Practice #1: Come Before God Daily

Someone has accurately observed that, show me your friends and I'll show you your future. The fact of the matter is, is that we become the people that we admire. We become like the people that we want acceptance from, and we become like the people we hang out with the most.

I mean, we pick up their mannerisms, we pick up their accents, we pick up their values, and that's why this practice, coming before God is so absolutely important. Because the more time we spend with God, the more we actually experience Him relationally, the more we actually become like Him.

What's it mean to come before God daily? What I mean by that is this, it's to meet with God daily through His Word in prayer.

And not just read a chapter or two or a program or through the Bible in a year, that's not what I'm talking about. That may be the method.

I'm talking about meeting with a person, connecting from the heart, hearing His voice, pouring out your heart. An interchange where you listen as He speaks through His Word. You listen as you learn to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. You share honestly and deeply your heart, your dreams, your struggles, where there's a real relationship.

The second, it also means practicing the presence of God.

Some people call it a quiet time where your devotions and I have my devotions and I get my devotions done. Okay, see you later, God. And now here I go and I do my life and oh, it's nine o'clock at night or well, I'm winding down. I guess it's time to say goodnight. Oh, okay, Lord, thank you for today - right? Even for those who developed the time and the discipline to meet with God and then it's like, Oh, I kinda forgot about Him most of the day.

When we talk about coming before God, we're talking about cultivating a relationship.

And it does take time and practice and skill. We're going to talk about all of that. But the attitude and the perspective is so, so important.

It's about meeting with a person. It's like an appointment with one of your closest friends or if you're married, a date with your wife or husband or if you're not married, it's a date or an appointment with your boyfriend or your girlfriend or maybe one of your closest friends.

It's that kind of relationship where, in my world, you go out and get a cup of coffee together and there's not a big agenda, you just love to be with each other and you get to know each other and you share things with them you wouldn't share with other people.

But that's what God wants. That's what He desires even before there was sin in the garden. That's what He wanted. When we're in the new heaven and the new earth, that's the way it's going to be. And so, coming before God, that practice is not just an event, but it's also learning throughout the day. And we'll talk about how to do this, where you bring to mind God, where you are aware of His presence.

And then finally, coming before God is a time where you come with other believers on a regular basis and you thank God and you praise God and you adore and worship Him usually in the reading of scripture and in the singing of songs, and then you're instructed in God's Word by someone who's gifted by God to help all of us understand His Word because He's given people certain gifts to help us do that. So, that's the practice of coming before God.

In our last time together, I talked about the very first and most important thing is for you to come before God and build a connection and a relationship.

Podcasts are great. Hearing maybe someone like me on a broadcast or some other streaming venue, that's helpful. Nothing is a substitute for you opening God's Word, and the Spirit of God taking the written Word and making it the living Word, and Him actually speaking to you and you making this connection, and you start to pray specific things and you actually see this invisible God, Creator of the universe, hear you and respond in very specific ways that you could say to another person, "God's real. He's real. I prayed this and He did that. I had a big question, I came to Him and I was reading. Bam! I mean, He spoke to me and I know He spoke to me."

We talked about the three essential practices of becoming a Romans 12 Christian or a mature disciple, and this first one I think is the most important and here's why, we're living in a world today that has a crisis of identity. We have a whole generation that has bought into the Freudian view that my identity is rooted in and defined by my sexuality.

We have others who think their identity is about how they look or what they accomplish or where they work or how much money they have or the kind of home. But this issue of identity, who am I? Who answers that question?

I heard recently, I was flipping through the channels and TMZ came on and they had a very, very famous person that I won't mention her name, but very famous and she was walking through and doing an interview and they asked this question and that question and she flipped around and said, "I will tell you this, don't let anyone tell you who you are."

You see, we're living in a day where, I have my view of me and my view of me is reality. And it's created a world where people are anxious and depressed, and suicide is off the charts, and mental health issues are everywhere, and we have dysfunction in family.

There are 30 different categories of identity about your gender or sexuality alone. We have a world that is so confused, but here's the good news, Jesus emphatically teaches who you are. When you come to know Jesus and you receive by faith the gift of salvation, here's who you are. You are a child of God. That's your identity.

