3.3 Engaging with God
© 2015 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
This is a general description of the Engaging with God assignments that are scattered through the course. Each particular Engaging with God assignment will have its own directions, but will base those directions on this layout. I have chosen this format instead of the Assignment PDF format because this is an explanation rather than assignment directions.
Objectives of Engaging with God:
- To live and not die.
- To actively engage with God inside of us.
- To know God as the One arising in us as springs of living water.
I fear God. I do not play games with Him. I do not mess around with God or His people or boast in myself or use God for my own lusts.
- God is the Almighty.
- God is a Consuming Fire.
- God is Love.
Absolute Surrender
The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Corinthians 3:6). I come before God in one pose. I place my face upon the ground and I am silent before Him. What He wills to do concerning me, I accept with all surrender and joy. And I do not give Him answer or say “Yea” or “Nay” to the Almighty as if I should find Him untrue. And in my continual surrender to the Almighty, I open my Bible before Him, and I respond to all that He speaks with the only human words that God hears.
Let it be to me according to Your Word.
Life
Life is God. God is action. I engage with life only as I engage with God inside of me. Treating the word God speaks as if it is human ideas or philosophy or fodder for debate or facts for us to accumulate is not something we do at Christ Revealed Bible Institute. Every Word in the Bible is Jesus and Jesus LIVES in our hearts. Thus we do not treat with God’s Word in any other way than as Jesus Himself in Person alive in our hearts and living now as us in this present cosmos.
Consider Mary
We engage with God in one way only. We engage with God as Mary engaged with God. Read Luke 1.
Consider Zacharias. Zacharias asked questions as a cynical human who is convinced that God just does not engage with human beings. Zacharias lived by the serpent’s words: “Did God indeed say?”
Consider Mary. Mary asked questions because she longed to know ever more fully, ever more deeply, this God who was speaking HIMSELF into her.
Always, let’s consider Mary. God spoke Christ into Mary. It was God who initiated the conversation. Mary did not dream it up; nor did Mary have any inkling of what God would do in her before the angel appeared. Yet take the word Mary heard and lay it against all theology and all theologians, then and now, and find one who would have told Mary that her theology was correct!
Mary could not have planted the seed of God in her own womb; yet it happened the moment she said, “Be it unto me according to Your word.” Mary’s ACTIVE acceptance of God speaking into her was required. Jesus could not have come into this world without Mary.
Mary could not have caused the baby in her womb to grow; nor could she have caused or prevented it from coming forth into the full light of day. Yet that baby belonged to Mary just as much as He belonged to God. Jesus was as much Mary’s doing as He was God’s doing. Jesus was birthed out of the union of Mary and God.
As Mary walked through the violence and unbelief of her day, she walked with the knowledge written so clearly upon her face that she was kept by God. Nothing could touch her because of the Life that she carried inside of her belly.
Consider Mary again, standing before the cross. Six hours she stood there, as close to her son as she could be. She did not turn aside, she did not look elsewhere. For every one of those 360 minutes, she looked steadfastly at the son of her womb in all of His agony and humiliation.
That was Mary’s son; 100% of Jesus came out of her. That was the Father’s Son; 100% of Jesus came out of Him. Mary was not alone – the Father of Jesus was also there, side by side with Jesus’ mother. Together they stood and beheld the passion of their Child.
That was Mary’s son upon the cross. If Mary had not stood there with God, the Father could never have won the Desire of His heart.
The Entrance of God
God cannot enter His creation except through a Woman, His Bride, actively engaging by Faith with all that He speaks, with Christ alive in her heart. Treating with the Word God speaks as mental ideas is to die. Believing that Jesus fulfills all that God speaks in us and through us is to live. God enters into creation, God enters into us, through these words:
Look at me, God. I belong to You.
Let all the Word that You speak, the Lord Jesus Christ,
be fulfilled in me in all that He is.
Communion
Eternal life is to know God the Father and to know Jesus Sent. Inside this knowing of God is the most precious reality of forever. We live in and by a continuous, moment by moment, active and engaged COMMUNION with God inside of us, inside our hearts. This communion is a communion of Faith ever responding to Word. We study God’s Word for one reason only. That we might receive that Word into us as Christ alive in our hearts, that we might live by that Word.
Creation
God creates by speaking. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light (Genesis 1:3).
God plants Christ in you by the Word that He speaks. You receive Christ in you by active Faith, engaging directly with that Word as it creates life inside of you. The Word does not produce life by your performance as if you could “keep” God’s word separate from God. The Word produces life in you by your faith, by actively believing that Jesus is that same Word in all fullness personal and now, alive in you as your very and only Life.
Entwined
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint (Isaiah 40:28-31).
Those who wait on the Lord. The word wait means “entwined together with” as the cords of a rope are braided together
Knowing God
Christ Revealed Bible Institute has one objective.
- To know God and Jesus Sent.
We know God by the Word God is always speaking. We know God by a Man on His knees to serve.
This Exercise
I have given, I believe, as strongly as I can, the reasons why we engage directly with God concerning His word, rather, than, say, stacking up facts in our heads about some Thing and what this Thing, far away from us, expects us to do.
How do we entwine ourselves with God? It is my hope that we will discover all the practical ways by which we do such a thing through the sessions of this course. Now, as you fulfill the several assignments in this course that are this Engagement with God, refer back to this lesson as the foundation and the reason for your active exercise.
Springs of Living Water
Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into age-abiding life. John 4:14
The only way we know God is as Jesus described, as we see the Father as these Springs of Living Water ever arising in us, into our knowledge, continuously, every moment, arising through our faith, our active engagement with God that He is telling us the truth.
Everything I write, every course in this Bible Institute, is in one way or another seeking to wrap our minds and hearts around the full knowledge of this wondrous reality, age-abiding LIFE, what He is, and what He means in us.