The tangible presence of God

Hey there, beloved… Question for you: Why are you a Christian? What good does it do you? What do you hope to get out of having a relationship with God? These are critical questions. And while there may not be right or wrong answers, what we feel and believe about these things determines everything about how and why we live out our life with God. More on this in Deeper Thoughts below…


BUT first…a few quick updates…

• EASTER is coming!!! Plan to join us and bring some family or friends to the most important celebration of the year… the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ! We will have TWO identical 65-minute worship services Easter Morning, April 5, at 9:00 and 10:30 a.m. The Gospel will be clearly and sensitively presented for your unchurched loved ones, and we will all be challenged to experience the resurrected life that Jesus has for us!
  • Kids Connect will be offered at 10:30 a.m. ONLY, but kids are welcome with us in the main service either hour. Nursery is available at 9:00 and 10:30 a.m.
    
    
    
  • AND… join us for an Easter Egg hunt at 11:45 a.m.… age-appropriate hunts for toddlers, kids, and teens! Everyone come watch the fun!
  
  
  
• Teens: No youth group this Sunday. It is our privilege and joy as the Youth Team to pray for our students. Please let us know any specific prayer needs!
  
  
  
• Ladies: Mark your calendars for our next event, Saturday, April 25 at 9:30 – 11:30 a.m. for breakfast and a prayer walk at Morven Park in Leesburg. Click here for more info and to RSVP!
  
  
  
• Are you interested in being baptized? Join us for an orientation to baptism NEXT Sunday, March 29, right after church. For those who decide they would like to be baptized, we will schedule their specific baptism for a Sunday in the days ahead!
  
  
  
• Help us support students in Sterling! We are collecting food, clothing, and personal supplies for under-resourced students at Park View High School and Sterling Middle School. Click here to download the list of needs and bring to church on Sunday!
  
  
  
• NEW Daily Six content THIS WEEK!! Join us for six minutes each day, Monday through Friday, as we continue our character-by-character study of how to find the heart of God… click here for our Daily Six webpage to find new content on Monday morning, OR… click here to sign up for our daily email reminders (if you’ve not already done so!).
  
  
  

OK… that’s it for today for you email skimmers and those who hate long emails…


BUT…


Some Deeper Thoughts


My little 12-year-old self was terrified of our house burning down in the middle of the night.


We had a neighbor’s home catch fire down the street, and you can image how that effected my immature little brain.


I had just recently been introduced to the idea that God exists by my buddy Chris Foley who lived across the street. In between wintertime sledding down his steep backyard hill and summertime playing soldiers in the woods, Chris explained to me who Jesus was and how to be born again.


I saw an excellent deal in what he offered. First, I could be sure to not go to hell when I died, which held an eerily similar fear to my housefire phobia. And secondly, I could ask God every night before I went to sleep that He’d prevent our home from burning down.


That’s all kind of cute, isn’t it?


As I matured a bit, my newfound pivot from atheist to Christian broadened only slightly. When I finally gave into accepting Jesus and truly being born again at the age of 14, the assurance of heaven became more real, and the prayer requests evolved to things 14-year-old boys are concerned with—namely God’s favor with the young ladies I was growing fond of. It would be another couple of years before I realized Christianity was far bigger and much more meaningful that just a ticket out of hell and a God to whom I could appeal for a few key things I wanted.


May I ask you a poignant question?


While I trust that most of our readers have a greater natural maturity than pre-teen little Chris, have you matured past your faith only being about your eternal security and your hope in God’s blessings and provisions for your wants and needs?


This question is not to shame you at all. It is to offer you something amazingly better.


I think a great number of Christians haven’t been told that God offers something SO much more meaningful and life-transforming than access to heaven and an audience to our prayer requests. Certainly, many believers have never experienced anything more.


How do I know this?


I listen to how we pray.


Again… please… feel no scorn in this. But stop and consider: When you pray, do you simply and only ask God for things? They may indeed be quite important things. We pray for a loved one to get over their physical ailments (this is our most common prayer request, and almost exclusively what we pray for in group settings). We might pray for an unemployed friend to get a job. Or we might ask God to comfort someone we know who just lost a loved one. These are good things to pray for, and the Bible tells us to do so.


But I almost never hear someone pray out loud for an internal, spiritual transformation. It’s super-rare to be in a small group where somebody boldly and persistently asks God for His tangible presence to fill their hearts. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been with a brother or sister who fell on their faces before God in a group setting to plead with the Lord for His healing of their souls rather than the healing of their bodies. It’s almost unheard of to see someone crying out to God in deep, heartfelt repentance. People kneeling at the altar at church on a Sunday just about never happens.


It didn’t used to be this way.


Wind the clock back just 30 years ago or so. At least in the Fairfax County church I grew up in, there was a deep and passionate appeal to God at the altar every Sunday where I would see dozens of adults kneeling around prayer benches at the front of our sanctuary. Loud voices could be heard as they cried out to God for His mercy over the hardness of their hearts. Believers would weep for the presence of the Lord to wash over them. The response to a sermon from God’s Word was bold and hungry as believers came forward to offer God their whole hearts in prayer that He would help them align with this biblical truth.


In short, these believers were believers for much more than receiving heaven and help. They hungered for the tangible presence of God, where an abundant life of joy and a clean and holy conscience was the outcome of their faith. They wanted to see God in their spirit. They wanted to hear God’s voice in the inner quietness of their soul. They cared far more to find God’s heart than to get God’s help.


King David longed for this same thing. And as He broke through his own hardness of heart, he found the tangible presence of God which was filled with crazy levels of joy.


Would you like this kind of breakthrough? Do you know how to get it? This Sunday, I want to explore this from a rather unlikely text of scripture. Dig around 2 Samuel 6 and 1 Chronicles 15 for a bit before Sunday… it’s where we were all week on The Daily Six.


Then, let’s meet! Sunday, 10:00 a.m. sharp… Don’t be late… bring your Bible and a pen!!


Much love to you all…


Chris Eads
Mt. Hope Pastor
Friend
[email protected]