Are You There, God?

One of the most common questions - and concerns - I encounter when discipling Christians is the question of what "walking with God" means, what it looks like. "You've come into relationship with God," the new believer is told; "God lives within you," they hear; "God wants you to know Him," they are taught. Okay. So? Where is He, then?, the new believer wonders. They don't feel God floating about in their innards; they don't experience God possessing them, as some are possessed by evil spirits; they don't get knocked down in the roadway, as the apostle Paul did, a divine, disembodied voice speaking to them from the ether. For a great many converts, nothing in particular, nothing overt or obvious, happens when they trust in Christ as Saviour and yield themselves to Him as Lord.

This can be very troubling to such converts because they expect that God, being a real Person, will interact with them much as the persons around them do. And so they wonder: Shouldn't a person in whom God dwells hear God, or feel Him physically in some way, or sense Him clearly in their mind and heart? Shouldn't there be some clear, tangible indication that God is there, an indication that one's physical senses can discern? God is, well, God, right? Shouldn't that mean that one's experience of Him is in proportion to who He is? Shouldn't God "blow our doors off" when He makes us His "temple"?

This doesn't seem an unreasonable expectation, to me.

But God, generally, doesn't behave this way when He comes to live within a person. He doesn't burst upon them after the manner of a demonic possession, wresting a person's will from them, perhaps throwing them to the ground, jerking them around, forcing them into emotional hysteria. There's not a single instance of such an event caused by God anywhere in all of the NT. No, instead, God approaches us with love - a gentle, patient, holy, peace-giving love. Jesus offered rest to those who would assume his yoke, not agitation and violence (Matthew 11:28-30); the fruit of the indwelling Spirit is inner stability and self-control, not wild ecstasy (Galatians 5:23; 2 Timothy 1:7); the life of a genuine child of God is marked by holiness, truth, grace and peace (Ephesians 5:9; John 14:17; Philippians 4:7; 2 Corinthians 1:3, Galatians 1:3, etc.) not regular sensual excitation.

Some Christians, unwilling to dive into the hyper-sensual "God experience" of some of their brethren, choose instead to show they are indwelt by God in the way that they live. The Bible describes in pretty exhaustive detail what "proper Christian living" is. And so, having a sort of "roadmap" of Christian living in Scripture, believers set out to create their version of it in their own lives. They don't feel God; they don't hear God; they have no experiential basis for thinking He's really there; but they tell themselves He must be, if they are willing to obey Him and live the life He commands His children to live.

It's fairly easy to superficially and falsely conform to Christian living and for reasons God absolutely rejects. The apostle Paul wrote of people in the Early Church in his time that were living this way: "They profess that they know God but in works they deny Him" (Titus 1:16), they "have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof" (2 Timothy 3:5). It was this very sort of person who was responsible for the death of Jesus. The Pharisees were all about doing "the right thing," about being obedient to God, about keeping the exterior of their "cup" clean while the inside remained full of reeking, foul, self-interest and sin. Paul wrote of them, and of the Jews generally, explaining:

Romans 10:2-3
2 ...they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.
3 For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.

For all of their careful, enthusiastic rule-keeping, for all of their apparent zealous living for God, the Pharisees were in constant rebellion toward God - "sons of hell," and a "brood of vipers," Jesus called them. This should hint, at least, at the danger and wrongness of relating with God on such a basis, of "experiencing God" by means of doing for Him rather than receiving from Him His doing in, and for, us. (Philippians 2:13; Philippians 1:6; 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24, etc.)

Our confidence in our salvation and of God's presence within is supposed to stand primarily on what He does for us. Scripture tells us that experiencing God is characterized, first and foremost, not by church-going, or praying, or Bible reading - by our religious activity - but by the work of the Holy Spirit within us. We experience God as we experience what the Spirit does in all who are genuinely born-again believers:

1.) Convicts of sin. (John 16:8)
2.) Teaches God's truth. (John 14:26; John 16:13; 1 Corinthians 2:10-14, etc.)
3.) Strengthens in times of trial and temptation. (Ephesians 3:16; Philippians 2:13;
Romans 8:13).
4.) Comforts in times of trouble. (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)
5.) Conforms the believer to the Person of Jesus Christ. (Romans 8:29; Ephesian 5:9;
Galatians 5:22-23)

It is in our experience of these things (and others, besides) that we are "led by the Spirit" (Romans 8:14); by means of these things the Spirit "bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God" (Romans 8:16). It is the Spirit's activity in us that establishes to us that we are truly born-again. All our spiritual living, then, is to be a by-product, a consequence, of His life and transforming work in us; we work out what He has first worked in by the Spirit. (Philippians 2:12-13)

So, when you consider the things the Bible tells us are the common experience of truly born-again, Spirit-indwelt, people, do you recognize them in your own life as a Christian? Or are you manufacturing a sensual counterfeit instead? Maybe you're working as hard as you can to show everybody - and yourself - that there is something real between you and God. What's the truth? Better to know now where you stand with God than to find out on Judgment Day that Jesus never knew you. (Matthew 7:21-23) Are you experiencing the life of the Spirit within you?

More to follow later.

