It's Ok....Just Move Closer

I am new to this whole Blogging thing and  I am admittedly nervous as you see:

I am what you might refer to as a Baby Christian.  Recently returned church and to Christianity.  

They say the wages of sin is Death and that death comes by our separation from fellowship with our holy father. Thanks to the sacrifice of his son Jesus, who died on the cross for OUR sins, coming back into the family of my heavenly father has been a true blessing. But it took me some time to finally figure it all out.

I remember at first, people asking me what it was like.  What did it feel like coming back to God through Jesus Christ? It was hard for me to come up with a description. They would talk about hearing testimonies of some folks who heard god speak to them and his wise words guided them, so amazing. I remember hearing about some people, how they were in church one day and they felt this ENERGY rush through them, this pouring in of the Holy Spirit into their hearts…… what a glorious feeling that must be. But for me…yeah..…not so much.  I personally have never heard the voice of God, and I have yet to experience that overtaking of the Holy Spirit. 

Since the Original sin, in the garden of Eden All god ever wanted was his family back.  He longs to have a relationship with us.  He doesn’t just want us to encounter him in a podcast, or in a church pew, or even in this message.  He wants us to live in Habitual fellowship with Him, he wants to love his children. And when I came back to Christianity THAT is what I wanted that is what I craved.  And so I turned to the bible, and to the church where I read of all the amazing stories of the things Jesus did for others in his ministry and of the things he would teach the masses about how to live. I heard the Amazing testimony of some of my congregation of their transformations and I was excited!!!  But was there something I was missing….I wasn’t getting those warm and fuzzies everyone was talking about, was I broken……was I just not getting it.

I mean I am a baby Christian right…..HOW do I do this.  

I know what the bible stories are saying, but what does this Look like, I mean, I am in the real world right? So, I followed some advice the pastor had given one Sunday, I turned to the scripture and began to pray and ask god to show me what I need to do. It was not long after that, I found myself reading the book of James, essentially A letter written to the 12 tribes of God’s chosen people scattered around the world after the fall of Jerusalem by the biological  brother of Jesus. In this book, is where it all started to make sense:

James Chapter  4 verse 7

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Yes I see that but HOW…….

And as I read on is where it hit me, James Tells us starting in Verse 8

Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

Come NEAR to God? .. You mean ….Move closer?….is it REALLY that simple…. And if it is……what does that look like?

• Move closer……….. You know when we feel a certain way about someone because of something we have experienced in the past, maybe we feel like they are not like us……..Maybe …..We choose let that go and give them a shot.
• Move Closer………… When we just feel the need to say something we KNOW we will regret……Stop…..and don’t say it.
• Move Closer ………. That person we KNOW we need to forgive, that person who hurt us and has caused us so much grief….we forgive them.
• Move closer………. All those thing we beat ourselves up about, all the stuff we throw in our way (those self-fulfilling prophecies)….. we realize we can’t continue this and we unburden our hearts and bring those things to God

MOVE CLOSER……..  Jesus makes it abundantly clear what this looks like in John 13:34-35 when he offers this to his disciples at the last supper:

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

You don’t hear god’s voice in your ear?  You don’t get that warm and fuzzy we talked about?  It is OK: 

Ephesians 2:4-5 tells us:

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.

We may not all get that spiritual experience, but we ALL get to return to a relationship with our heavenly father, It is a gift to all of us, EVERYONE, thanks to Jesus who died for OUR sins so that we might be brought back to fellowship with God. We just need to claim it.

Come near to God ……  Just….Move Closer…….and he WILL come near to YOU.