to the Cross. Train the meditation of your heart (Psalm 19:14) to follow Christ’s train of thought and to stay always on His train tracks. If you want to see more, God has much more for you to see.
Monuments are built to honor God from a distance, but faith directly encounters and interacts with God in the presence moment. We need to know about the God of the heavens, but we need to experience, surrender to, and obey the God who reveals Himself directly to human hearts today.
An ancient steeple
And an ancient tree.
Which one was made
By the God
Who sets people free?
