God is Available

This week, we are starting a brand new series called Connected. We’re going to look at what it means to be Connected to God. What it means to be connected to His presence. What it means to be connected to His promises. We talk about all of these different things within Christianity, especially coming out of our Basics series, reading our bible, praying, taking communion, these are not just things we do, but they are connection points to God.

We are no longer just a human being, we’re connected to the God of the Universe. The God who created everything. Who always has been and always will be. He’s the God who lives outside of time and space.

To describe the greatness of God we use three unique terms. We say God is / / Omniscient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent.

/ / Omniscient

Omniscient means knowing everything. God is All-Knowing.

This does not necessarily mean that God sees the future. One could argue that God does know the future, that is a particular belief that some theologians hold to. If he is outside of time and space then is time irrelevant to him? Does living outside of time mean living in the past, present and future, or is it something we can’t even comprehend? Those are big questions. But what I do know is that / / God sees and knows all that is going on in the here and now.. That’s what All-knowing means, that all that is going on, God knows.

David writes in Psalm 139,

/ / vs 1 You know everything about me.

vs 2 You know when I sit down or stand up.

/ / vs 3 You know when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything I do.

God knows what I am doing, he knows what you are doing, and he knows what’s happening on the other side of the world too. There is nothing hidden from God.

God is all-knowing.

/ / Omnipotent

Omnipotent means having unlimited power. God is All-Powerful.

Psalm 139 again, / / You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb.

When you read through the Genesis account of creation and think of the awesome power of God. I was thinking this week. Listen to this. OK, the sun, our little sun, which is at the center of our little solar system,

/ / 93 million miles from earth.

And is so big that / / 1.3 million earths could fit in the size of the sun.

How big is one million? We don’t often think of it. If you were to count from 0 - 1 million, 1 number every second, no breaks at all for any reason, 24 hours a day, it would take / / 11 days, 13 hours, 46 minutes and 40 seconds… just 1 million. multiply that by 93 to get the distance from here to the sun.

Now, to think of the power of God as our creator, not just of our solar system, but of the entire Universe, it begins to get pretty intense.

Our solar system is like our neighborhood. Our solar system with our one star, the sun, sits in the Milky Way Galaxy. But that Galaxy, according to NASA has anywhere from / / 100 BILLION to 400 BILLION stars, just in the Milky Way.

Remember how long it took to count to 1 million? Well multiply that by 1000 and you get just 1 Billion. Which would take / / 31 years, 258 days, 18 hours… And then you need to multiply by 100 to get that how long it would take to count to 100 Billion… the lowest estimate of how many stars are in JUST our Milky Way Galaxy. You’re looking at counting 1 number every second, without a break for more than 310 years.

Now, I’m not trying to break your brain this morning, but stick with me for a second. That’s just ONE galaxy, and in our known universe, what scientists have been able to see so far, they estimate there are / / 2 TRILLION galaxies. Not 2 trillion stars, not 2 trillion solar systems, but 2 trillion galaxies, and our 1 galaxy has a few hundred billion stars in it.

To me that just blows my mind. And our God created it all. And you can easily go the other way, smaller and smaller and smaller until the very tiniest of our cells structures and see how intricately and uniquely it all works together.

God truly is All-Powerful

/ / Omnipresent

existing everywhere, or everywhere at the same time. God is omnipresent, He is everywhere.

Psalm 139:7-11, / / I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence! If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there. If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me. I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night - but even in darkness I cannot hide from you.

Jesus said in Matthew 28:20, / / And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

The Holy Spirit is in every believer. Jesus said, You know him and he will be IN you.

God is omni-present, present everywhere.

So, these are three attributes that speak of the greatness of God, He is All-knowing, All-powerful, and present everywhere.

Some people actually use this to argue that God couldn’t be these things, and so there is no God. They say, if he’s omniscient, all knowing, then why do people suffer? If he knows and doesn’t stop it, how could he be a good God?

They ask, if God is omnipotent, all-powerful, then why doesn’t he use that power to fix any and every situation?