You may be an athlete, you may be a business person, you may be single, you may be married. You may have all kind of other issues that talk about your identity.

You may have a family history, you may have a certain ethnicity.

But here's the deal, who you are is primarily defined by: You are a child of God. You are loved, you're accepted, you're forgiven. The tragedy - most Christians understand that intellectually but have no deep overwhelming sense that they are loved deeply and they're a child of God.

The Bible says in Romans, chapter 8 that we have been adopted into a new family, that our spirit now cries, “Abba, Father,” in Romans 8, 15 and 16. Ephesians 1 says, “We've been predestined to adoption.” Galatians chapter 5 will say, “If we are children, then we're also heirs.” God has a future for us. First and foremost, your identity.

When we're taught to pray, what do we pray? “Our Father, who art in heaven.” He's omniscient, He's omnipresent, He's powerful, He's robed in light, He's unapproachable, He's holy above all things, and He's intimate, and He's tender, and He's personal, and He's your Father, and He wants to have a relationship with you.

And so, what we want to talk about is how do we have a relationship with our Father? How do we come before Him and experience Him in our personal life as our Father? Because the bad news is this, most Christians have very little family resemblance to their Father or to Jesus.

You hear it all the time. Christians are bigoted, Christians are narrow, they're judgmental, they're hypocrites. And yes, some of that is blaming that's unfair. But let's be honest, a lot of that is true and it's true because I think we don't understand that we're children of the living God and we haven't entered into the practice of Jesus so that we become more and more like Jesus.

Listen carefully. Knowledge about God is not the same as knowledge of God. Let me say that again. You need to digest it. Knowledge about God, I go to church, I listen. There's a podcast. I talk to people about God, that's different.

I can have knowledge about the president of the United States. I can have knowledge about a king of another country, that's different than meeting them, knowing them, spending time with them, having them share intimately with me and me share intimately with them.

And I think, in general, we have Christians that know a lot about God, but know little of God. We’ve believed the teaching about Jesus, but the son-ship that we need to experience, the daughter-ship that we need to experience, that's what's lacking. And we're going to talk about how you, ordinary person like you and me, can develop a relationship with our heavenly Father following the path of Jesus.

So, let's ask the question, what did Jesus actually do to cultivate His relationship with His heavenly Father?

Let me give you three things.

Number one, His highest priority was knowing and pleasing God. Think of that. His highest priority.

Remember the story about the woman at the well and He's there at the well and the disciples, they go to get some food and a woman comes that, you know, a Jew would not speak with a woman that day, let alone a Samaritan woman.

And they have a conversation and He tells her some things and then she goes away and the whole town comes out and there's a revival and the disciples say: Hey, did you get lunch? Where did you get the food? I mean, what's going on? And Jesus makes this definitive statement. He says, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me.”

In other words, what drove Jesus, what matters to Jesus was pleasing His heavenly Father. The Apostle Paul would make the same statement. He said we make it our ambition, whether in the body or outside someday is to be pleasing to Him. Jesus would also say, "I can do nothing apart from My Father."

Knowing Him and pleasing Him was His number one agenda. What if the beginning of every day that you live on this earth from today on, you said, "Lord, I know you're my Father. I want to get to know You and I want my life more than anything else to be pleasing to you, more than what I get done, more than what other people think. I want my life to be most pleasing to You."

The second thing is He habitually memorized and meditated on God's Word. That's right. Yes, He was fully God, but He was a man. And so, being fully human, He had to learn the Old Testament like every other good Jewish boy.

And a good Jewish boy by the time they were 12 would have the first five books memorized. Many, many people in that day, this is hard for us to believe, but it was an oral culture. They had the entire Old Testament memorized.

When Jesus was doing spiritual battle. Do you remember this? He's in the wilderness and He's being tempted by the enemy, “If You are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread.” What did He say? “Man shall not live by bread alone, but every Word that proceeded out of the mouth of God.” Jesus memorized huge portions and He meditated on it. The things that the Old Testament taught, Jesus practiced. And His disciples would watch Him.

Be in God's Word, pray, talk to the Father, He habitually spent time in the scriptures. He would say to those Jews, “You search the scriptures because you think in them is eternal life, but they bear witness of Me.”

