Sit with me, there's plenty of room

Illustrate here: Sit with me video https://vimeo.com/139639707

Learning and engaging our target goal this month: I am asking specific people to sit with me at church because God has positioned me to play a role in bringing them to Jesus.

I have found that in my walk with Christ there is a rhythm, a flow that I've enjoyed yet there are days I feel as if the heavens are completely closed off to me. Experiencing trials, frustrations, fears, and adversities. Battles and confusion seem to overpower and drown out the purpose and mission of my life. Just wandering around instead of advancing forward.

In those times I've learned that it's an opportunity to draw closer to God, if I'll allow myself.

Exodus 19 Exodus 24-34

1.      Level 1. I believe there are four levels of intimacy with God.

1.      You have to understand something as a believer, if we are not in vital connection and relationship with Him, every thing will be out of focus.

2.      But when our relationship with Him is close, alive and sincere, you will then produce in every area and aspect of your life.

1.      On the flip side if you're relationship with God is in need of resuscitation or sporadic then I believe that you are living well under His intended purposes for you.

3.      Level 1 all the children of Israel had gathered at the foot of the mountain and God commanded that barriers be put up.

1.      So from a distance they could look up and see this cloud that represented the presence of God.

1.      I want you to notice the people on level 1 the furthest place from bullseye, bullseye being God's very presence.

1.      Now look they weren't worshipping other God's, they weren't worshipping idols, statues, or the Devil they were worshipping God but doing so from a great distance.

4.      The thing I want you to see about this group is that they kind of had this attitude I've got all of God that I want to have.

1.      They were saying: I'm saved, there's no question I'm going to heaven, but I'm just going to stay behind this barrier.

1.      I'll come to church when I can, I'll give when I can, I'll serve when I can, I'll tell people I'm a Christian if it comes up.

2.      Every once in a while I'll read the bible and sometimes I'll pray but the bottom line is I'm happy where I am I'm just satisfied right here.

1.      Some people are just content to watch what God is doing in someone else's life mightily, their satisfied and pacified with their current level.

1.      A vast majority choose to stay, dwell, and operate in this level.

2.      Level 2.

1.      Exodus 24 there was a group out of the millions and out of the multitudes that gathered at the foot of that mountain.

2.      Yet out of that group was Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and 70 leaders of the people of God that crossed over that barrier, they said:

1.      We're not content to just know God we know there's more and were going to pursue more.

2.      They said we're going to qualify, sanctify and purify our selves and they started moving up.

1.      They were going to where there's more of God.

1.      Level 1 saw the cloud at a distance, the 74 others climbed up and they saw God's feet and under His feet a sapphire pavement of stone.

1.      Comprehend and connect to the fact that: You can be in His presence or see His presence from a distance.

1.      Say this with me: I'm as close to God as I want to be.

3.      They're all looking at the same thing but from different levels and perspectives.

1.      They're all worshipping God but some are getting more out of it than others because they decided to climb up higher, pay a higher price of purity, and press in further.

4.      The scripture said that even though they saw God's feet and saw a glimpse of eternity there was still no real transformation.

1.      As a matter of fact they went back down the mountain and worshipped the golden calf just a few days later.

3.      Level 3. Watch this: there was another level that was even higher.

1.      For the bible said, Moses and his assistant Joshua ascended up the mountain.

1.      Here, the presence of God is covering that mountain like a devouring fire.

2.      Question: Why did Joshua the assistant of Moses get to climb higher than the 70 elders?

1.      Then I remembered that the bible said:

Exodus 33:8 "Whenever Moses went out to the Tent of Meeting, all the people would get up and stand in the entrances of their own tents. They would all watch Moses until he disappeared inside. 9 As he went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and hover at its entrance while the LORD spoke with Moses. 10 When the people saw the cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, they would stand and bow down in front of their own tents. 11 Inside the Tent of Meeting, the LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Afterward Moses would return to the camp, but the young man who assisted him, Joshua son of Nun, would remain behind in the Tent of Meeting."

2.      He departed not from the tabernacle.

3.      The reasons that Joshua became the leader that would take Moses place; Joshua climbed up higher, he paid a deeper price of purity and pressed in further than the multitudes, the 70 Elders and even Aaron the High Priest.

1.      The reason that he got to go further was that he would not depart from the presence of God.

2.      Now they were serving around 2 million people.

1.      He had duties and errands he had to tend to do, he had to execute plans and strategies.

2.      He had to provide for his family, take care of his children, he had all kinds of stuff he had pressing for his time.

1.      But there was something about him that said when others may be able to just see God from their tent or stay content to worship Him at the base of the mountain, yet turn back to living the same very way; Joshua refused.

1.      Something, inside Joshua was so passionate, so hungry, so driven, that he desired more of God.

1.      I can see this, every spare moment after Joshua had finished what he was doing he would run back to that tabernacle, where he felt God's presence.

2.      He got involved, he indulged, and he got inspired by the presence of God. 

3.      Level 3 is when you get so hungry after God that you get vitally connected to the House of God, the purposes of God, the cause of Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of His people.