Often, in conversation with fellow Christians, when I refer to the list given in Scripture of those things the Spirit does within a genuinely born-again believer, there is confusion. For example, what does "conviction" mean? When the Spirit convicts us of sin, does He just make us feel guilty? Is the Spirit's conviction basically the same as a pang of conscience? No, the difference between a merely guilty conscience and the conviction of the Spirit can be seen in the difference between the response of Adam and Eve to their sin against God and the way the Corinthian believers responded to sin in their community. When Adam and Eve sinned, what did they do? They hid away in the bushes, right? Their sense of guilt drove them to hide away from God, to conceal, to isolate (Genesis 3:8). When the Corinthian believers were confronted with their sin, and fell under the conviction of the Holy Spirit, what did they do? Here's Paul's description of their response:

2 Corinthians 7:9-11
9 I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance; for you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us.
10 For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.
11 For behold what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow, has produced in you: what vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what avenging of wrong! ...

Rather than hide away from God, rather than isolate from Him in shame and guilt, the Corinthian believers, indwelt by the Spirit, feeling his conviction, moved toward God, toward restoration of broken fellowship with Him. The Corinthians took zealous action to clear away their sin so that it would not hinder their communion with God. They drew near to God after the manner described by James in chapter 4 of his epistle:

James 4:7-10
7 Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.

Those to whom James wrote responded to the Spirit's conviction and drew near to God by cleansing their lives of sin (1 John 1:9) and repenting of the double-mindedness that produced it, in humility before God, grieving over their evil living. This is always the way to distinguish a mere guilty conscience from the conviction of the Spirit.

More to follow later.

How about the illuminating work of the Spirit to God's truth? What is meant by the Spirit teaching us divine truth? How does His teaching differ - if at all - from mere academic study of the Bible that anyone - believer or non-believer - can do?

Some believers assume the Spirit's teaching will produce mysterious, arcane - semi-nonsensical, even - thinking about spirituality. They also often seem to think that rational, logical strategies for Bible study will confound rather than complement the Spirit's illuminating work in one's heart and mind. As a result, all sorts of terrible twisting and contorting of God's word occurs, these "Spirit-only" students of God's word frequently wrenching a phrase, verse, or passage from its immediate context, adding and subtracting words and meanings to words or phrases, eisegetically - and dangerously - distorting Scripture in their search for some radical new "spiritual" insight no believer (or an exceeding few) has ever had before.

The Spirit's teaching is, for these believers anyway, far more...prosaic. Generally, what Scripture says, it means. No Scripture is of any "private interpretation," Peter wrote (2 Peter 1:20), or, in more modern translations, "a matter of one's own interpretation." After 2000 years, the word of God has been well-examined, great men and women of God shown its depths by the Spirit for two millenia. There is, then, no new, never-before-seen insight into Scripture a person today can expect to obtain. What the Spirit taught the faithful, studious, born-again believer two hundred years ago, or taught the same sort of believer 1500 years ago, he teaches to believers today.

What really marks the Spirit's teaching isn't so much the content of what he teaches but the effect of it upon a believer's life. When the Spirit is teaching, he doesn't just reveal God's truth but applies it to the life of the believer (2 Timothy 3:16-17; Psalms 119:9; Colossians 3:9-10). The Spirit's teaching changes the believer's thinking and living; his teaching doesn't simply inform. It is in this respect, primarily, that the work of the Spirit can be distinguished from common human investigation of biblical doctrine. The Spirit is not content just to give us divine data, but to use that data to make us all more and more like Jesus (Romans 8:29; 2 Corinthians 3:18).

Are you being taught and transformed by the Spirit? Or are you just accumulating information, puffed up by knowledge, rather than purified, and equipped, and guided by it to serve God in humility, purity, truth and love?

NBB said:

**Sigh**

Anyway, you can say you don't want to feel anything,

But:
If you enter the holy place you are going to experience something.
When God is close you are going to experience something.
When the Holy spirit fills you, you are going to experience something
If God gives you living waters, you are going to feel and experience something.

Click to expand...

Yes. I'm glad to know we agree - except on the assertion I "don't want to feel anything." I didn't write this in my OP (or following posts). Where are you getting this mistaken idea from?

friend of said:

Ok thanks

Click to expand...

You're welcome.

What does being strengthened by the Spirit look like in our daily living?

Perhaps more than any other area of walking with God, this one is the murkiest. Many Christians have this conception of being strengthened by the Spirit that separates the Spirit from the power he imparts to the believer. Imagine a child going to their parent for their weekly allowance, clamoring for the money they've been promised. Many Christians see being strengthened by the Spirit in this way. The power they receive from the Spirit is doled out them in "packets" of ability to resist temptation; the Spirit gives some power here and some power there, in response to the believer's pleading, giving them assistance to endure, to push down their natural impulses, to labor against their sinful inclinations. But the power of the Spirit always runs out and needs to be replenished. And it always has to be added to by the believer's own self-effort.

Is this what the Bible describes of what it is to be strengthened by the Holy Spirit in the face of trial and temptation? No. Not at all.