They ask if he’s omnipresent, why doesn’t he just reveal himself to all of us and get it done with?

Well, that’s the very reason we’re doing this series. Because / / God wants to be a CONNECTED God, not a COMMANDING God.

God does not force you to love him.

God does not make you obey him.

God does not demand you serve him.

Each of those decisions need to be made by you. And God chooses time and time again to lay down his ability to force us to do anything. / / That is the gift of free will. God CAN make us, but CHOOSES not too.

In 1 Corinthians 13, probably the most famous of scriptures on what love is. in vs 4-5 Paul writes, / / Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way.

Listen to how the Message translation of the Bible says that last line, / / [Love] doesn’t force itself on others.

I think we can all agree that love forced on someone isn’t love, is it? In fact, we call that illegal and you’ll get arrested for it. It’s just plain wrong. I can’t force myself on you. I can’t force you to do anything. I can’t force you to love me or even like me.

But God, God could. He is omnipotent, all powerful, after all, isn’t he? I think the greatest act of love is choosing not to force the other person to love you, when you can. We all want to be loved, and God COULD MAKE us love him, but he chooses not to.

So, what’s the opposite of forcing?

The opposite of forcing, I would say is, being available. My message today is titled exactly that.

/ / God is Available.

It’s the invitation. It’s not being forced, but being offered, being asked, being invited into something.

As I was working on this message one of our cats, Libby comes over and gives me the greatest illustration possible. See, if you’re a cat person, which, I guess I would have to admit that I am. We have Libby and Moonlight and they’ve been with us for 6 months now and they are just classic cat with me. if I pick them up, they instantly want me to put them down. There is NO forcing myself on them. They won’t have it. And they will actually both rub up against my feet and my legs non-stop, constantly, but, as soon as I pick them up, “Nope, put me down.”

But, if I simply make myself available. See, if I’m in my office, like I was on Friday afternoon, working on this sermon, typing this very section about the opposite of forcing, who comes walking up, looking up at me. Libby. And that to me is an opportunity to give an invitation. I simply lean back in my chair, move my arm and she decides, ok, I’m going to jump up on you. She’ll curl right up on my chest, yes, making it very difficult to work.

One of the things we’ll run into probably a few times as we journey through this series is pride and humility.

I’ve noticed that when someone says to someone else, “Listen, I am here for you, if you need anything, do not hesitate to call me.”

How many in this room have said that to someone? Ya, most of you, and I’m assuming most every hand went up at home as well.

Now, here’s the real question. How many times have you actually had the person you said that to reach out for help?

You’ve made the offer, you’re available, you were 100% genuine about that offer. Money, time, effort, whatever it is, you were genuine when you said call on me, I’m here for you. What is it that gets in the way? Pride. / / Pride will rob you from experiencing connection.

I know I can go to you for help, you’re just a phone call away, but something is stopping me. Either I don’t want to show weakness. I don’t want a handout. I don’t want you to see I’m vulnerable or weak or broken. So, I endure the pain, the sadness, the loneliness, the pressure…alone.

My cat clearly loves being pet, I mean, when she finally does come up on me, she purrs and purrs and purrs. But it takes her forever to get there. And I always reassure her, “You don’t need to be afraid of me. I’ll never hurt you. I’m right here for you.” In fact, most nights I give an all out call, “Listen, Libby & Moonlight, you could be cuddling with me getting loved on and pet right now, I’m just saying...” but they’ll come around in their own time.

What’s my point. My point is this. I’m always available. Even when I’m working at my desk, I try and make it work for libby to sit on me while I’m typing. The same is true for Kaylee, my daughter, and maybe she would have been a better example than our cats, but that’s ok. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing, Kaylee likes to sit on me. She really is just like a cat. But even when I’m at my desk working, even though sometimes I do say I need to work, I pretty much can’t say no to that little face, and she climbs up and just plops down on me, no matter what I’m doing.

But just like those cats, if I walk up to Kaylee and say, “Give me a hug, I need a hug.” And I grab her and pick her up, what happens, “Put me down, put me down… nooooooo....”

