SEVEN HINDERANCES TO INTIMACY WITH GOD
Brad Bailey - February 13, 1994
This morning we’re going to continue looking at the process of ENJOYING INTIMACY WITH GOD.
We’ve looked at how Jesus taught us to find and structure those “special places” of prayer.
I’ve had some wonderful times of solitude with God… but I also asked God, why is it hard sometimes… what in me can hinder the great privilege of experiencing intimacy with you?
- I want to share some of the things He’s shown me, that many authors point out as well, & that I have known are in some of your hearts as well.
- My purpose is not to address these in depth, but to describe them as a means to help you identify them as you search your own heart
- This morning offers something to place in your prayer journal for the future, but even now to consider in terms of your relationship with God.
- How appropriate that we will conclude with Communion… the very invitation to intimacy.
- (1 Cor. 11:28) “A person ought to examine themselves before they eat of the Bread and drink of the cup
- God’s inviting us to an opportunity to confess and clear the way for receiving his life… and walking in intimacy through prayer.
1. POOR SELF-IMAGE (related to feelings of shame & unworthiness)
- Some of you are not sure you should hear from God
- All of us from time to time can feel this way
- Though I’ve generally been a “go-for-it risk-taker” for most of my life…
o God showed me this week how the feelings of unworthiness had come into play at that point when literally overnight I was placed in the position of senior pastor of this church. Besides having been married & assuming new expectations as a husband that same week, now 100’s of eyes… and expectations upon me.
- It accentuated the choice we all face in our doubts… GET REAL GOOD… OR GET REAL WITH GOD.
- The Question we often ask is “Am I good enough?” and it gets us into trouble every time…
o Overwork, timid with God & in our spiritual authority
o As foolish as the young man who had just received his plumbers license… taken on trip to Niagara Falls… and said…‘I can’t fix it’
- Jesus came to say that the question of ‘Good enough’ is a fine 1st question, easily answered, but the question he answers is ARE YOU WANTED AND GOOD FOR GOD?
- It’s the painfully wonderful transition of honesty that authentic prayer will bring us to
Sometimes I find coming and being STILL before God is killing me, …And that’s the whole point; then I can join in God’s goodness in me… and join the Psalmist:
O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. Such knowledge is too wonderful from me, too lofty for me to attain. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. Psalm 139:1-2, 6, 13-14
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the MOST HOLY PLACE by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Hebrews 10:19-22
2. UNEXERCISED BELIEF… an apathy that can creep into our faith; marked by PRAYERLESSNESS
- We can treat faith more as a noun than as a verb.
- We become more comfortable believing in God than believing God
- our lives are bound by a domination of the visible
o We end up with a posture that doesn’t need to depend on God.
o Like dating several people so there’s a back-up.
- NO ONE CAN HURT YOU… NO ONE CAN HELP YOU
- As a result, our hearts grow unresponsive to what God has to say.
“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.” James 1:22-25
- As Jack Nicholson said so intently in ‘A Few Good Men’ “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!”
…though God doesn’t communicate it in quite that way, He does remind us that we must decide if we really want what He has to say before we should expect Him to speak.
- If we want to hear from God, how do we handle what He’s already told us? Are we hungry, aggressive listeners… or indifferent, passive?
3. SELF-CENTEREDNESS
- That is… WE ONLY WANT GOD TO HEAR US
- We set the agenda for the relationship
- Come to God like Santa Claus with our list or as C.S. Lewis said, like a cosmic ‘vending machine’
James 4:3 “When you ask you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”
- Intimacy is not our agenda imposed on another, but “two hearts beating as one;” His pleasures becoming ours.
- Totally appropriate to ask God for provision, but not if we’re refusing to hear God.
- Proverbs 21:13 “If a person shuts their ears to the cry of the poor, they too will cry out and not be answered.”
- The answer to our self-centeredness is to OPEN OUR HEARTS TO GOD’S HEART
Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this. Psalm 37:4-5
- Asking God not only FOR things, but ABOUT things
- Prayer is more LINING UP than LISTING
“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.” – John 5:14
Similarly
4. UNRESOLVED RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHERS
For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” Matt. 6:14-15
- Anger & lack of reconciliation in our hearts can block our very means of relationship with God.
- The very work of God is an invasion of mercy into a world under the power of condemnation.
- If I condemn others, I’m identifying with the enemy & refusing God’s work.
- God knows that as we hold onto the wrong of others as unforgivable, we can’t at the same time expect to enter His mercy & forgiveness.
- Usually we’re projecting our own shame, and therefore refusing our very need for God’s mercy on ourselves.
Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift. Matthew 5:23-24
5. UNCONFESSED SIN
- I don’t think at any time we’re going to be aware of all our unconscious wrongs, BUT AT ANY GIVEN TIME THERE ARE CERTAIN CONVICTIONS GOD IS LIKELY TRYING TO MAKE US CONSCIOUS OF…
- He’s putting His finger on it & we’re not dealing with it.
- In this case, there’s ambivalence in our desire to meet with God; at one level, we’re not sure we want to hear from him. [APPROACH—AVOID]
- Like with a friendship or marriage, when you both know there’s an issue between you that needs to be discussed… UNTIL IT DOES, IT’S AWKWARD.
- And so it is with God, WE SHOULDN’T EXPECT TO MOVE WITH GOD, TO WALK IN AGREEMENT WHEN DISAGREEMENT IS AT HAND.
- God wants to deal with that first… and we must OVERCOME OUR AVOIDANCE,
6. REBELLIOUS INDEPENDENCE
- I’m using this term to describe what God has shown me about some of us who have been in relationship with Him for some time.
- Somewhere along the way we found our faith too much conditioned & defined by the system, whether our family or church or fellowship circle, and so we began to individuate out from that.
- But healthy rebellious individuating left some unhealthy independence.
- There’s a pride & arrogance that lingers as we now have “our terms” for the Christian life
- My experience in high school and into the start of college… saw the hypocrisy… and used it to justify my own sin.
- God doesn’t mind wrestling with those in the ring, but armchair coaches don’t move him.
Some of you need to sort this out, to separate your issues of submission to past authority with your submission to God… to submit some of YOUR TERMS.
7. UNRESOLVED DISAPPOINTMENT
• Spoke of this before…
• Some of us have a past prayer that God didn’t seem to respond to. We went through, and may still be going through, real suffering… not sure where God was, or is in it… we’re avoidant of seeking him
• I don’t want to try to answer all the hard questions your heart knows all too well, but I do believe the table of communion we come to has something to offer.
• It brings the life of God who had to suffer in order to confront His creation
• The reminder that God couldn’t wipe away evil & suffering because it was part of us in our condition
• HE COULD ONLY ENTER IT & OPEN UP THE DOOR TO THE OTHER SIDE
- Invite you to look at him hanging on the cross, hear his words ‘Father forgive them, they know not what they do’ LET THE SPIRIT HE SENT ENFOLD YOU.
- There you may discover what the apostle Paul did, having entreated God 3 times… “MY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT FOR YOU”