He was teaching the disciples, the Old Testament, all those prophecies, all those things all aligned around what? Jesus, the Son of God, the Messiah, the Savior of the world.

The third thing He did was, He habitually slipped away to a private place to pray. Luke chapter 5, Luke chapter 11, all through the book of Luke, He slips away, He slips away, He slips away.

After the biggest demands that He ever had ever recorded in scripture, it says He got up a great while before dawn to go to a lonely place and spend time with His heavenly Father. Jesus’ way, His practice, not His teaching, His way. What He did was He made pleasing God and meeting with God and memorizing God's Word and getting away to talk to His Father, the number one priority in His life.

And I know you can do time with God anytime during the day, and I know there's early birds and night owls and there's no actual command that says you need to do it in the morning. But when I look at the example of scripture and when I look at the lifestyle of most of us, if you don't meet with God first, your life gets so overwhelmed and so busy, it is pretty hard to squeeze that in.

And the other thing I found is this, God knows what's going to happen in your day, whether it's at five A.M. or six A.M. or 7:30, whenever you get up. He knows the meetings you're going to go to. He knows exactly what the traffic is going to be like.

He actually knows Wall Street, exactly - what all the numbers are going to be. He knows who's going to have a problem. He knows what phone calls you're going to get. He knows what irate person that you get stuff coming at you that you don't deserve. So, you could go through all of that and then at the end of the day, say, "Lord, could You help me process that?"

Or you could meet with God and say, "Lord, since You know all about my day, would You give me direction? Would You prepare me? Would You speak to me so I could put on the full armor of God? Would You speak to me so that my heart would be ready and sensitive to You, so I'd be dependent on the Holy Spirit? Would You prepare me for what's ahead?"

And so, again, I don't want to be legalistic, but I just want to tell you, if you want to develop almost any habit, doing it first, doing the most important thing first, is the easiest way to develop habits that make a real, real difference. And so that's what Jesus did. He made His first priority following and knowing His heavenly Father.

So, if we are to take His yoke upon us, if we're to say, Okay, I want to take Your yoke and learn from You, I see this is what You do. You come before God, You practice the presence of God, You soak in God's Word and You get away and talk with Him privately. That's your way.

What did Jesus teach? What's His yoke? What did He teach His disciples then and now, you and me, about coming before God?

Jesus taught that our relationship with the Lord will be determined by our response to His Word.

Remember the parable of the seeds and the soils? It's the most important parable. Jesus said, “The keys to the kingdom are in this parable.” The Son of Man is the sower. The seed is the Word of God. The soils are human hearts and the seed of God's Word drops into four different kinds of human hearts.

The first human heart is hard. It doesn't receive the Word of God, Satan comes and snatches it away.

The next human heart is shallow. We respond to God's Word. We get excited, but when it gets difficult, it's gone.

The third is a crowded heart. It's a person that's in God's Word and listens to what He says, but the desires of other things and the deceitfulness of riches and life gets complicated and distracted, chokes out the fruit.

And the final seed is a human heart that's open and receptive and it takes in God's Word and it puts it into practice. And after putting it into practice and persevering even when it's difficult, it bears fruit 30, 60, a hundredfold.

The greatest sermon that Jesus gave was the Sermon on the Mount. At the very beginning, He talks about the priority of God's Word, and He's saying, this is how the kingdom of God works. And then He gets to the end of the Sermon on the Mount and He says, let me tell you a quick story.

There was a man who built his house on sand and the floods came and the wind blew and the house was blown away. There was another man who built his house on the rock and the floods came and the winds blew and the house didn't move. I say to you, everyone who hears My Words and puts them into practice is like the man who builds his house on the rock.

Jesus taught His disciples then and disciples now, our relationship with the Lord will be determined by a relationship to His Word. Pause.

What's your relationship to God's Word? Not to Jesus, not to church, not to podcast. Not to - What's your personal relationship to this book? Do you read it regularly? Are you studying it? Are you taking core passages and memorizing them? Are you digging in and saying, I want to get to know my heavenly Father because that's what Jesus did and that's what Jesus taught.