But at two o’clock in the morning, when I wake up to this little person standing beside my bed tapping my arm, saying, “daddy, I want to cuddle.” I know it’s because I’ve made myself available. I haven’t always, and don’t always do everything right as a dad, but she knows I’m available, and when she needs that cuddle, when she needs that connection, she knows I’m there for her.

As we start this new series this is what I want you to really understand today.

/ / God is Available. As often and as much as you need.

God is available to you and WANTS to connect with you. And that’s what this is all about. To be connected to God.

So, one of the things I said earlier is that God is Omnipresent, or present everywhere. So, I want to talk about that for a moment because I believe that God continually makes an invitation for us to Connect with him. Just like I am constantly making an invitation to my cats, come cuddle with me, or to Kaylee, come sit with me, God makes himself available, makes the invitation for us to connect with him. And that is different than the omni-present, or the ever present God.

I like how Robert Morris talks through this. There are three different aspects of the presence of God:

/ / The Omni-presence of God

As we talked, this is God being everywhere

The Inner Presence of God

This is when the Holy Spirit comes to live inside of us. The bible talks about this that the Holy Spirit will be IN us, Jesus said.

The Manifest Presence of God

Manifest means / / to be clear or obvious to the eye or mind, to display or show by one’s acts or appearance; to demonstrate. The Manifest Presence of God is when He makes himself KNOWN to us.

In the very beginning, this is what life was like, the Bible says that God was walking in the garden in the cool of the day. His manifest, made known, presence was there with Adam & Eve. It wasn’t that he was just everywhere, but that he was making himself available, making himself known to them.

But what happened. What did humanity lose when Adam & Eve fell, and what did Jesus restore on the cross, and that is this manifest presence of God, the invitation to be close to God.

In Genesis 3, Adam & Eve are in the garden, the devil has deceived them and they have eaten the fruit from the only tree that God told them not to, and vs 8 says, / / When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the Lord God among the trees. Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

The ESV says, / / [they] hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

So, that wouldn’t be possible if God was ONLY Omni-Present, right? If he is everywhere, and as David says in Psalm 139, where could I go to hide from your presence?

So there are clearly different aspects of the presence of God.

And the other one, which we’ll really get into in one of the coming weeks is the Inner Presence of God. Jesus said of the Holy Spirit, in John 14:17, / / He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be IN you.

Jesus, at the moment of the baptism had received the Holy Spirit, so this whole time the Holy Spirit has been present with the disciples. But, Jesus is saying, Just like I received, you too will receive the infilling of the Holy Spirit. And we’ll look into that in the coming weeks.

But today I want to dig a bit more into the manifest, or made known, presence of God.

This is the connected God. He wants to connect with us.

Alright, remember in the last few weeks we’ve read from John 10 where it says that the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy, and that Jesus there is warning about false teachers and false messiahs, those who would claim to be the messiah sent from God. But that we also recognize that this clearly indicates the mandate of satan. His mission is to steal, kill and destroy.

From the very beginning, the goal of the devil has been to get between us and God. If you read the story of Adam and Eve in the garden you very quickly see that the goal was to get into Eve’s head with, “Is God hiding something from you? Is he telling you the whole story?” Essentially saying, “You can’t trust him.” And when we don’t feel like we can trust someone, we act differently, we become apprehensive. This is why I keep telling my cats they can trust me.

See, in Genesis 3:8, that we read earlier, when Adam & Eve heard God approaching them, they hid. Why did they hide? / / The enemy will always try to use shame to get you to hide YOUR face from God. And this tactic has been the same from day 1 to today.

My message today is entitled God is Available because this is one of God’s primary objectives, to be available, just like I make myself available to my cats, to my daughter, God makes himself available to us. Even in the garden, what was he doing? He was calling out for Adam & Eve. He says in Genesis 3:8, Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”. If God knows all, if he is omniscient, all knowing, he already knows Adam & Eve have sinned. They actually don’t have anything to fear. I’m always trying to help Kaylee understand this. If she’s done something wrong, it’s better she come to us FIRST than for us to find out some other way.

