We are reading The God Catchers, by Tommy Tenney. In this book Tenney teaches that we need to be hungry. We must have a desire for Him. We have to create empty pots for Him to fill. It is something that touched me deeply. He says, "You have to create the empty space and furnish it with your hunger, your worship, and your praise. " The following is what was given to me to share and what I read at last nights small group meeting.
While on my run the other day God told me that I am his paint brush and the world His canvas. We can paint a beautiful, colorful picture if we allow Him to use us for what He created us to be. He talks to me a lot while I am running and have worship streaming through my ears.
He kept playing the idea of creating emptiness through my mind. We have to create emptiness so that we can catch Him. The emptiness can only be created when we give up ourselves, our worldly “needs and desires”. We tend to fill ourselves with things that make us feel better not realizing that it is keeping us away from God, NOT bringing Him to us. We do this with obvious sins but there are things that we don’t even realize. We come to church seeking Him and find fellowship, friendship, laughter, shoulders to cry on etc. These are wonderful things but when it becomes the reason for us to gather, then we are filling our emptiness with something other than Him. We gather to have Him there, we fellowship to help one another stay focused on who we are chasing and living the life we were created for.
“For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” Matthew 18:20
He says gather in my name, not in the name of fellowship and friendship.
Tenny says “ Unfortunately centuries of bad human decisions and our attraction to the stuff of religion muddied the waters of our privileged grace relationship with divinity. We have used man-centered, religion-based traditions and methods to rebuild the walls that divide God and man-after Jesus shed His precious blood to break them down.”
Anything that builds a wall dividing God and man is a sin. It is black and white, there is no grey area.
Hebrews 6:4-6 “It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.”
Because of God’s abundant grace we can lay our sins at the altar. We can give them to Him and never look back. We MUST give them to Him and ask for forgiveness in order to create the emptiness we need so we can fill ourselves with Him...it is the only way to catch Him. We have to be careful though. As Tenny says we cannot take God’s grace for granted as if we deserve it. He says “If it is deserved, it isn’t grace. If it is grace, then it isn’t deserved.”
As Paul wrote in Romans 11:5-6 “So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace”
So… I have this box. It is colorful because God wanted to signify the importance of painting this world with His color. The only way to do this is to lay our sins at the altar, repent and move on. Create the emptiness so He can fill the white void with vivid colors. Also, I have white cards and black pens, because like I said, God told me ANYTHING standing between us and Him is a sin, no matter how insignificant we think it is. When it becomes about us, it is sin. Black and white.
What God showed me was our God Chasing group writing down what is filling our emptiness. We do not have to share, we can be free to be open and get everything out. We put the darkness of sin in this box of color and Sunday morning we, as a group will lay it on the altar. Freeing up space to let God in and Catch His glory.
One thing that I didn't mention to my God Chasing group last night is the signficance of the colors I painted the box. I started with blue, the living water. Then I added green as the emerald rainbow that encircles the throne. This is what we are living to die for...the sight of the throne room. Next was purple...His royalty. and last but not least the gold representing our crowns, waiting for us in Heaven. These are just some of the colors we can show the world by simply creating emptiness and filling it with our hunger, worship and praise.
Glory be to God, always.