Your relationship with the Word will determine your relationship with the Lord and your relationship with the Lord will determine the kind of marriage you have and the kind of dad you are and the kind of person you are.
The second thing that Jesus taught was that our view of God in prayer will determine our intimacy and our answers - our view of God.

He was a man of prayer, and His disciples would watch Him pray and they had the Pharisees prayers that they heard. They'd go on street corners and they would quote lots of scripture and made sure everyone could hear them. And John the Baptist taught His disciples to pray, and they had a routine that they went through.

And there was something about Jesus prayers. Of all the things we have in scripture, they didn't ask Him, teach us to preach. They didn't ask Him, you know, could you teach us how to do miracles like you do? Here's what they said, "Lord, would you teach us to pray?"

And so, we have in Luke chapter 11, the conversation, and He gives them a pattern because they wanted a pattern. When you pray, say, “Our Father who art in heaven…” and you know the Lord's prayer.

What He realized was their issue wasn't saying the right words. Their issue was how they viewed God. And then He tells the story about someone coming late at night and knocking and saying, "Hey, I've got visitors." And in that culture, hospitality is important. You don't turn them away, so what am I going to do?

And the point He was making was the only person you would ever go knock on the door, think of you calling someone at three A.M. and saying, "Hey, my car's broke down and I know you would come and get me."

It means that you have such confidence in that person that they don't want to get up, but because you would ask that they realize, wow, you must think the world of me. And then He flipped it around with another illustration. He goes: You, as fathers, if your children ask you for an egg, you wouldn't give them a scorpion. I see God accurately. I see Him as a good God. I see Him as the how-much-more-God. I see Him as a God who is kind and gentle and patient and loving. I see Him as a God who gives mercies each and every day. I see Him as a God that you don't have to perform for. I see Him as a God where you don't have to earn it. He's your Father. He loves you and He's for you.

If you saw God like that, if I saw God more like that. It would be pretty easy to get up in the morning and say, “I'd like to get to know You better.”

You know, the Bible says that God delights - think of this word - God delights in the prayer of the upright.

Can you imagine you grasping and understanding that the God of the universe who is all-knowing and all-powerful hears your prayer and it delights Him? And He just wants to spend time with you and wants to share with you and wants to hear your hurts and wants to help you.

I mean, all of us have been little kids, right? When we ran to mommy and mommy comforted us or we went to Dad and we needed some wise advice or counsel or something. God is all that and infinitely more. You see, Jesus taught His disciples that our view of God would determine our intimacy and the answers to our prayers.

The third thing that Jesus taught His disciples was obedience to God's Word is the prerequisite to experiencing His love and His presence.

That very last night, John 14, He told them the Holy Spirit would be coming. He said, “I'm going to prepare a place for you…” And then He says, “He that has My commandments and keeps them, he it is that loves Me.” Then listen. “And he that loves Me will be loved by My Father and I will love him and we will come and,” the old English is, “make our abode” or manifest our presence [to him.]

You see, it's not just taking in truth, it's not just listening to a good message. It's not just reading the Bible and getting through your reading program for the year or the New Testament. It's not just kind of going through YouVersion, which is really wonderful, but it's saying, God, what do You want me to do? I want to obey what You say because obedience is the organ of transformation.

Here's what I'm saying. Jesus taught, in one word, the goal of coming before God is to “abide.” The word just means to be connected. Your heart connected to God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. “If you abide in Me and My Words abide in you, just ask whatever you wish and it'll be done for you.” In other words, abiding is our responsibility and the result is joy.

So, how do you develop the practice of coming before God privately?

Number one, make a daily appointment with Jesus. Set a time, set a place, and have a plan.

Second, it's a habit to be developed.

I mean, I don't want to de-spiritualize it, but here's the deal, if you don't do this regularly, your life is being discipled by social media, by friends, by work. Every day you have a path, you're living a path. You have a rhythm that you live. It's called your way. What I'm trying to tell you is there's a way of Jesus, and so I have a pattern and all of it doesn't sound really spiritual. I get up. Like you, I go to the bathroom. I let the dog out, I feed the dog. I get my cup of coffee, I tell my dog to wait for His master to get up, who's my wife, and then I have a place and it's a chair, and then I take God's Word and then I spend this amount of time that has worked for me over the years and I talk with God.

