Drawing Near

Drawing Near

 

Sometimes God speaks to us in unconventional ways, doesn’t He?  Sometimes He uses repetition to get our attention.  And sometimes, He uses unlikely people we would never have expected to speak to us through.  Just as it sometimes happens to many of us, this happened to me very recently.

            It was the night of April 12th this past spring.  I was among the group of young adults that had gathered in the dark sanctuary of our church for the young adult worship service, and as it began, one of my brothers in the Lord stepped up to the microphone on the stage lit by colored lights and shared a word he felt the Lord had put on his heart to speak.  A verse that he said the Lord had kept bringing him to.  “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you (Jas 4:8),” he read from his iPhone.  “God doesn’t break His promises,” he reminded us.  Therefore, if we would only set aside everything, seek His face in worship, and draw near to Him, then God would draw near to us just as in His Word He said He would, he encouraged all of us gathered there that night.  If we could only get our eyes off of ourselves and stop asking God for things: for Him to rain down His presence, for Him to come fill us up, etc. and understand that worship is about bringing glory to Him first.  That worship isn’t about us; that it’s about the Lord and bringing praise to Him.  All we have to do is just get out of the way our circumstances and our selfishness- stop making worship about us and our needs and wants- and all of the things that battle for our attention and distract us.  My church brother encouraged us that night to set aside all of the distractions and just to worship God for Who He is.  To simply draw near to Him, enter into His presence, and feel Him draw near to us.

            The Lord used that word to speak to me and a few months later, as the words of that brother returned to me one Sunday morning, I realized that God had used them to shift my perspective and therefore my approach to worship.  I found myself now entering into the Lord’s presence on a different and deeper level.

            The months then passed until it was August 21st.  That evening, as my parents and I entered our church sanctuary for the Wednesday night Bible study, our pastor’s voice reached my ears as the service had already begun.  “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you,” our pastor quoted.  He went on to encourage the small group of believers there with what I recognized as the same message of the word that was shared on that night back in April.

            In the weeks that followed, our pastor shared that word several times more both on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings.  It was not that church brother’s word; God had simply spoken the same message to our pastor as He had to that brother.  On Wednesday nights, we began singing a song by one of my favorite music groups- Draw Near by Bethel Music.  This verse, “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you,” was strangely beginning to cross my path more and more.

            It was this past Saturday night when I sat, my back against my bed, and read a mini devotional someone had posted on Instagram.  They had mentioned this particular phrase of this particular verse.  Though it was late at night and I should’ve been crawling into bed, I suddenly felt a peculiar urge to look for similar Scripture passages and began searching in the Bible concordance apps on my iPod.  Next I began flipping through all of my Bibles, reading footnotes and verses referenced to in the page margins.  I was beginning to sense something strange about this verse.

            The following morning, our pastor once again mentioned the verse, urging us to draw near to God in our worship.  That afternoon, I found again that someone else had posted on their Instagram the verse that was becoming so familiar to me.

            I was more convinced then than ever that God was trying to speak to me through that verse.  Every time I encountered it, something stirred within me, telling me its message was for me.  But that one phrase that kept haunting me was so simple.  “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”  Its truth seemed so elementary, but yet, I kept sensing that there was something deeper to it.  That there was something more to that verse that God wanted to speak to me, but that I just wasn’t getting.

            So I resolved to dig deeper into that verse until I discovered what God wanted to teach me through it.  The next day, I logged onto the internet and skimmed commentary after commentary on the verse.  Nothing.  I asked the opinion of someone close to me, what her thoughts were on the verse and what it meant to her personally, hoping maybe it would shed some light on the verse from a different angle.  Again, nothing.  She interpreted it exactly for what it said: if we draw near to God, He will draw near to us.  Exactly what was the only thing I kept seeing in the verse.

            But the gnawing persisted.  There was something more to that Scripture than I understood.  It was eerie how it continued to pop up all over the place.  But again, its simplicity puzzled me.  I kept sensing that maybe what God was trying to tell me had to do with that verse, yes, but not only the verse.  The words of my church brother and later the same words my pastor had frequently repeated continued to ring in my ears.  But I had already learned that lesson and applied it to my worship life.  What more in that word was there for me to gain?  I broadened my view and began considering the entire passage of Scripture in which the verse was found.  Still nothing.  I kept being drawn only to that one simple sentence: “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”

            I began to grow discouraged and doubt.  Maybe I had been off base.  Maybe I had been wrong.  Maybe I was making more of it all than there really was.  Maybe I was looking for something that didn’t exist.  I began to feel a little crazy.  Had I gone a little off the deep end this time?  Could I really trust my own judgment?  Maybe it hadn’t been the Holy Spirit’s stirring in me that I had discerned after all.  I began to doubt whether I should’ve even told anyone.  What if I never found the answer?  What if there was no answer to be found?  The repetition of the verse, the stirring in my spirit, my strange sensing…  It all seemed a little too supernatural to be real.  Like something that only happens in movies or books.  Did God really work like that?

So I stopped searching; I stopped asking God for an answer.  As many of us do, I had begun doubting the stirring in my spirit when the results were taking longer than I had expected, when I didn’t see any product.  In truth, when God takes longer than we anticipated to work out a situation, to reveal His reasons and His plans, to give us answers, we have a tendency to grow discouraged, question ourselves and if it was really God speaking and leading us after all, and we give up on waiting.  We allow the Enemy to plant doubts, discouragements, and disappointments, to whisper little lies into our ears.  When my search came back fruitless, I chose to forget about it and abandon the idea.

