As you learn more and more how to engage in believing and enjoy the life of God, something wonderful will have happened to you. You will become addicted to His life.
David tells us in Psalms 63:3, “Your love is better than life…” Psalm 34:8 says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good”. Psalm 94:19 explains, “In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul.” The scripture says in Ephesians 5:18, “Do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit.” The life of God is extremely enjoyable and the peace of God passes all comprehension (Phil. 4:7).
The soul is addictive in nature. We become addicted very easily to things. The marvelous thing about addiction (and the worst thing if it’s a bad addiction) is that it becomes all you think about. Once you become accustomed to tasting of the life of God, you will want to taste and experience even more. It is a good thing to be addicted to the Spirit of God. Once you become addicted to the pleasure and peace of God’s presence, it will be all you will want.
Like an expert connoisseur, once you become addicted and very used to tasting of the quality of the Spirit of God, nothing less will do. You will become dialed in. Anything less than the quality you are used to will be instantly exposed for what it is.
Becoming Lost in God
Because the heart is addictive in nature, we are easily “caught up” with things. The drug addict is caught up with his drug of choice. The average American is caught up with busyness and the pursuit of money. We can be caught up with entertainment, people, social causes, politics, food, fear, ambitions, a dream world of imaginations, and anything else we can think of or that can be found on the planet earth.
Our hearts fall in love with things very easily. At first we are just attracted by the thing, but then we begin to look at it and focus on it. We take it in to our hearts and we gaze at it. Within our hearts we meditate on, ponder, and enjoy our idols of death.
The Lord created our hearts to be addictive for a reason. They were created for Him. He is to be the object of our affections. He is to be our obsession.
Watching the Lord
Becoming lost in God is similar to watching a movie. Something very interesting happens to us as we watch a movie. Because the movie has a story line and something going on, unknowingly we get lost while watching it and we lose ourselves. To some degree, we are no longer self aware as we “get into” the show.
The same thing can happen in our hearts with the Lord. There is much activity in the Spirit of God. He is speaking, He is leading, and He is loving us. The Lord always has something going on. The scripture teaches us in Hebrews 12:2 to “fix our eyes on Jesus…” As you gaze at the Lord Himself and you keep looking, you will be caught up in who He is, what He is doing, and what He is saying. You will leave yourself and become lost in pure holiness and love.
Once we leave the death of our own flesh, and we taste of the purity and love of the Lord, we can never go back. The life of God will become overwhelmingly enjoyable to you. Hopefully you will become ruined for the life of God. The shallowness of this life and the distractions will become more and more distasteful.
Being caught up with God and leaving ourselves allows us to sit with the Lord for long periods of time. When we are not occupied with the business of our own words and thoughts, we are able to enjoy the Lord and soak in His presence.
The Group Dynamic of Holy Spirit Saturation
Not only should we be addicted to the Lord’s life as individuals, but also as a fellowship group. When you get an entire group of people together whose lives are saturated with the Spirit of God and they are settling for nothing less, incredible things happen.
A brother recently sent me an email asking about particular dynamics in the meetings he is a part of. Here was the response I sent him:
“The key is the life of Christ. If there is no life in the meetings, people will not come. If there is the life of Christ in the meetings, over time as Jesus builds it, the right kind of people will come to the meetings. Fervent love for one another and the life of Christ in our meetings are the best evangelism tools we have (John 12.32, John 13:34, Acts 2:41-47).
The Lord’s presence in the meetings will drive some people away, and that is not always a bad thing. Rebels, religious people, legalist, people with hidden agendas, etc. will be repulsed by the simplicity of the Spirit of Jesus in our midst.
Few fellowships flourish because they don’t have much life. Most meetings are spiritually dead. This is true for both traditional church meetings and home gatherings. Traditional churches often have many in attendance because
they have other things to replace the life. Occasionally there are meetings with the life of the Lord present, but it is very rare to experience quality in most Christian gatherings – any Christian gathering.
When I speak of quality, I am referring to again, the “life of Christ in our midst.” If you walk into a gathering of saints, His life is unmistakable to the humble, to the seeking, and to the broken. The life of Christ in our midst is difficult to describe, but let’s just say that it is the Spirit of Jesus Himself being poured out and evident among us. This is not a charismatic emotional experience I’m talking about, although His presence is often undeniable to the emotions.
Several reasons for this lack of life in most meetings:
1. The group has never had their compass set toward life. Their individual lives are dry, yet they are not crying out to God. Many people’s practice of Christianity is only having a belief system, as opposed to a walk of intimacy experiencing the true and living God. Therefore, most don’t even know what to look for and they don’t know what they are missing. The old wine has become good enough. However, when groups are thoroughly leavened with the life of Christ, anything different from the pure life of Christ will become very evident and therefore it will be checked.
2. Many groups don’t know how to open to the Spirit of Christ corporately, so they are only left to flounder, guess, or do whatever it is they do every week. They’ve not been trained to do so. They live shallowly, with their life’s purpose being only accomplishing the things they have to do each day, so rarely are they encountering the living God in their moments. So when they come together with others, the song remains the same.
3. Groups have not and do not practice the discipline of corporate prayer where they learn to “minister to the Lord.” This activity can be observed being practiced in scripture by the early church. In the previous book, “The Way Church Was Meant To Be” there is a chapter called “Well digging groups and Establishing a Beach Head”. This is where the group sets aside time to taste of the pure seed of Christ and to learn to open to the Spirit of God together without the distractions that meetings, teachings, and talking can bring.
4. Many times people show up to meetings empty handed. When we come to a meeting of the saints, we need to come with either something to give and contribute, or with a need. Too many people not participating is dead weight and hinders faith in the plural setting.
The Pure Seed Of the Kingdom
When you open a can of frozen concentrated juice, you have to add water to it so you can drink it. God is like concentrate. His life is strong and pure, through and through. There is no fluff with God. He is pure power, pure love, pure holiness, 100% righteousness, and super concentrated joy. He is anything but watered down. The Spirit of God is extremely potent.
Many times, our individual lives are not filled with the concentrate of Jesus. We have mixture. We are very much diluted. When people are around us they might catch a little whiff of something of the Kingdom every now and then. But rarely do you meet people whose lives have the very strong pure concentrated aroma of the Kingdom.
This is reflected in our meeting times as well. Most Christian meetings are full of many words and songs, but for the most part they are very impotent. There is not usually very much of the super strong, super concentrate, super pure Kingdom of God in our midst. When we all come together, it should be a nuclear explosion of Kingdom quality and life.
God is after quality, not quantity. Individually, as we taste of the quality of the Lord, we must maintain this same standard corporately as well. The teachings and messages we bring should be potent and full of revelation. The songs we sing should be from the Spirit and should fit the need of the moment. We ought to be very sensitive to others, listening for words of exhortation and prophecy. We need to hear the Lord in what we bring to the meetings.