1.      You can't expect some one to put a rope around your neck and drag you higher.

1.      Dragging you up into His presence, dragging you up into life change, dragging you up into serving, giving, commitment and pursuit.

1.      It's a choice that you must make.

2.      You have to say I need Him desperately, I will not operate and function without Him, I refuse to.

1.      At some point it must get in your heart that what's going on in that church is affecting my marriage, my children, my relationships, my job, and my life's purpose.

4.      Listen even when you get fully committed and faithful to go to the next levels in God, if you're not careful it can all become routine and lip service.

1.      I refuse to function on a yesterdays, last years, last miracles mindset.

1.      Church can just become this religious thing that you do instead of this lifestyle, relationship, and encounter that you live out through Jesus Christ.

1.      I want more than to watch and experience Him from a distance.

5.      I refuse to be cold, calloused, and calculated in my relationship to Christ.

1.      Church work alone is not what God desires, it's relationship, it's intimacy, it's communing with God's greatest creation, people.

4.      Level 4.

1.      Then there was Moses who said Joshua you're going to have to stay here.

1.      Moses moved into that bullseye place in God, he moved up that mountain all by himself into a place of intimacy with God scripture records, "And God spoke to him, face to face." Exodus 33:11a

2.      What could be more intimate, friend to friend, face to face!

1.      Could there be any greater experience?

1.      The way we live our lives is either a declaration of our faith in Jesus Christ or a declaration of our unbelief.

2.      There's more, there's a higher level, there's a face to face experience for all of us to encounter and engage.

1.      He moved from the distanced place, climbing higher, paying the price, pressing deeper into an experience of absolute and complete life alteration.

5.      Finally I saw the levels in the New Testament.

1.      He called the 70, commissioned them to go preach in His name, but He chose the 12.

1.      He now has 12 that He's eating with, talking with, living with and they're being discipled by Him.

1.      They're like we're allowing this Christianity thing to infect our existence.

1.      Then out of that 12 Jesus pulls out three, Peter, James and John and on four separate occasions He separated from the 70, from the 12, into the 3.

1.      The same three at Jairus' house, the Mount of Transfiguration, on the Mount of Olives, and in the Garden of Gethsemane.

1.      There was something about those three that was passionate, and that qualified them to move to a higher level.

2.      He showed them things that others could not see or experience.

2.      But watch here: Out of that three, was one who hit the bullseye,

John 13:23-25 "John leaned his head upon the chest of Jesus."

3.      What does that mean?

1.      That He could hear the very heartbeat of God.

1.      What's your heart beating for Jesus?

2.      What are you wanting to do in my life, my family, in my children Jesus?

3.      What are you wanting to do with my future?

4.      What are you wanting to do in this city?

1.      I don't have any more years or even moments to waste.

1.      It is said of John what is not said of any other disciple, "John, the disciple who Jesus loved." John 13:23

4.      It is a well known fact that some Christians seem to experience a much closer relationship with God than others.

1.      God are you saying you love some, more than others?

1.      God spoke to me and said, "it is not that I loved them more but that he loved Me more than they loved Me!"

2.      So both Scripture and experience teach that it is we, not God, who determines our degree of intimacy.

1.      He has given us His Word will you align your self to it?

2.      He has given us His Son will you receive that sacrifice of forgiveness and embrace the gift of eternal life?

3.      He has given us prayer/worship will you communicate with Him?

4.      He's given us serving/giving/generosity will you engage?

3.      You can know Him face to face, you can know Him friend to friend or you can watch, witness, and wonder from a distance.

1.      Question: Had you lived in those times, in which level, if you were to take honest and unbiased inventory would you be found? 

1.      With the crowd behind barriers?

2.      A little higher with the seventy?

3.      Having paid a deeper price with the two or the three?

4.      Or would you have been found pressed in on the chest of Jesus as close as you could possibly get like the one?

6.      I love God's House, I love His church, I don't depart from it even when I'm not here it's on my heart, deeply intrenched in my spirt.

1.      I wake up or am kept up thinking of you, praying for you, praying for this city, calling out to God on it's behalf, but I'm not where I want to be.

1.      Jesus is the groom and we the church are the bride and if the bride and the groom aren't intimate, there will be no children.

2.      Dad, mom, single adult if there is no intimacy between you and Jesus your children will not be coming up with a Godly heritage.

1.      That's what scripture says God desires from His people, Godly offspring from our union.

3.      We must hit the bullseye because if I as a parent, and we as a church do not engage intimacy with God that means the next generation will never know what it means to be saved, baptized in water following Christ's example.

1.      They'll never experience a supernatural healing, gathering together to lay hands on the discouraged, depressed or demonic and watch deliverance occur.

2.      They'll never understand the experience of being baptized in the Holy Spirit, where the fire of God is falling because the people get so hungry for God that nothing and I mean nothing will pacify or satisfy but Him.

2.      God is no respecter of persons, your relationship with Him is the result of your own choice.

1.      I pray that you would sit with me, there is plenty of room.

1.      Climb higher, pay the price, press in and refuse to be cheated there is another level in Christ.

Jesus' chest is still open to any and all who are willing to come.


Will you come today?