An Invitation into God's Presence

I grew up believing that it was the things that I didn’t do that made me right with God. Don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t skip church, don’t go to movies, don’t spend your money on selfish things, don’t neglect reading the Bible, don’t have friends that aren’t Christian, don’t get too close to the “world” and other even more extreme don’ts were the measure we were taught in order to claim the benefits of right standing with God.

Not true.

Looking back on those days, I believe the theology I was introduced to was based more on denial and self righteousness than in the life that Jesus actually came to offer.

In Luke, chapter 18, Jesus is talking with a young man who has been a very good boy growing up. He was now asking Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. He doesn’t want to get this wrong. He tells Jesus that he has fulfilled the requirements of the Ten Commandments. He has done all the right things and not done any of the wrong things. I believe he was expecting Jesus to confirm his impeccable behavior as the only thing that he needed. Jesus’ reply is interesting. He says that there is still one more thing – he has to sell all that he has and come and follow Him. Leave all that you are counting on as measurements of goodness and right living and come and be in My presence. This was difficult for him to understand. All we know about the outcome is that he went away sorrowful because he had a lot of riches and a lot of good things going for him.

When God asked His people to be holy as He is holy in the Old Testament, and Jesus reiterates it in the New Testament, we have to realize that He is inviting us into his presence. It is not a call to clean up our act as if we could achieve it because it is a commandment. It doesn’t matter how good we’ve been or how religious we are. It doesn’t matter what we have not done or what we have done. Holiness cannot be achieved – it must be imparted. And we cannot be holy apart from the presence of God.

When God introduced Himself to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus chapter 3, He told Moses to take off his shoes for the place he stood on was holy ground. Now, that dirt wasn’t any different from the dirt that was on Moses’ left or right, but what was different was that God’s presence was there – that is what made that ground holy. It was still dirt but the manifest presence of God made it a holy place.

The same goes for us.

We’re created from the dust of the ground, we live this life and then when we die we go back to the ground (Ecclesiastes 3:20). We are just dirt, but in God’s presence, we become holy. It’s not because it is a cleaner dirt, or a more refined dirt, but because God’s presence is there in that dirt, or us, that makes us holy.

I know this makes us uncomfortable in some ways because we want to believe that there is something we have changed in order to become holy. There is. It’s intrinsic. The "outward behaviors" change as we "grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." (2 Peter 3:18) In John 20:22, Jesus breathes on His disciples and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” That's intrinsic. And, John 7:37-38 “Anyone who is thirsty may come to Me! Anyone who believes in Me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his heart.’” That's outward.

The presence of God is a gift. It cannot be earned by what we do or don’t do but we do have the invitation!