See, as much as God is always making himself Available, / / the enemy will always try to get YOU to make YOURself UnAvailable. And he does this by heaping on shame for our actions. Our actions, when we sin, when we fall short of the standard of God for our lives, the enemy will try to use that to cause us to make ourselves unAvailable, because he’s convinced us we need to feel shame.

But the reality is, because of the blood of Jesus, it doesn’t matter WHAT we have done, we can boldly enter the presence of God because we are redeemed by His sacrifice. We do not need to hide from the presence of God.

/ / Shame will say, “I must hide from God...” But Love says, “I must get to my Father...”

See, when we do something wrong, when we don’t measure up, our default SHOULD be, “God, I need you. Father, I need your help, your guidance, your love, your mercy, your grace...”

Instead, what does the devil try to do? “You’re not worthy of his love.” “there you go, messing up again.” “You just can’t get it right.” “Look at your life, such a screw up”… and we cower in shame and fear rather than running to our Father who IS love.

How would the story of Genesis be different if upon eating the fruit and realizing they were naked, thought, “wait, what just happened....God, help, we just did something horrible..... why do we feel this way??? why do I feel exposed, why do I feel naked....”

Sin will always try to get between you and God, not because it has the right to, but because although God is available, we can make ourselves unavailable.

Paul said in Romans 8:38-39, / / And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow - not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below - indeed, nothing in all create will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If nothing can separate you from God’s love, can we agree that no matter the situation, no matter the circumstance, no matter what we’ve done, God is ALWAYS available?

I can’t tell you how many times I have allowed shame to ruin my connection with God. Maybe a season of life where I wasn’t reading my bible on a regular basis, or I wasn’t praying, or didn’t feel connected in that way, and the shame of that would actually STOP me from starting because the enemy was trying so hard to convince me I’d been away for too long. I’d not been a good son for too long, so now the Father doesn’t want to be connected with me. Or I have to go through some sort of penance before I can be close again.

Jesus tells a story, we call it the parable of the prodigal son. I’m not going to read the whole thing to you this morning, but the basic story is this. A man has 2 sons, and in the culture of that day, the wealth of a father was passed down to his sons as their inheritance when he died. The oldest son would get a double portion and the other sons a single portion, meaning, the oldest got twice as much as the others. So this man, with 2 sons, his younger son, who isn’t even the one who gets the larger portion, comes to him and says, “I want my inheritance now.” basically saying, “I don’t want to wait for you to die...” He takes his inheritance and goes away to another land and wastes it all, drinking, drugs, prostitutes, gambling, you name it, this kid did it. And he burns through the whole thing. Suddenly, all those friends he had were gone. He ends up hiring himself out to work on a pig farm, feeding the pigs, pretty much the worst job for a young Jewish man to have, tending unclean animals. And he’s so poor he’s eating the food that he’s feeding the pigs.

This is a depiction of someone who turns their back on God and wastes their life to the n’th degree. ok. There’s no one worse here. If you think you’re bad, this dude has you beat.

So, he suddenly realizes, wait a second, my dad has servants in his house better dressed and eating better than me. Maybe if I go back, beg for forgiveness, not to be treated like a son, but just to be a hired servant in my Father’s house, that will be better than hanging out here and eating pig feed just to survive.. So he plans this elaborate speech, how he’s going to beg his father… but listen to how Jesus wraps this story up. And this is in Luke 15 and we’re going to read vs 20-24.

/ / So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son.’

But his father said to the servants, ‘Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. And kill the calf we have been fattening. We must celebrate with a feast, for this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found.’ So the party began.

And so it is with each one of us. This is the heart of God for you. It’s the heart of God for me. To be connected.

I want to point a few things out from this passage that I hope you not just walk away with today, but really embrace as we move forward through this series.

/ / God is WAITING

I would almost say God is impatiently waiting for you. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming.