            Yesterday night however, my parents and I were again at our church for the Wednesday night Bible study when something happened.  The musicians began playing a relatively older worship song- The Heart of Worship by Matt Redman, something very uncommon for them to do.  I will confess, as a modern eighteen-year-old, I was initially a little disappointed by their choice of an “old” song.  An old, outdated, worn-out song it seemed.

            But as I began focusing for the first time on the words of that song I was singing, I found myself again reminded of the familiar word first given that night back in April.  That night that seemed so long ago then.  And I finally understood.  It finally clicked; I got it.  I finally understood what God had been trying to teach me through that word and through that verse.  “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”

            Yes, I had learned to set aside all of my troubles and simply worship God for Who He is and all that He does.  I had learned that my ability to worship is not contingent on my situation or my feelings, but that it is a choice I have to make to tell myself that I will worship God despite what might be going on in my life or despite how I feel at the moment.  I had learned to draw near to God in worship.

            But now, God was telling me that that wasn’t enough anymore.  It was time now to take my worship experience outside of the bounds of music.  To learn to worship Him not only in church with our incredible worship band, not only when I have worship music playing in my bedroom, not only when I’m playing worship songs on my guitar, but to worship Him with every minute of my every day.  And to do that, would mean laying aside all of my troubles, all of the distractions, everything that worries me, every anxious thought.  To stop dwelling on the imperfections of this season, to stop fretting about how all of my passions and dreams are going to fit together, about getting my life together and figuring out my future.  To lay aside all of the pressures that overwhelm me and bring me mental and emotional stress, and to simply live to praise God for Who He is and all that He does.  To set my sights on drawing near to Him and keeping that relationship as it should be and growing ever closer, in fact.  To make drawing nearer to Him my goal.  “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God- this is your spiritual act of worship.”  (Ro 12:1)  “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.  They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’  You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.”  (Mk 7:6-8)  Clearly then, true worship should come from the heart and therefore, it should not be dependent on the presence or absence of music.  Our true spiritual act of worshipping God should be found in every minute of our life.  When we leave the church, when we turn off the worship music, when we lay down our guitar, it should not be the end of our worship.  Worship should be ongoing, never-ceasing in our lives.

            As I stood there in that church sanctuary, I heard a few minutes later, another one of my brothers in Christ speak up.  He shared that he felt God telling our group there not to give up on the dreams that He had placed in us.  He reminded us that all of God’s promises are “yes” and “amen.”  “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ.  And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God.”  (2Co 1:20)  I was reminded again of one statement that had strangely stood out to me and stuck with me all those months since April: “God doesn’t break His promises.”  For me, this word confirmed and sealed the lesson God had just revealed to me.  It was Him saying don’t worry about how everything’s going to turn out, how everything’s going to fit together.  That’s for Me to handle.  Set your focus entirely on Me, worship Me every day with every aspect of your life, draw closer to Me, and I will work out the details of everything else when you focus on what really matters.  Draw near to Me, and I will teach you.  And I will open up doors that no man can shut.   

            So this morning, I took the first step in learning to apply this to my life.  When I awoke, I crawled out from beneath the comforter of my bed, knelt down at my bedside, and gave God my day.  I chose to worship God with every minute of my time.  Everything in my life still existed as it had the night before, the anxious thoughts still arose in my mind, but I made the conscious decision to dwell not on the pressures and the problems, but to dwell on the greatness of God and to worship Him for Who He is and all He does in my life.  To dwell on His faithfulness and His love that always sees me through every hard season.  To dwell on His infinite wisdom and sovereignty that works all things for good and knows what’s best.  “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”  (Col 3:2)  And doing so, I had a day far better than I have had in a long time.

            So I thank God for using people in our lives to speak to us through.  I thank Him for my pastor, for my older brother in the Lord, and for my younger brother in Him, who, unbeknownst to them, He used them to help teach me this lesson.  I thank Him for taking our simple acts of obedience and our steps of faith and using them to produce a return in ways that we may never even realize, in ways that we could never imagine.  Never underestimate what God can do when you surrender everything, obey, and offer what you have to bring for His glory and His service.  So the boy with the five loaves and two fish learned this lesson.  (Jn 6:8-13) 

            I encourage you, readers, to join me in learning to apply this lesson to our lives.  “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”  (Jas 4:8)  Such a seemingly simple verse.  But let us learn to draw near to God in worship not only when the music is present, when we feel like it, and when all is going well, but let us learn to draw near to God in worship with every minute of our lives, with everything we say and do and think.  To choose to worship Him unconditionally.  When you understand and accept this into your act of worship, it will transform your life and your relationship with the Lord.  Be blessed, friends.

 

“Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Fathers seeks.  God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” John 4:23&24

 

 

Photo courtesy: www.123rf.com

 

~We’ve all heard of the phrase “pulling on her/ his heartstrings,” but heart-chords?  I was struggling to decide what to name my blog.  I wanted it to be a name that was both creative and meaningful.  As I pondered, my gaze fell upon my acoustic guitar where it stands in my bedroom, and the Lord reminded me that our hearts- our lives- are instruments.  They are constantly in song, but what melody our heart plays is each of our own decisions.  They can play a melody for praise or for entertainment.  A musician selects his songs according to his audience.  So do we.  Whether our audience is the world or the Lord, our song will be different.  This blog is designed to first, increase my awareness in finding God and His guidance in my every day and second, to share the music lessons He teaches me in tuning my heart to learn the chords of praise He longs to play on my heart-instrument.  Music is a powerful tool.  Use it for His glory.  “He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.  Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.” Psalm 40:3