And for me, some days then I need to process, so I'll write some things in a journal. I’ll put a few little boxes of specific answers to prayer, and I'll sit quietly and ask God, You know what's coming today? Would You speak to me? Would You give me direction? And then I go to work and then I have a time when I work out three days a week. There's a pattern to my life.

Here's the deal. Do you like your life right now? Are you married? Do you like your marriage? You’re a parent. Do you like how it's going with your kids? Your current path, your way, your road is producing the life you currently have. You are a disciple. I'm a disciple.

All I'm saying is let's be Jesus' disciple, and the first step is let's come before God daily and meet with Him. One, make an appointment. Two, it's a habit. So, are you ready? Like every habit, you do it good for two or three days, then you miss, right? And then you struggle.

Here's the pattern. Yes, it feels like a duty early on. That's okay. Then little by little by little, it becomes a discipline and pretty soon... Like, do you have to, like, make yourself a note? Make sure to brush your teeth. Do you have to write that down?

The day can come where part of your life is you meet with God, it becomes a habit, and then what I can tell you is over time, with practice, it goes from duty, to discipline, to delight.

I could tell you a time as an early Christian where I had to get out of bed to meet with God. And then I will tell you, as the years went and the discipline developed, I love the mornings. I love to get up. I bounce out of bed, but it took time, it took practice.

The third thing is you have to have an actual plan or practice, and I got mine from Solomon, the wisest man in the world. In Proverbs, chapter 2: 1-5. Listen carefully to what he talks about in terms of coming before God.

He's talking to his son, “My son, if you'll receive my words and treasure my commandments within you, make your ear attentive to wisdom and incline your heart to understanding; for if you cry for discernment, lift your voice for understanding, if you seek [for] her as silver and search for her for hidden treasure, then,” notice a result, “then you'll discern the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God.”

As I broke this down, just follow along. In fact, you might want to download the notes on this: “My son, if you'll receive my words,” he's talking about the words he's gotten from God, “treasure my commandments.”

Step one, be intentional; have a plan; receive His Word. Get into His Word in an intentional systematic way.

Number two, make your ear attentive to wisdom; incline your heart - be teachable.

I'm mentoring a young, very gifted man from another country right now, and he's really fast. He's really sharp, and in my last trip when I was there, he said, "Would you mentor me?" And I've watched his life. I said, "Sure." My last time there, he said, "You know, I'm hanging around you and I think I may have to, like, forget a lot of my Christian life and start over."

I said, "What do you mean?" He goes, "I like to get things done. And honestly, man, I get up. I read through the Bible in a year. Bam, I got my four chapters. I say a few prayers I run. I'm a doer, doer, doer, but I don't think I'm very teachable. I'm not sure I'm really hearing God's voice. I think I'm doing these things so my life will work and that God will love me. And from hanging around you, I'm thinking, that's not really the plan, is it?"

I said, "No, it's not." I said, "But you don't have to start over. He's gentle. He understands. He just brought us together to maybe give you a couple tips. You know, that's why He brought people into my life."

Third, he goes, “for if you cry for discernment, lift your voice for understanding.

Notice, cry. “God, I need this!”

In other words, be passionate.

Be intentional, be teachable, be [passionate]. Cry out, “I want to know! I want to know You! I want an answer to this! God, this matters to me! Show me how to fix my marriage. God, this addiction, I don't know what to do.”

Cry out! Come to God like a real person, instead of all this religious phony stuff. Bring who you are to Him.

And notice what he says, and then be diligent. “…for if you seek her as silver and search for her as for hidden treasure.”

I mean, if there was $5 million buried in your backyard or somewhere in your apartment, you wouldn't go, “Oh gosh. Well, I've looked for two days. You know, I guess it's just not here.” No, no, it's guaranteed. It's there. You would knock down walls; you would do whatever it takes. Be that passionate; be that diligent in searching out God's Word.

I get up a lot of mornings, I don't feel like praying; I don't feel like reading. But isn't it interesting that once you start, right? It's a lot like working out. Once you start to practice - it's the same here.

And then notice the huge payoff, “… then you discern the fear of the Lord, discover the knowledge of God.” That was the goal.

You'll be transformed.

