#152 The Presence Centered Life (4 - An Unbroken Relationship)

God desires an unbroken, daily, personal relationship with us, but we must cooperate. Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening. The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and reports. Hey, well, welcome to the OneCry podcast. I'm Kyle Reno, back with Bill Eliff here on the other side.

And we are humbled to have a few minutes of your time to just let the Lord stir our heart for prayer, revival, awakening, really all centered around the presence of God. So I know y'all started a series a couple of weeks ago, you and Jordan, Bill, really about that. And we did on the essential presence. Good to have you back, my friend. And to be with you, I feel like, you know, I had the A team in there with Jordan, but I kind of bring it in the B string now.

But it makes you more dependent on the Lord, bro. It just makes it. Well, it does. It makes me.

Upon Jesus. There's so much in me that makes me dependent on Jesus. I don't need you to have to need that. Ditto. But, you know, Kyle, I don't think I could be more excited about a series that we're doing and of conversations here about the essential presence of God, because everything, everything really flows from his presence. I've had a thought about this. I'm going to ask you a question to get us going here.

If you could think back just to all of human history, and you could spend a day with one or two people, and you'd spend all day with them, who would you pick? I don't know. I'm just throwing that on you. All right. Okay. Okay. Well, I mean, I got thoughts biblically around that, but I'm going to be real with you and go the sports way. All right. Don't say, you're not going to say Saban, please. Are you? No. I won't say saving now, but I would say instead of that, for the sake of listeners

that are not Alabama fans, it wouldn't be saving. It'd probably be Paul Bear Bryant. Oh, yeah. Just sit down with him. I'd love to have that conversation together because, you know, and you do know this, that Bear Bryant and I were born in the same little railroad town in South Arkansas, Fort Ice, Arkansas, where he really wrestled a bear. There's a plaque where he wrestled a traveling company that brought in a bear. I know. I mean, just imagine.

If that conversation ever happens, I'll make sure you're there. Okay. Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. Who would be yours? Who would you spend the night with? You know, Moses. Yeah. Trump carded me. I just, yeah, I'd go spiritual. But, I mean, you just think about it. I've thought about this a good bit. You know, you just think about David. David, man, just spending a day with David who wrote the Psalms. Or I was thinking about in the New Testament, you know, Paul, but Paul's a little intense.

Maybe John, just think about the apostle who leaned on Jesus' breast, the apostle who Jesus loved. What a day. And just think how beneficial that would be. And then think about this. And I want our listeners to think about this. What if I told you you could do that? Would it be beneficial to you? Would one day would that person be beneficial? Of course, the answer would be you would never be the same. You would remember it the rest of your life. Here's the follow up question,

Kyle. What if I told you you could spend a day with God? Just God, all of his wisdom, all of his understanding. He knows the answer to every question. He has a solution to every problem. And of course, you know where I'm going is we can't, you know, we can do that. And not only can we do it, but God wants us to do that. And that's what we're going to talk about here for just a few minutes.

I want us to, if you have a Bible where you don't do this if you're in the car, but if you're at home and you can pull out your Bible to Exodus 32 and 33, there's an incredible passage about the presence of God. Now, to understand this, though, I've got to go back. And I've got to go back to the beginning of Exodus. Exodus, and you remember that the children of Israel were in bondage in Egypt, and it was horrible, the worst kind of slavery you could ever possibly imagine.

And they cried out to the Lord, and God heard their cry and said, I'm going to come down and take you out. And in chapter 12, He prepared a man, of course, Moses, and they start this pilgrimage out. Now, from chapter 12 to chapter 20, the giving of the Ten Commandments, is about a three-month period. In fact, scholars think it was probably April, May, June, somewhere around that time of the year that they're traveling.

And so much happens, but it's just in three months. but in those three months, Just think about this. They were delivered from 400 years of bondage, and this was probably a million and a half to six million people. They had direction every day. I mean, all they had to do was follow the fire, pillar of fire, or the cloud. And they never got up any morning and said, what are we going to do today? Where do we go?

