Something For Those Who Believe 5

Something For Those Who Believe 5

This is a series that I believe the Holy Spirit wants me to put in my blog. I pray that the readers will finish reading all parts of the series and get something from it. These are things that we need to do in order to seek the real living God. I am not qualified to write this series because I am also at the learning stage. But, it is God’s Spirit that will speak to you through these articles.

“Missing Key: Intimacy with Jesus”

Need I say more?

The very foundation of Christianity is love. Not just love, God love. Jesus love.

You can believe all you want. You can repent all you want. You can surrender everything. But without love, it is all pointless.

Christianity is pointless without a passionate love for Jesus Christ. It is all in vain. Jesus died for the intimate love of his people to Him. This is what God is deeply after, our love for Him. Our love for Him produces all the things He wants us to have. Our love for Jesus helps us believe without a doubt, repent truthfully and surrender totally.

I will repeat. It is not just an ordinary love but a passionate love. It is a love to the point of oneness. One cannot live without the other and vice versa. It is an overflow of deep affection, deep caring, deep emotions of love to one another.

This kind of love makes the lovers totally focused on one another. Wala silang paki-alam sa mundo. Maski mag PDA sila diyan, wala silang paki-alam because they are totally consumed with passionate love.

Intimacy with Jesus is compared to the intimate relationship of a man to a woman as designed by God in the beginning. This is the type of love that God wants us to have with His son. That is why Jesus calls us His bride. The bride is totally crazy over Jesus. She just wants to be with Him all the time, hug each other, kiss each other, speak soothing words to each other.

Intimate. Very intimate. This is the kind of love that will make us discover the true, powerful and genuine God. Without love, everything is nothing. God is love. Only love will find the one true Love.

This is the major missing key to a Christian life. Christians are so busy with their ministry, so consumed with their service for God, so consumed with the gifts and miraculous manifestations of the Spirit to the point of forgetting to fellowship with their First Love.

We are like Martha in the bible. Martha was doing all the household chores to serve Jesus, their guest. But Mary was just there, listening to Him, sitting on His feet. Mary and Martha are depictions of Christians today. We are either Martha or Mary. Jesus favors Mary. He wants us to be like Mary of Bethany. He wants us to be intimate with Him. He wants to have a bride-bridegroom relationship with us.

That’s right! We, young men, are also called bride. Jesus has no gender. We are to be intimate with Him spiritually. You cannot be intimate with Christ carnally. That’s impossible. Man and women are to be intimate with God spiritually for He is a Spirit.

This verse should make sense:

²² And He went through the cities and villages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem. ²³ Then one said to Him, “Lord, are there few who are saved?”
And He said to them, ²⁴ “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able. ²⁵ When once the Master of the house has risen up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open for us,’ and He will answer and say to you, ‘I do not know you, where you are from,’ ²⁶ then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets.’ ²⁷ But He will say, ‘I tell you I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity.’

Luke 13: 22-26

The narrow gate is Jesus, Himself. Unless we become intimate with Him, we cannot enter heaven because there is no other way inside. You will notice that Jesus said the same thing on the parable of the ten virgins and when He divided the righteous and the evil. He said “I do not know you.”

Knowing a person requires intimacy. Intimacy includes spending time with that person, talking to that person, opening up to that person, being with that person in every kind of circumstance. You cannot really know a person unless you spend many times with him or her. You cannot really know me unless you have spent times with me. You do not know me as much as my brother and my mother know me. We are intimate with one another because we spend time together almost everyday.

This is the love that Jesus wants to have from us. His love for us is unquestionable. He wants our love to be this intimate. He wants us to respond to His love the way a bride responds to her bridegroom.

During the rapture, Jesus will only take those who spend time with Him everyday. Those who get to know Him inside and out. Those whose delight is in Him.

I do not say I am at this state already. But, everyday, I just want to spend time with Jesus. My love for Him is starting to grow. I am becoming more spiritually hungry for Him which is quite surprising for me. How come I was not like this before? Ever since I decided to seek the genuine God, my hunger for the Lord has been increasing. I am beginning to feel fire in the love that I have for Jesus. I am becoming madly in love with the Lord and I am very new at this stuff.

Being intimately in love with Jesus makes Him more alive in me. Changes are taking place. Miracles are taking place. However, since the enemy does not want me to be intimate with Jesus, the enemy’s attacks have leveled up as well. He will do His best to break this intimacy.

I do not fear though. As long as I cling to my Beloved, I am safe. I am like a nail. If the devil pounds on me more, I’ll just go deeper and deeper in His heart.

I still need to surrender everyday. Intimacy requires surrender. Imagine a girlfriend so consumed with her career. She is not the type of girl a guy would like to be with for the rest of his life. An ideal girlfriend for us guys is someone who can’t get enough of us. Someone who just can’t help but adore us, serve us, make us happy. Existing pa kaya ang mga babaeng ganun? (Lord: Yes)

Same with girls! I bet they want a guy who just can’t help but spend more time with her, who cares for all her needs, who encourage her in dark times, who loves her just the way she is.

With intimate love, we learn to surrender, let go of pride and be transformed.

Intimacy with Jesus allows Him to share secrets to us. He will share secret meanings of some verses in the Bible that no bible scholar will ever know. He will share kingdom secrets that you can use for your own advantage. He will teach you things you will not learn on the internet. You will discover how human-like Jesus is, how He can relate to what we go through in life.

You will know Him and He will know you. You will enjoy Him and He will enjoy you. It is already heaven on earth once you get to be close to Jesus. And yes, I am enjoying every moment with Him. Slowly but surely, He is beginning to take me to places where I have not been. Changes are taking place in my character. Habits are broken. Words spoken change. Just plain awesome.