Be intentional, be teachable, be passionate, be diligent, be transformed.

I want to wrap up our time with how to practice the presence of God. What I don't want you to do, I don't want you to get the idea that I start to have this time with God and I get in God's Word and you're all fired up - that's the beginning of practicing the presence throughout the day.

So, let me give you a few tips on maybe how to begin doing that.

Take one truth, or one promise, or one verse in your time with God, and chew on it throughout the day. In other words, that word chew, we get the word ruminate, or meditate. Let's say you read Proverbs 3: 5 and 6. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways, acknowledge Him and He will direct your path.”

Let's say that was the verse that stuck out to you. Let's say you wrote that on a card, or you got your phone out and typed it in, and got in the car and you started to drive, and you usually turn on the radio and either music or sports or something you say - You know, uh, I think I'll just, I’ll let that go around in my mind.

So, you're driving - Trust in the Lord with all your heart…. Lean not in your own understandings… You just chew on it. Or maybe there was a promise and you're in line at the bank. You're in line at the grocery store and instead of scrolling, you think, Okay, Proverbs 3: 5 and 6, right?

We can have a time with God and we come before Him and then we practice His presence throughout the day and it makes all the difference in the world?

Another tip is limit technology and develop the habit of practicing thanksgiving and interceding rather than scrolling. All I'm going to say on this is that you've heard it, you know the research. I know the research. Take baby steps. It's six, seven, whenever you eat dinner. Then take your phone and put it someplace else. Don't be someplace else when you're here.

You have to break some habits. Some of the spiritual disciplines are subtraction, not addition, and this is one of those I feel like I'm getting fired up and poking around, aren't I?

Can I tell you, this is hard for me. I'm very visual. I understand how hard, but as I've gone into training, not to try to be a better Christian, but to come before God and then eliminate distractions little by little, you'll be transformed.

Proactively, spend some time in nature, take a walk, listen to some good music, do some things that just give you a sense of awe and a bigger world. Go out at night and look at the stars. Do some things that if you're into art that are just beauty and magnificent, read some really high-quality books that invigorates your heart and invigorates your mind.

See, Philippians 4 says, whatever's true, whatever's noble, whatever's lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there's anything of excellence or worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things because they're a reflection of the nature of God.

In summary, life-change and bearing fruit and being used by God can only - are you ready? - can only happen when the supernatural life of Jesus is flowing into your life and your heart by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit takes the written Word and He makes it the living Word, and then He empowers inside of your heart a new set of desires, a breaking of old habits and addictions, and begins to manifest the love of God and the mercy of God, and the kindness of God in your heart and in your mind, which gives you a very different view of God, but - are you ready? - it gives you such a different view of you.

See, when you start living as a: I am a beloved child of God, fully accepted, completely forgiven and infinitely valuable, now that's an identity that you can live out of.

Finally, coming before God daily does not earn any favor with Him. There's no magic about coming before God that your life will automatically or quickly change, but it positions you to allow the grace of God through the activity of coming before Him in His Word of practicing His presence. It positions you where the grace of God can manifest the truth of God and the power of God that brings transformation from the inside out.

Final warning: Take baby steps.

Consistency is way more important. Don't say, I'm going to start spending a half hour, an hour with God every morning. 10 minutes. Doing it every day is more important than you spend an hour one day and then do it again two weeks from now.

And then remember that Jesus is gentle and humble. You're going to mess up. You're going to go a day or two or a few days where the habits break, and then you get all down on yourself and the enemy's going to come in and say, "See, you don't really love God. You don't really care."

The Bible talks about our relationship with God as - what? Walking with God, and I can say this as a grandparent, and I've watched lots of young parents, when they see their little maybe 12 or 18-month old starting to take steps, right? Are they like this going, come on, walk faster, walk faster.

What do they do? They're like this. “Come to daddy. Come to Grandpa,” buh, buh, buh…. Right? And the little kid goes [loud clap] smack, face-plant, and we run. We pick them up. We go, "Oh my lands, you did so good. You did so - you did two steps." Right?

Can I tell you something? That's exactly how your heavenly Father thinks and feels about you as you begin to walk and spend time before Him, He's on your team. Take some baby steps.