John 7:37-39
37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.
38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”
39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

"Rivers of living water"? This is what Jesus said the presence of the Spirit within a person would be like. Does this accord with what I've just described above of the bit-by-bit strengthening, of the dribs and drabs of power, many believers expect from the Holy Spirit? No! He is not a drip, or trickle, or rivulet of living water but is to us as rivers (plural) of living water.

Jesus also described the Spirit as the rivers of living water, not as merely the giver of them. This is extremely important: The Spirit is himself the "river of living water" that flows into and out of our hearts. Among other things, this means that, to have more of his power, we must have more of him.

This is, though, not an entirely accurate way of speaking. We have at the moment of salvation all of the Spirit we can possess. He is, after all, a Person, not a material, a gas or force, we can obtain in varying measure. The Spirit comes to us, then, not in piecemeal fashion, but entirely, as any person does when they interact with us face-to-face. When I interact with my wife, I don't do so having left an arm or my legs in another room; I don't slowly collect pieces of myself, adding them to my body, as my wife and I enjoy greater and greater fellowship with one another. That's a bizarre, laughable idea - and just as much so when thinking of the Person of the Spirit who dwells within us. We don't, over time, accumulate more of him. When the Spirit fills and strengthens a believer, he isn't imparting more of himself to them. No, instead, he is expanding in his control over their life, moving more fully into all areas of their living, shaping and transforming them according to his will and way.

It is by way of this expansion of control that the Spirit strengthens those in whom he dwells. Because he is himself the power he offers to us, we shouldn't expect to be the ones in control of his power; for to be in control of the Spirit's power is, obviously, to be in control of the Spirit. Again, there is no division, no separation, between the two things. Of course, this confounds the thinking of many believers who believe the Spirit gives them soon-exhausted portions of power to utilize more or less as they see fit (but for righteous ends, naturally). They don't realize when they pray for strength, they are actually praying for a greater measure of Spirit-control.

This is a problem because these same believers, while keen to eradicate certain sins about which they are feeling powerfully guilty and/or frustrated, aren't at all interested in God's entire control of them. They want His power, sure, but not Him. And so, when their prayers for divine power from such an independent, rebellious life aren't answered, they assume its up to them to make whatever changes in themselves they can. The results are never good, in the long term. Self can't ever produce true godliness; it is only capable of more selfishness. Only God can make us godly.

Another problem many believers have with their conception of the Spirit's strengthening is their expectation that such strengthening will always manifest in a feeling, a sensation, of power, of a sudden sense of freedom from the grip of a temptation. There might even be some tingles, or pulses of warmth, in concert with an overwhelming impulse to obey God. In this, there is an attempt to put spiritual experience on a physical level and to make the Spirit's strengthening an overt, coercive thing, similar to demonic possession (though it is never thought of in this way, consciously).

Love, the bedrock of our relationship with God, can't, of course, be coerced. At every turn, the Spirit acts upon us in response to our submission to him, which is, essentially, our conscious and constant agreement to his transformation of us. There is, then, no possession of a believer by the Spirit after the rough, compelling manner of the demonic. His control and strengthening of the believer is far more profound, subtle and natural. Rather than strengthening us by wresting us around to his way, the Spirit demonstrates his love and power to us in a quiet, almost imperceptible reshaping of our desires, thinking and behaviour. He's not flashy; he's not overt; he's not looking to excite our fleshly senses. But his change is deep and wide, always marked by an enlarged knowledge of, and joy and rest in, God. (Galatians 5:22-23; Ephesians 5:9; Matthew 11:28-30)

In contrast, the typical approach to spiritual strengthening I encounter among believers focuses on the mere corralling of desire, the suppression rather than transformation and/or replacement of one's impulses, an uneasy, often collapsing, "truce" with sin and Self, rather than consistent, growing victory over, and freedom from, them. This mere stuffing-down of sin and Self, the constant, laborious pushing back against the sinful, selfish things one really wants to do, is not the way the Spirit works in us. This is how a believer can distinguish Self-effort, self-"strengthening," from the strengthening of the Spirit: The Spirit transforms us effortlessly and profoundly; we strain and struggle - and fail often - when we attempt to change ourselves.

The Vine and the branch metaphor (John 15:4-5) Jesus used pictures the believer's growth and change very well. The "sap" of the Vine (the Holy Spirit) flows into the branch, providing to it all that it requires to develop and bear fruit (Titus 3:5; Romans 8:9-13; 1 John 4:13). A branch does not produce itself; it does not strain and struggle to be a branch; it just remains connected to the Vine and is nourished and transformed by the "sap" that gives it life and strength, growing and producing fruit entirely naturally. And so, we read in Scripture verses/passages like the following:

Romans 8:13
13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

Not: by the Spirit's power, but by the Spirit himself, by his work, not ours. We put to death the deeds of the body as a reflection, a by-product, of his transformation of us.

2 Corinthians 3:17-18
17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

It is the Spirit who transforms us into the image and glory of the Lord. Beholding the glory of the Lord, we receive, remain in, and reflect the Spirit's work; we don't produce it.

One last note: We enter into this transformation by way of submission (James 4:7), surrender (Romans 12:1), humbly yielding to God (1 Peter 5:6; Romans 6:13-22). There is no other way.