They always knew. I mean, that'd be wonderful, wouldn't it? just to always know exactly where you're going to go. They had divine protection. They got their backs up against the Red Sea, and here's the Pharaoh and his army, greatest military in the world, bearing down on them. And God parted the waters and then closed them back over this military and delivered them. And then this is so beautiful. They got on the other side of the Red Sea, and they didn't have food.

They ran out of food, and they cried out. And God said, I tell you what I'm going to do. Just walk outside your tent. And every morning there's this delicious, it tastes like honey bread. And it's going to be sitting on the ground just waiting for you. It's going to be exactly how much you need. You don't need to take any more than just your daily bread because I'm going to give it to you every day. That's so endearing to me that the Lord would feed them like that.

They ran out of water. he provided water. And then he also gave them deep intimacy. The Bible says Moses set up a tent outside the camp and he would go out there and he would talk to God as a man talks to his friend. And anyone who had a question could come out there and talk to Moses and hear from God. So in this three-month period, just think about this. There was deliverance, there was direction, there was divine protection, there was daily bread, there was deep love,

intimacy. Now, what this illustrates is one important truth. This is worth writing down. Are you ready? God desires an unbroken, daily, personal relationship with us, but we must cooperate. Let me say that one more time. God desires an unbroken daily personal relationship with him, but we must cooperate. And here's a second follow-up sentence. His presence is what we most need, and our presence is what God most desires. Now, when you have the presence of God, you have everything, right?

And we need his presence. That's what the children of Israel had in these three months. All of this was provided by the presence of God, right? But what What we forget is not only do we need his presence, God desires our presence with him. We saw that a few podcasts ago from Genesis to Revelation. This is a whole story of God pursuing us so that we can be with him. Now, we don't believe that. We don't believe that he really wants us.

And the reason is because we believe the big lie. And Satan has been shooting this to us ever since the garden and telling us that, number one, we're not good enough. We can't possibly be in the presence of God. And number two, that we don't think God could possibly be interested in being with us. I mean, why would he want to do that?

You remember when you were a kid and you were in junior high or high school and you saw this girl, if you're a guy, and your heart started thumping, you know, and you asked your buddy, you said, hey, man. You know, do you think she'd go out with me? And your buddy said, no way. It's just no way. And then you took another run at it and you came back and you said, well, go ask her best friend. So you had your friend ask her friend and she comes back and she says, maybe.

And you thought, wow. And so you ask her and all of a sudden she went out with you. And then you got on the date and to your utter amazement, you realized she wanted to be with you. And then you had another date and another date. And then you got engaged and married and had eight kids and 27 grandkids. At least that's what happened to me. Right? Now, how tragic if because of a lie, you didn't think she wanted to be with you, you would have never approached her, right?

And so the truth of the matter is that God is constantly calling us back to Eden and providing the means for this to happen. Now, let me say this statement again. God desires an unbroken, daily, personal relationship with you, but you must cooperate. His presence is what we most need, and our presence is what God most desires. But let's pick this story back up again. So they get to Mount Sinai, and God wants to codify this.

He wants to write it in stone to help the Israelites understand what's going on. So they stop at the bottom of Mount Sinai. Moses goes up and he's up there for 40 days. And God begins to record this so that they'd forever understand it. And he says this, Exodus 20, I am the Lord, your God, verse two, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Don't have any other gods besides me. In other words, what God is saying is, Moses, I want you to tell them this.

I want you to write it down. Remind them that everything that's happened over the last three months has been because of me. I'm the one who delivered. I'm the one who gave you daily bread. And I'll keep doing that. I want to have this relationship with you. Don't leave me. Don't walk away from me. And I will show, he says further in that passage, my loving kindness to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments.

