God is NOW!

I have a friend at my Bible school that was born with one leg shorter than the other. One of my other classmates prayed for her, and while he prayed, her leg grew out instantly.

There is a word that has been in my heart for a while now, and it is God is NOW! There are many of you who have turned sour on God because of your past experiences with religion. You were shown an imperfect view of him, and you have judged him because some actions and teachings of those who claim to be his followers, and have not given him a second chance.

I discovered these three categories that people in the church sometimes fall into that hurts the image of God. (As a disclaimer, I know that some are going to miss understand at first, don’t worry, I know about Rev 1:4,8, just hang with me..) Do not feel condemned by these! Just about all of us, including myself, have spent time in each one of these areas. My point is not to make anyone feel bad, but to point out some traps that we can fall into that will cause us to miss God when he is right in front of us.

The first is a group that worships God in the past. They take a move of God from the past, and use it to create a formula, so they can try to continually replicate the good ol days. They think that all change is of the devil, and God couldn’t possible do things in a new way.

Understand that God will never change the Bible or its message, which would be wrong change. But there is a right kind of change that God uses to reach different people groups.

The problem is this first group creates man-made traditions, boundaries and doctrines that are meant to “protect” the anointing, but actually end up replacing the Holy Spirits leadership. There are many denominations today that began as Spirit led/filled groups, but because they tried to put God in the small box of their understanding, they are now dry and dying.

The second group worships God of the future. This group is always putting God in a far off, unrelatable place that will happen someday. They think that all we are trying to do now is survive. We have to suffer, grope for hope, be miserable and fearful, but one day it will all be okay. We will all understand in the great by and by!

This group keeps praying that God would hurry up and return because they are convinced that the evil present in the world is overpowering the church. They feel hopeless and fearful when they see the world events because they don’t understand who lives on the inside of them.

The third group is kind of a counterfeit, but they don’t know it. They claim to believe that God is not only in the past and future, but he is present now, but the fruit of their lives and thoughts do not show it. They will pray for you to be healed, but there is no shock or disappointment when nothing happens.

This third group is like a vacuum cleaner salesmen who comes and throws dirt on your floor, and says “this vacuum will sweep that up perfectly” but then walks away and doesn’t demonstrate it. When sickness, financial problems, or any other hardship comes against them they react exactly how the rest of the world reacts, with fear, stress and worry.

This may be the most harmful group. While the people who look to the past, and the people who look to the future do not do much to prove that God exists, they also don’t do much to disprove it. This third group that claims God does still do miracles now, but they cannot demonstrate it, confirming the doubts of the world that Christians are just crazy people hoping in fantasies. I have to confess this has been my story for much of my life, but I am no longer satisfied with it.

God is God of the now! Yes, he existed and did great things in the past, and there is much value in reviewing those things. Yes, he is in the future, and he is preparing a glorious dwelling for those who will accept him. But you can’t have a relationship with a memory from your past, or a story about what is going to happen in the future.

Those things are important, but they are abstract, and you cannot connect with them on a daily level. If you were lost and dying of thirst in a desert, would the water someone gave you two years ago, or the water someone would have given you two years in the future help you now? 

Jesus set the example of what the Christian life is suppose to look like. He, as the express image of the Father (Heb 1:3), took great concern for people’s needs, not just in the future, but in the present. He calmed their storms, healed all their diseases, fed them, and embraced them. Those who walked with him he instructed daily, giving insight into the heart of the father.

His example was always meant to be the “normal Christian life.” It is a life of demonstrating the power and love of God, setting people free of bondage, sickness, and oppression. He reminded of the past. He spoke about the future. But he brought the (present) presence of God where ever he went. In fact, he said the works he did in the present confirmed what he said about the future was true (John 10:37,38).

Jesus said in John 14 that he would not leave us as orphans. An orphan belonged to someone in the past, and may belong to someone in the future, but they are currently called orphans because they have no one to care for them now. The word orphan in the Greek means: parentless, comfortless, fatherless. Jesus said that he would pray to the father and he would send a helper (his Holy Spirit) to abide with us. The word “abide” means: not to depart, to continue to be present, to be held, kept, continually.

This is God the Fathers heart for all mankind. He desires to be with you right now where you are. Psalms 46 says, God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble.

I thought it was funny it said a “very” present help, so I looked up the word very in Hebrew, and it means: exceedingly, abundantly, much, force. He is exceedingly, abundantly present for you. He isn’t hiding in the past and he isn’t just waiting for you in the future. He is present with you now.

There was a survey I heard recently that said that around eighty percent of people under around twenty five have never seen anything real in the church. (And we wonder why they are leaving so fast!) This is a terrible tragedy! For a long time I believed that it was better, and took more faith to believe in God without seeing any proof of his existence. Now I see that this mindset has become a wall that has kept people from seeking God they way he desires.

Aimee Semple McPherson, an amazing revivalist, grew up in a Christian home. But when she got older and realized that the miracles talked about in the Bible were not being demonstrated in the church in her day, she decided to become an atheist. She believed, either the entire Bible was true, or none of it was true.

Finally one night she said God, if there even is a God, reveal yourself to me. Do you know it takes more faith to pray a prayer like that than most churches demonstrate?

It takes much less faith to live with form without power (2 Tim 3:5) and just sweep every question about why God doesn’t heal or speak today under a rug of a man-made doctrine. It takes great faith to pursue something real from God that is more than just a story or an argument! I think God delighted in Aimee’s honest request. Not only did he revealed himself to her when she perused him, but he made her one of the greatest evangelist of all time.

So why do most churches not see manifestations of God’s presence? Why isn’t God confirming his word in churches they way he did in Mark 16:20? There are many reasons. But these three traps play a big part in occupying the church to keep them from asking the questions they need to be asking. I will give you hope that miracles are still happening in the world today. Since I have been at Bible school, there have been some amazing miracles here. God is rising up a generation that is no longer satisfied with the stories of past revivals.

Many of you have never really know God as God of the now. The good news is he is looking for people who will ask the honest question, “Where is God?” and then genuinely pursue the answer. One other thing to consider is that this cannot be a half hearted pursuit. Jeremiah 29:13 says, And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. You cannot add God to your list of god’s and expect him to benefit you. He wants your all of your heart, not just the scraps that are left over.

If you are tired of settling for just stories of God’s greatness, begin to study the life of Jesus and the apostles in Acts, who were the Biblical examples of what life should look like in the Kingdom that Jesus brought. Read books about past revivalist like God’s Generals by Robert Liardon, and study what revelations they received that led them into the miraculous.

Find people who are experiencing miracles and listen to what they have to say. Above all, don’t let your past experiences, and those of others, to become more authoritative to you than what God’s Word says.