What that says to me is that the father sat everyday since his son left, waiting for him to come home. He didn’t go after him. He didn’t chase him down because he knew that his son needed to come to terms with his own needs and desires. Like we said earlier, He didn’t force what’s best on his son just to make it happen. We all know at a certain age if we try to force on our children how they should live, we really only push them away. So, he lets him go, lets him find out life himself, but never, not for one second, does he stop hoping and WAITING for his son to return.

/ / There was not and is not a moment where God is not waiting for you to be with him. He loves connecting with you.

/ / His objective is LOVE

Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.

Like the son felt, the enemy will try and convince you that you need to gravel and beg and pine for the lowest place in the father’s house, but God is literally waiting to pounce on you. If you ever read the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, you know that Hobbes would wait all day for Calvin to come home from school, and just waiting to pounce on him. This is God waiting for you. Get ready for the hugs and kisses.

/ / Why is it that we seem to wait for the scolding and correction, when God is waiting to hug and kiss us?

You can be assured of this. Every time you come to God, the response is the same, JOY in seeing you. He’s been waiting and his objective is love.

/ / There is no second rate

You’re not second best, you’re not second rate. You are precious to God. I've said it before and I’m going to keep saying it. God broke the mold with you! You are a unique, one of a kind, special, wonderful, fantastic child of God. And this son, who thinks he no longer deserves even to be a son, let alone celebrated, comes home to hugs, and kisses, and while he’s trying to recite his perfect little speech his father doesn’t even pay attention to it, and says, "Go get some clothes and jewelry and let’s have a party, get the good food we’ve been saving!”

At the beginning of this series, I want you to understand that / / God WANTS to be CONNECTED to you. When you come to him in worship, when you go to him at your home in your quiet time, when you are about your life and you take time to focus on him, he wants to manifest his presence. He wants to make his presence known to you and do for you something you couldn’t ever do for yourself.

So, if the heart of God is to be connected, and the goal of the enemy is to kill, steal and destroy, then we need to be aware that he will try to ruin, or block that connection.

/ / WARNING: SIN

Sin, although we are redeemed through the blood of Jesus Christ, the enemy will try to use sin to cause a rift between us and God, trying to convince us we don’t deserve it, we don’t measure up etc...

Like we read about in the garden, Adam & Eve, when they had sinned they hid from God.

Genesis 3:8 says, “…and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”

This took me a long time to learn when I struggled with certain things in my life. There is no time period you must stay away before you return to God. There is no penance you must make. You simply run back to your father and fall into his arms of mercy.

Do you know what the definition of / / Penance is? Voluntary self-punishment as an outward expression of repentance for having done wrong. I choose to punish myself… what?

Penance is only mentioned in bible on one occasion, and only in two translations. Isaiah 58:5 of the NLT says, / / You humble yourselves by going through the motions of penance, bowing your heads like reeds bending in the wind. Is this what you call fasting? Do you really think this will please the Lord? No, this is the kind of fasting I want: Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. Share your food with the hungry and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes o those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help.

I read that to say this one important thing. When it comes to sin, don’t let it distance you from God, let it be what causes you to run to him and lean on Him. You’ll never be free from sin by trying to conquer it yourself… That’s not how it works. Rely on, lean on, run to the mercy and grace of the God who gave his own LIFE to set you free. Like Isaiah said, Penance? no, mercy....compassion… love…

/ / WARNING: SHAME

In the next chapter, if you know the story, Cain, one of Adam & Eve’s sons kills his brother Abel. And because he kills his brother, God punishes him and says, / / “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground! Now you are cursed and banished from the ground, which has swallowed your brother’s blood. No longer will the ground yield good crops for you, no matter how hard you work! From now on you will be a homeless wanderer on the earth.”

Ok, that’s certainly not fun, but listen to what Cain says in response, / / “My punishment is too great for me to bear! You have banished me from the land and from your presence; you have made me a homeless wanderer. Anyone who finds me will kill me!”

Talk about 0 - 60, right?… 2 things here, first, did God say you’ll die? no. Did God say someone was going to kill you? No. Where’s he getting that from. And now the worst part. You have banished me from the land… ok, yes, I can see how you get that, God said you are banished from the ground..ok, but then he says, “and from your presence...” but God didn’t say that. Listen, Cain just killed his brother, and for that there are consequences, but God didn’t banish him from his presence, I think Cain let the shame of his sin push him away.

