Learning, yearning to follow

Learning, yearning to follow

written by Michael McBane

Some have said, I want to be a carrier of God's presence. Sounds admirable, actually weighty if not fearful? From my perspective it is a desire that God has planted in us to draw us towards His heart. We are changed in His presence. If we are really in His presence certain aspects of life cannot remain. Here we have opportunity to realize the dimensions of a continuum of divine exchange as the great mystery within us is given the liberty to expand.

I felt the Lord told me in the late 80's that the calling on my life was to be a facilitator of His presence. He hinted at the transformation that would overflow from this place when I was told this. This potential had nothing to do with anything I would do except to be with Him. But He also made it clear I had no idea what that meant and that the years to come would allow me to begin to walk in this. On occasion I have stumbled into the activation of the wonder of this transformation. It was as if the edge of His garment draped over the place I was occupying.

A leader once told me that what I was told concerning my calling was not a calling after he asked what God had told me my calling was. Funny, how preconceived we can be at times. I was not moved and simply knew that I could honor what this ministry was doing but not find the continuation of the path that God had offered me therein.

I have seen that as we grow in our relationship to the Lord we understand at times how our hearing accommodates the language we can accept at that time. It also can be formed around our particular culture or desires as we do not have our understanding or minds renewed in such a way that purges us of us. The traffic of our communities that we measure our standards by has not received it identity from allowing the presence of God to carry them. 

What is the true invitation that sits before us? Within the context of this question and what I have shared thus far I offer this. Instead of wanting to be carriers of God’s presence we should allow His presence to carry us.

To allow His presence to carry us is a paradigm shift. In fact I think I can safely say it is really a place few of been. If some step up with bravado and say that is not true, I will give them grace. We touch the Lord but do we allow Him to touch us? It is not that we do not want this aspect of living it is that we have been so tuned to thinking we can do it that we cannot easily adjust our mindsets. What will constitute lasting change in and among us. It is this. When we go from glory to glory, from hope to hope and refuse to package it as some type of experience that we can gather around or sale to expand our ministries, excusing this as expanding God’s Kingdom. When we stop selling the Lord with hype and trust Him. Truly most desire to at least find the opportunity to find the weight of a corporate presence that we have been often graced with in gatherings. But observation of multiple decades reveals that we then ask God to follow us. To adapt to our rules. If He comes in a particular way we box it and attempt to reproduce it exactly the same way. Listen to the tone of these words, we go from glory to glory, hope to hope. We follow Him. We gain life here. We drink freely here. Anything less and we short sell the vast frontier of God’s expansive love. We equate life from standards that are less then finding purpose and value in the love that God gives to us and allows us in turn to be released in the pleasure of loving Him.

Let us not judge the weight of God by our experience alone. It is the stillness of God, the unknown and the quite that so often paint the canvass of our deeper engagement. When we are forced because of our culture to attempt to make God make noise or do something spectacular we step around Him mistaking or misplacing the wealth of tangible possibility.

On several occasions I have been brought to a place where the Lord simply asks me to sit with Him. I have and then I have turned to Him and asked what do you want me to do? He has turned to me each time with the same answer. Saying, “Just be with Me”.

When I have mused upon this I often am shown a picture of myself doting in a garden pruning flowers. Simple and unprovocative. Does not seem like this could be found under the heading of transforming leaders or communities does it? But God is a mystery that we rarely consider from His vantage.

Unfortunately I have not grasped the finality of these words. Because I wrestle within a culture that sets a completely different model before us and it is relentless in its pursuit of diversion. We must have the courage to be firm in the things that God has so gently asked of us. These things He usually does not bring in an obtrusive way, He merely sits them before us, perhaps over and over. We tend to divert to the things that externalize life.

Everything I have done or will do can be contained within the subjection I have to that  answer Jesus gave to me. “Just be with Me”.

I think most of what we do and have done must be redefined as it concerns weaving it within a public face with the Lord. Though everything we do should have that subjection.  

So do we want to allow God’s presence to carry us?

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