Now, what's tragic about this story is at that exact same moment, down at the bottom of the mountain, God is showing us something about ourselves. And it's very tragic to illustrate something to us. And so we pick the story up in Exodus 32, verse 1. When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people assembled about Aaron and they said to him, come make us a God who will go before us.

And just, I'm telling you, you read that, it's just hard to fathom that they're doing this. Three months of this total presence of God, 24-7, giving them everything they need. And in just the absence of Moses for a few days, they say, let's make a new God. And so Aaron makes a great leadership fail. He says, well, give me your earrings. And they give him their gold, and they fashion this golden calf. And then they say, this is your God, O Israel, who brought you out from the land of Egypt.

Moses and God are still up on the mountain. Of course, Moses doesn't know what's going on, but God knows everything. And God says in verse 7 of chapter 32, go down at once for your people. Doesn't call them his people anymore. Your people whom you brought up from the land of Egypt. They have corrupted themselves and they have quickly turned aside from the way which I've commanded them. Now, here's a second truth I just want us to see. It's easy to quickly choose a substitute for God's presence.

It is so easy. There are constant distractions to us, constant temptations to us, And it's real easy to choose a substitute for God's presence. And God calls them gods, small g gods. You say, Bill, what's a small g God? Well, it's just any person or thing that we exalt or deify or honor as more valuable than anything else, more valuable than God. Anything that we substitute for God. Anything that takes the place of my affections for God that I seek to give me what only God can give me.

And we have different kinds of gods, Kyle. We have the gods of reputation. You know, we just we want to be liked. We want to be loved. We want to be popular. We have a god of possessions. Possessions, you know, somehow we think that money and possessions will give us what we need. We have the God of pleasure, comfort, ease, you know, we seek all these kind of things. And the fascinating thing is, all of those gods, in essence, are just serving me.

So who's the real God? Right. It's just me. You know, I have become my own God. Yeah. And I want to be served. Kyle, as you think about this, what do you think are some of the gods that we deal with? Yeah. Small g gods. Yeah. One. Let me say this. That's the clearest I've ever heard it stated about God's desire for us relationally in experiencing his presence. So we could go right back to the beginning of this and lay that out again, Bill.

And I honestly think by the end, you need to share those statements again because it rung true in my spirit to just say, hey, one, it's the greatest longing of your heart is the experience of God's presence, getting us back to the garden. That God is saying, I want relationship. I paid the ultimate price through the gospel of Jesus to bring you home, to let us experience him again. And God desires that. It's our greatest joy. It's God's greatest desire.

And all that is you're tracking along through there. I'm just thinking.

But the experience of God's presence in the past does not promise us the sustained desire for his presence like that. We have to cultivate that. We have to. And if you just miss a season spiritually, that might be a day. That might be a week or might be a dry or hard season. We need to understand the tendency in us to grab on to a counterfeit. There's just counterfeits for God's presence. And we can try to find, try to suck the life out of a sport, you know, or a hobby, you know, or money.

Yeah, right. Or this person, you know, I remember vividly when the Lord shared with me in a marriage counseling with somebody is that they're trying to find in their spouse what they were, God intended for them to find in their Savior. If you're, you know, like we often try to make a God that will bring about the hunger, that satisfy the hunger that they are incapable of doing. And in that moment is they lost patience and waiting just for a moment. Just wait for Moses to come down.

It leads to another statement, really important statement I want to make, Kyle, and that's this. Is God's greatest grief and our greatest loss comes when we settle for anything less than God's presence. Yeah, right. Let me say that again. God's greatest grief, it grieves him. Yeah. And our greatest loss comes when we settle for anything less than God's presence. I know in this passage, when this happened up on the mountain, God was grieved. He was angry.

And it was a righteous indignation because he knew what was happening to his people that he had so tenderly taken care of and provided for. And Kyle, what they lost was his presence. Yeah. And, you know, I don't, I started to say I don't know about you, but I do know about you and all of us. The deadly price of choosing any substitute God anytime in any way is losing the conscious awareness of the presence of the only one who can give us life.