I want to make a distinction this morning. Shame is horrible, it’s wicked, the enemy uses it to cause division. But there’s a difference between guilt and shame. I would say that Guilt is simply a recognition of wrong doing. Basically our conscience kicking in saying, “hey, why’d you do that? that was wrong.” The definition of Guilt is the fact of having committed a specified or implied offense or crime. So we are guilty of something. It’s just a fact. we did something wrong.

Shame on the other hand, by definition is “a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.” It’s not a recognition of wrong-doing, it’s humiliation because of that wrong doing. Guilt will let you know there’s something wrong that needs to be made right. Shame will disqualify you and cause you to want to make yourself unavailable because of something you did wrong.

/ / Guilt says, You DID something wrong. This is healthy because it allows you to make it right.

/ / Shame says, You ARE wrong because of something you did. This is unhealthy because it causes you to hide.

/ / WARNING 3: DISOBEDIENCE

Do you know the story of Jonah? Jonah was a prophet of God in the Old Testament, and God told him to go to a city called Nineveh and give tell them that they were being judged by God because they were doing so much evil. But, Jonah doesn’t want to. So, in Jonah 1:3 it says, / / But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction to get away from the Lord. He went down to the port of Joppa, where he found a ship leaving for Tarshish. He bought a ticket and went on board, hoping to escape from the Lord by sailing to Tarshish.

The ESV says, / / But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord....So he paid the fair…to go with them…away from the presence of the Lord.

I do not believe in any way shape or form God makes himself unavailable. I believe God is always available. God is like the father Jesus told the story about, waiting and waiting and watching in the distance so that when he sees you returning He runs and pounces on you like Hobbes waiting for Calvin after school.

But available in a relationship is only good if the other person returns to pursue. If we are making ourselves unavailable, we will miss connecting with God.

So, what’s Jonah’s life showing us here? How can we actively be leaving the presence of God? By not doing what he told you to do.

I’m not talking about making mistakes, God doesn’t cast us out of his presence for making mistakes. I’m talking about wilful disobedience. You know God has said to do something, and you are actively not doing it, or doing the opposite. Jonah went in the opposite direction.

What has God spoken to your life, either through his word, through a message here at church, in your own quiet time, what has God spoken to you that you’re not being obedient to?

This is about connection. About being connected. Think of it this way. An outlet on a wall, is always available, right? The power is always there. But does it work if the cord isn’t plugged in?

No, of course not. How many times have we woken up, a couple hours into our day and our phone is about to die and we’re like, “what happened? Oh no, I put my phone on my nightstand and forgot to plug it in...” The source of power is useless if it’s not plugged in to.

Another little illustration.

The difference between the Omni-presence of God and the Manifest presence, or made known, presence of God. Kelley and I have a wonderful marriage. But sometimes when we’re sitting in our living room, I’m in my chair and she’s on the couch. We are in each other’s presence, but there is no connection being made, or very limited. We may be enjoying being in the person’s presence, but we’re not connecting.

But, if I get up, go over to the couch and sit next to her, sure enough, we’re very quickly holding hands, or leaning on each other, or a leg gets flopped up on my lap.... connection has been made.

There’s a difference isn’t there? To be in someone’s presence, and to be connected to them, to make your presence made known to them. How many families are living in each other’s presence, but not experiencing the joy and connection of truly having that presence made known? How many couples are suffering in their relationship because they are around each other, but not truly experiencing each other.

How many people come to church, and are in the presence of God, but never truly experience his presence. You can be praying, telling God what you need. You can be reading the bible, and not experiencing the presence of God in the way he wants you to. Do you understand what I’m saying?

/ / God is always there, he is omni-present, but he wants to connect with you in a very person, tangible, made known way with his manifest presence. So, over these next few weeks we’re going to talk about being connected. Connected to God, connected to His presence, connected to the Holy Spirit, to the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Connected. Because God is available, and I want to be Connected to Him.