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God has always called us.

written by Michael McBane

Perhaps one of the biggest battles that has been fought over our ability to comprehend and accept the love of God is this, that He has always called out to us, He has sought us. God desires to be with us, God desires to speak with us, He desires to walk with us. He is not abstract in His relationship with us. He wants us to know Him and to understand Him in all and through all the senses that He created in us. Our hearing, our taste, our ability to smell. The scriptures speak even of us being the fragrance of God therefore we would have to have a proximity that allows the transfer of such a fragrance. We have all been with someone and left them to have the scent of their perfume linger.He wants us to know the real the truth from the masquerade that many are coming with that proclaim Him as He is not but entice with the sparkles of wooing light that dims quickly.

Consider that so many tell us that we can think we hear God to much, that only the scriptures speak to us all else is delusion. Some are fearful of hearing the Lord yet at the same time desire to. Some believe that only a trained professional hears God, that they should not even read the scriptures for that is the clergies duty. How diluting. Clergy has such a clinging sound. When a pastor is set up above the people in such a way that it separates or causes the people to look up to them rather then to Christ there is error it may be minor or large but it is error. These are the systematic barriers that must be deliberately taken down so that the people are forced to seek the Lord and gather the manna of possibility contained in walking with the Lord intimately. This piece I am writing is not a instructional how we can be with God or how we can hear the voice of God. It is a short encouragement to reinforce the reality that God has to be relational with us.

To be deliberate in His love, the Father in agreement with His Son determined to crush anything including our sin by giving His greatest love His Son to the cross to be crushed and twisted and defiled on our behalf. Jesus then took away the keys to death and then heard the voice of His Father and ours call Him forth from death to life. He arose leaving the scent of sin and death behind in the depth of hell. He recaptured life and gave it to mankind. A highway to the heart of the Father with all its glory was opened to us. Yet the enemy fights through every means possible to stop our purposed relationship to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He is blatant and he is distracting. Let us be ever mindful that the enemy is determined to separate us from the love of God. We then must set our minds apart to absorb the mind of Christ which is the love of God to us. If we allow this to be our filter we will begin to strain the sediment that battles our relationship and we will then be walking testaments of the love of God.

Should we approach the Lord with fear and trembling? Yes we must see His holiness and know His righteousness. We should have a built in sense of honor when we walk into His presence. We must understand the reality of, “this is Holy ground I must walk carefully.” At the same time we should understand that we are His children or that you are His child. You, one to one no distractions completely with Him heart to heart, hug to hug. No one is going to edge in on your time with the Lord. God wants this to go deep way beyond the head into the core of who you are. So much so that it is directional in how you walk out your daily life. This is your security. Until this begins to seep deep within you merely believe you do not have a relationship with Christ, you are not a follower.

Some will say that God will test us but we have misunderstood this as some type of warped way to tear at our humanity. God created us. When He tests us it is to build our relationship with HIm so that we know Him as we had not. In a way He is seeking to build us eternally for our relationship will never end and in the ways that we know Him as He is we are secured and all else blows away. The battles we are in are comprehended completely different. When we are tested and we see them from such a renewed perspective we can turn in situations and say or know that we know that is God or say I am sorry that is not the way of God and depart.

I have had seasons of extreme testing and truly I have come to know the Lord in ways that I can not articulate readily but I know Him differently then some. I am humble for in this my voice is not boisterous quite the opposite and I have gained a comfort here. I can feel a wisdom emerge from within at times that I would not have know unless I had been graced to walk through the fires of His love. I  know that who I am is attached to an eternal thread that I am tethered to and I am gaining a currency of love.

Let me clarify I am not passively compliant. Do I understand much of what has come our way? No.I recognize the characteristics of much that has gone sour and I am conflicted at times for I recognize the potential of some things but I trust that God is far above all of this and He will adjust much for we have set our faces to merge with Him in all things. And here is the good news I and our family know Him as we may not have or at least as readily.

So allow me to set some incomplete directional insights on how the Lord calls us from the beginning of all time.

Let us go to Genesis 3:8 and 10, “ And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”

Here we see that man recognizes that God engages with the senses, they heard God walking. What distracted them? They heard the Lord walking searching for them. They heard the Lord God call them by name. I offer that the trees represent the emerging wisdom of a fallen man. They were hiding amongst the deception of a wisdom offered by the enemy of our souls an enemy that seeks to divided the communion of God and man. This is the same consistency of wisdom that the enemy sought to engage Christ with as he sought to tempt him in his testing in the wilderness. satan offered what seemed like ultimate power, riches and insight but Christ would not separate from the love of God and His purpose.

Abraham was a total relational man, he was tested and all of his tests were meant to allow Abraham to know God. He was being adjusted in where he had misunderstood God. He was going out and he was going out not knowing where he was going. 

God spoke to Joseph in dreams as a very young man so much so that they formed who he was. His confidence angered and brought even his family into jealous rage towards him because he was hearing the Lord speak to him. He trusted God’s voice so that he offered the wisdom of His hearing and was rejected but in time, God’s time the reality of God speaking saved a nation. But the testing was to insure that Joseph really knew the ways of God not just the voice of Him speaking. The testing that came to Joseph formed Him not only in wisdom and discernment but the compassion and love of God were also clearly being given to him. His testing allowed a divine exchange.

Consider the poetic language of Isaiah. To write like this one must know the source of your inspiration. Isaiah was fully engaged to hear and feel and taste God.

Consider that the eyes of the Lord are searching for just one, “The eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.” 2 Chronicles 16:9.

And now I ask did the disciples come to Jesus? No He spent the night asking the Father who have you chosen today to walk with me? Who should I call out from among them so that they might know us. I say us because Jesus was clear, He came to reveal His Father to us. I say also that Jesus in calling your name did not do this lightly, for the Father has asked Him to do so.

Jesus called them all one by one. Come follow Me. And they dropped everything immediately and followed Him.

This insight they heard and followed and dropped everything is the missing link in the equation of who we are not today as a collective community of followers.

If we go through the scriptures  in the gospels we see that there are those who want to follow but cannot because the cannot let go of what entangles them. 

I ask us, do we know how earnestly God calls out to us? If so do we see how we might hold dear to much that does not give us the liberty He offers? Come. follow hear the voice of the Lord without obstruction.