The Spirit of God is now calling His people out of Babylon. Babylon is the great city of sins, worldly riches and idolatry. He is calling His people out to return to their First Love who is Jesus.

We are the Laodicean Church prophesied in the Bible.

Revelations 3:14-22

¹⁴ “And to the angel of the church of the Laodiceans^[f] write,
‘These things says the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God: ¹⁵ “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. ¹⁶ So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot,^[g] I will vomit you out of My mouth. ¹⁷ Because you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked— ¹⁸ I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see. ¹⁹ As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent. ²⁰ Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. ²¹ To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.
²² “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”’”

Lukewarm Christians are Christians who pursue God and money or riches or wealth. Lukewarm Christians are those who pursue God AND _______. The Lord said you cannot serve both God and moolah. Not necessarily moolah but anything else besides God.

Some christians who are active in the ministry might be lukewarm because they are too busy serving the Lord with no time for God only. In the verse above, He encourages intimacy with us. The door that He knocks on is our hearts. He wants us to open up to Him so that He can have fellowship with us.

Basing on the context of Jesus’ message for the laodicean church, it seems they are deluded by worldly things. They operate in the natural and not in the spiritual.

When we become intimate with Christ, we become more and more sensitive to the spiritual world. We will begin to see truth that was right in front of us yet we did not see before. The Word of God will become simple to understand. The promises of God in the spirit start to manifest in the physical. We will begin to realize our own selves, our own faults. Instead of looking at others mistakes or faults or imperfections, we will begin to see ours. And we will begin to change our ways through His help.

Intimacy with Jesus fulfills the greatest commandments: love God and others. This is what Christianity is all about – loving Jesus. Our job is to love God above all and He will do the rest. A Christian’s job description is to love God and because he loves God, He will work in him so that he will be able to love others as well.

Believing, repenting and surrendering are after effects of an intimate love for Jesus. Without intimate love, believing, repenting and surrendering are just another set of rules.

Aren’t you tired of rules? I can write as much as I can but if you do not love Jesus, these words will not make sense. This whole blog will not make sense if you do not love the Lord. The Bible will not make sense if you do not love God.

The reason why I do not see a living active God before is because I loved God’s promises not God Himself. Kaya nung hindi natupad yung promises ni God, I felt backsliding. But I believed something was wrong and I was right.

Believing, repenting, totally surrendering and intimately loving Jesus are things I did not understand fully. I realized that God is not a magician who performs magic when we want to see magic.

God wants us to do what He requires us to do which is to love Him above all, not His promises, but Himself. And out of love is faith, everyday repentance and surrender and most importantly, fellowship. And out of intimacy are the supernatural manifestations of a God Spirit.

Every day, have a time to be alone with the Lord. We often pray to God because we need something from Him. Try just having fellowship. Imagine him as a friend. You do not meet with friends only because you need something from them, right? Yung tipong gusto mo lang siyang ma-solo. Gusto mo lang siyang makasama.

Example. Every night, before I sleep. I say. (Sample lang ha, medyo personal at private ang pinag-uusapan namin ni Lord)

“Lord, I just want to be with you tonight.” I imagine Him sitting right next to me wearing an exciting smile. “Lord, how was your day?” I will stay silent and await for His reply. Sometimes He will ask me “How was yours?” Tapos magkukwento ako. “Lord, si ganito-ganyan, nakaka-asar kanina. Lord, ganyan-ganyan.” Then I will just stay silent and wait for Him speak. Or minsan, dak-dak nako ng dakdak. But God loves listening to me.

Then out of the blue, I suddenly imagined Him feeding me with grapes. “Thanks, Lord.” Then I will imagine myself leaning on His shoulders and it always makes me feel so relaxed and comfortable.

Sometimes we laugh hardly. Sometimes, I cry out of joy or desperation. Sometimes I see Him cry because I did something wrong.

People who is not open to spiritual things will find it weird. But it is through this fellowship that I get my strength back, that I get answers to my questions, the encouragement I needed, the care I sought for. It is in this fellowship that I get to know more about the Lord. While writing, I can’t help but get excited to my alone time tonight with Jesus, my Beloved. My meeting with Jesus every night is becoming the highlight of my day.

When with Jesus, I feel like a clingy child again. I felt free and joyful. Just amazing. Intimate love for Christ will change your Christian life. Sobra.

Some might say that it is just too much imagination. God has a way to prove to me that every night fellowship we had was real and not fictitious. It’s like connecting the dots. We will talk about a certain topic for the night and the next day, that specific topic becomes so relevant for the day.

I’m not yet at the point where Jesus tells me specific things that will happen in the future or an open-heaven vision or an actual visitation of Jesus. Though I am hoping, I am just enjoying where I am now. But He does give me dreams with messages.

Again, like believing, repenting and surrendering, intimate love is a choice. When you become intimately in love with Jesus, you become consumed by Him. Your heart is full of Jesus and your words only speak of Jesus. This is the bride. This is what God wants us to become.

When I speak to Christians, I have the ability to see if he or she is a bride or not. The bride will speak more of Jesus and his/her spiritual experiences with Jesus. An ordinary Christian will talk more of promises and how to apply God’s word to everyday life.

Nothing’s wrong with the latter. The problem is that too much of the promises make us focus more on the promises, not on the One who made the promise.

A truly spirit-led Christian is hungering for Jesus because the Spirit’s job is to testify about Christ.

---> Part 6