John 16-17

I want to talk to you tonight about something that is really simple, you’re not going to be blown away at how deep or profound it is. At the same time, it’s a very mysterious truth and it takes a lifetime to understand and practice.

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This practice will change the way you relate to God in your day to day life. It will help you when you feel alone and wonder if God is near. It will be with you when temptation strikes and you are battling to follow God over sin. It will be with you when doubts and anxieties are heavy on you. This practice will help you grow as a Christian and grow closer to God.

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I struggle with this practice and yet when I have done it, my Christian life has had a sweetness to it.

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What is the practice?

Being Mindful of God’s presence in my life and communing with Him‌

Beep - beep -beep story. Bad car crash - season of my life where God just felt so far - I was seeing suffering everyday and I couldn’t reconcile suffering and God being near, he didn’t feel near. My brain was theologically combusting. And in that season I began to sense God was drawing me out of my mind, which is where I often life, and inviting me to experience Him in a new way.

Being mindful of his presence and communing with Him

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So tonight I want to help us see from John 16 and 17 how Jesus teaches us to commune with Him. To be mindful of his presence.

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In chapter 16 we pick up where Jesus has told his disciples he is going to go away, they are filled with sorrow but Jesus says it’s actually better for them that he go away so that the Holy Spirit can come and be with all of them. And we pickup reading in v32

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v32- “you will leave me alone…”

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Jesus is foreshadowing what is about to happen in a few chapters. Jesus and his disciples, his closest friends, are going to go to a garden to pray because Jesus knows he is about to be arrested and they go but all of his disciples fall asleep when Jesus asks them to pray.

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Then Jesus gets arrested and they all end up leaving him. Judas, one of his friends and disciples betrays him and sells him to the government. Peter even denies knowing him. All of Jesus closest earthly friends abandon him.

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He is alone.

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What does the text say? “Yet… I am not alone… because the Father is with me.” So is he alone or not alone?

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Jesus’ connection with His Father is so real, so personal, so intimate, that in a moment where everyone has left Him he says, I am not alone. Someone is with me, my Father. When I read that, I said, I want that. I want that type of communion that type of intimacy with the Father that Jesus has.

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Then in Chapter 17 we see Jesus enter into a time of prayer for his disciples and look at

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Verse 11 - “so that they may be one as we are one”

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Verse 20-21 “I pray not only for these, but also for those who believe in me through their word. 21 May they all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us”

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Verse 26 - “I made your name known to them and will continue to make it known, so that the love you have loved me with may be in them and I may be in them.”

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It seems to me, that one of the deepest desires for Jesus as he was leaving his disciples is the same desire he has for us. To learn deep communion with God the Father.

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Here is the only thing I am trying to get you to see tonight -

Do you commune deeply with God?

1- Do you know God or simply know about Him?‌

Look at v3 KNOW

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There is a big difference between knowing about and knowing. Think of popular celebrities if you’re a big fan of theirs you know about them, you could name where they were born and what movies they were in or what songs they sing. You could name all kinds of stats you know about them.

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But you don’t know them. You don’t have a deep intimate friendship with them. Some of us this is how we approach God. We know facts about Him and some bible stories. But you don’t know him deeply, you don’t commune with him.

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That word know in v3 is a greek word that implies a deep intimate connectedness. It is used to talk about a marriage between a man and a woman and the deep connectedness between them. This isn’t simple I know facts and stats and verses, this is a deep, profound togetherness.

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Why don’t we experience this?

2- Do you compartmentalize your spiritual life?

One of the reasons we don’t experience this deep togetherness with God is because we compartmentalize our spiritual life. God in this box here, Sundays and Wednesday's and if Chris is around. But the rest of my days, those are mine. God’s over here in this box and all the rest of my life is without Him.

A lot of us view our lives like a desk drawers. We have one real life and one spiritual stuff.

‌Ask yourself: on any given day, what most influences the way that I think about myself and my life? What is the driving factor for the majority of what I think, say, and do?

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Jesus is trying to get us to merge the drawers. To where your spiritual life is present and influences everything in your life. Where God is with you at school and when you are at home and when you are playing baseball and when you are doing homework…

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Many of us think about our spiritual lives like this: We have all of our days activities, 6 hours at school, 3 hours homework, 2 hours eating, 3 hours sports and then we try to give God 30 minutes. Which isn’t bad, we do need set aside time with God.

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Perhaps a better way to think about our day to day lives though, is rather than only setting aside time for God here and there, what if we attempted to bring God into the many other areas of our lives? Don’t you think this is what Jesus is getting at when he prays for us that “Him and the Father may be in us”?

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What can this look like?

3 - Don’t rely on your feelings

How you feel does not dictate reality. We live in a time where feelings are elevated so high in how we think. Feelings are good gauges, but they are not guides. What we learn from Jesus here is that even when the Father feels far, because we have the spirit within us, God himself dwells in us. He is near.

4- How do we practice mindfulness of God’s presence and commune with Him?

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We overcomplicate it - I think back to when I was in college and even High School and my spirituality had this pureness to it, I just wanted to be with God. I wanted to be mindful of Him. But you grow up and think about things more deeply and suddenly you complicate what it means to be with God. Live with God. That God is with you. And life gets busier, you get a job and then married then kids and you suddenly have all these pressures on you that can seem to change your relationship with God.

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In studying this chapter I felt convicted, I have really fallen out of practice with simply being with God. Being mindful of him like those earlier days.

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What could it look like?

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today at molcajete - just talking to God then went on a drive. Constant prayer.

before preaching, reciting God’s word to myself.

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I want this for you, for us all, to grow in this. To deeply be with God. To talk to him as a friend, to be more and more aware of his presence in us. Christ is with us. In The practice of the presence of God by Father Lawrence he says:

“There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful, than that of a continual conversation with God; those only can comprehend it who practice and experience it.”

God is near to you. Nearer than you know. Near in suffering, near in temptations,