More of God Close and Clear

God willing, as we end this week and step into Sunday, I’d like to bring together a few different things I’ve said over the past couple months, and years.

This past Sunday, I preached an unusual sermon. It was a stand-alone reflection on God’s grace to us these past several years, and especially in this current season. The most important part, at least to me, was the concluding comments related to Romans 6. I had said that we need more of the power of God in our lives. That is the greatest prayer for these days (and for any days), and it goes much deeper than any physical renovations and provisions. What good is updated accommodations for our ministry if our ministry lacks the supernatural, life-changing power of God? As I had said on Sunday, I have zero interest in that. We want the power of God, and so then, what is that? And what’s it for?

The power of God is the power of the Holy Spirit to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. That is Paul’s stunning prayer for the church in Ephesians 3:14–21.

Where do we see God’s love most definitively?

It’s the cross of Jesus Christ. That is the place where God demonstrated his love for us (see Romans 5:8).

What effect does the cross have on us now?

It marks the end of our old selves and the beginning of the new. We’ve been crucified with Jesus. When he died, our old selves died. When we was buried, our old selves were buried. When we was raised, we were raised to walk in newness of life (see Romans 6:1–11). We are dead to sin, and alive to God in Christ. That is what it means to trust in Jesus — we are inseparably united to him by faith and everything changes forever. 

The Christian life is, put simply, a journey “further up and further into” that reality. Do we really know the love of God for us? Do we really know the treasure we have in Jesus? Do we really know what it means to be his, to have him?

That’s what we’re preaching to.

Our Assurance, God’s Glory

Going back to February, I had said in a sermon introduction that our preaching is for your assurance of God’s love. Because that’s what leads to personal renewal, which then leads to relational renewal, which leads to church renewal, which leads to city renewal. 

Renewal is another way to say revival. It’s a fresh experience of God, the effect of a fresh outpouring of his Spirit. It’s the sort of thing that especially magnifies the glory of God. 

Because, as we’ve talked about some years ago, the more assured we are of God’s love and how much we don’t deserve it, then the more we’re humbled and filled with joy, then the more we’re poured out in love for others, which all amounts to magnifying the glory of God. 

And magnifying God’s glory means that we have more of God close and clear. It means his weight and substance — his glory — will be more palpable to us. It’s knowing him more, and being overcome. It’s having more of him in all that we think and say and do. More of God.

It’s basically what Revelation 21 describes: there will be no temple and no light because God’s dwelling place is the whole world — he will be close; and God’s glory is the light — he will be clear.

That is more of God close and clear. Just more of God. I’m sorry, I don’t know a better way to say it yet, but I’m certain that is the future world that God is preparing for us. And that is the world for which we are being prepared. … even now, in our progressive glorification (see 2 Corinthians 3:18). God is changing us, bringing us, further up and further into the heart of Jesus … Jesus who is ever-becoming more real to us than anything else. God is most glorified in us when Jesus is most real to us.