And I know what this is like. I started thinking about this when I choose other gods, when I start substituting. I feel it. I'm out of sync.

There's something wrong a whole string of worthless things start coming out of my life i start sinning and i keep sinning and sin always brings death i miss the best part of life because god's presence is the best part in his presence it's fullness of joy i start chasing trinkets, earrings, you know, these, I mean, they, they chased earrings, you know, taped into a golden calf. I want to be entertained. I want an experience. I want to gain recognition.

And, and, and here's the other thing I lose power and everyone around me is affected. I hurt people when I walk away from the presence of God. And Kyle, I think I want us just to pause right here for this podcast and come back. And we're going to look next time at how do we regain that presence? But let me just reaffirm these statements again that we made in the beginning. And just two or three statements. Number one, and that is that God desires an unbroken, daily,

we could even add intimate, personal relationship with us. But we must cooperate. And his presence is what we most need. And our presence is what God most desires. He longs to be with us. But then when we, like the Israelites, we began to walk away, it's easy. It says they quickly chose another God. It's easy to quickly choose a substitute for God's presence.

And God's greatest grief and our greatest loss comes when we settle for anything less than the presence of God. Hmm. Kyle, I wonder if you would lead us in just a season of prayer, all of us that are listening right now. And maybe help us just pause and identify what's going on with us. Where are we in this? Are we with him or without him? Have we walked away?

Have we turned away? Why don't you lead us? Yeah, well, let's just do this together. So if you're driving down the road or if you're in an office or just listening to the podcast on a run or walk, let's acknowledge first the presence of God. That the truth of his word has walked us into the throne room of grace and mercy. And why don't you do this? One, thank him that we can be with him. Thank him that he wants us. He wants us to abide in him, to be with him.

And then just take a second there and say, Lord, show me the areas of my life where I'm making a terrible trade. That I'm trading this pursuit or this person or this object or whatever it is in my life for the experience of your presence. Ask him to show you ask him to cross examine you. And as he does repent turn from those things confess those things, ask him to cleanse us.

Take a moment and ask him to refresh us in his presence, so lord i just thank you for every listener and for this podcast that i believe lord had truth that would should permeate our lives and lord i just thank you that you want us that you long for us that you made us for you for the experience of relationship with you and so god i pray now that you would show us in every way we're making just a terrible trade, that we're laying hold of things

that can never satisfy and awaken in us a desire for more of you, Lord. So I pray that decisions in your presence are made today that will be met, Lord God, with an experience of relationship with you like never before. God, so I pray that adjustments are made today. Lord, we love you. We entrust this time to you, Lord, that you just started something. something, and I pray that it would sustain and help us to keep walking in it in deeper ways. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, Bill, bro, that was awesome truth. And I'd encourage our listeners, here's the deal, that we're walking through God's Word and we're seeing, honestly, the narrative of God, the desire of God. And Bill just laid it out in Exodus. But just honestly, I think this was a glimpse. A really good sight line into the heart of God around experiencing His presence. Share it with somebody.

I mean, share it with somebody. Have a conversation. If you're a pastor, maybe let your staff, y'all sit down together and listen to it or small group and others. And I think I picked up where you were there, Bill. I think we're going to continue this conversation a little bit more in the next podcast. Yeah, next time I would love to talk. We'll just stay right in this passage. And so you'll want to pick up the next podcast. And what did they do?

How did they get out? And there's some astounding twists in this that happen at the foot of the mountain and that get them back on track. But for a while there, it looked pretty iffy. And we need to understand those because it's our story. Exodus is our story. It's not just something for the past. It's our story. It's where we live. That's why God took such intentionality to write it down. So we look forward to having everybody join us. We pray you'll check out our OneCry website.

And also we're featuring in these days the book, the little book, Essential Presence. And it's a 40-day book that will help just set your mind there, take you into his presence every day. So thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time. Music.