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A dear friend comes to you telling you that they have fallen in love with someone and they are so excited about the relationship. There is only one problem; the other person acts lovingly toward them and is considerate, giving and all the other qualities one would want in a relationship but they won’t open up. It seems that the other person is guarded, holding back some of themselves, not giving themselves totally to the relationship.
What would you advise this person to do? What if it were they who were the one holding back, not opening up, what would you say then? Maybe you are in that kind of relationship where one of you is holding back, not giving yourself totally to the other. What are you or they missing out on if that is the case? Sure you are missing the intimacy that you could experience with the other person, that deep connection we make when we open our lives up to another. People who have been burned in relationship are the most difficult to open up because they know what it feels like to have your guts ripped out by someone you love. So, they tend to hold back, are reserved with their whole self, so not to get hurt like that again. It will take the right person with patience and perseverance to get into their lives again in deep intimate ways. When that person comes along they will once again open up and trust and give finding the intimacy we all long for.
There is one who waits for us to come to Him with open hearts and spirits to develop that deep relationship with. One, who will never let us down, hurt us or walk away from us and has great patient perseverance. It is the Lord who waits behind the veil of us to come. He waits for us to remove the veil that we put up that separates us from the depth of relationship He desires with us and that we truly desire but are unwilling to risk tearing down. It is because we refuse to tear down the veil that separates our hearts from His that we do not have the depth of relationship with God we truly desire. The veil separating us is the sin nature, shutting out the light of God that wants to enter in. We have failed to tear it away because we allow our sin nature to go unchecked, unjudged for the evil that it is. We have failed to crucify it and its sinful desires. Too often we excuse it away as our being only human and the like. Rom. 6:6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— We fail to allow the sin nature to be completely crucified because we are not honest with ourselves about it, seeing it for what it is.
Is there anything you would not do for the one you truly love? If we truly desired to pursue a deep relationship with God, a burning passion for Him in our spirits and hearts, we would push through the veil of sin that separates us from God, facing our weaknesses asking God to forgive us for those sins that have separated us. We would then ask Him to go to work in us cleansing us and bringing us to the place He desires us to be. Gal. 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Heb. 12:1-3 In our verses here we have an encouragement to throw off all that hinders us from having the kind of relationship with God that He truly desires and the one we truly desire. We can see from times past that there were those who were able to do this, those who are listed in chapter 11. They had a depth of relationship with God that no matter what they were fully invested in their relationship with God. They are our examples of where we need to be heading. Getting rid of those things that hinder us, things that weigh us down, slow us down, in having the kind of relationship God wants for us with Him. We need to fix our eyes on the goal of relationship with God through Christ, just as Jesus had His eyes focused on the goal of our salvation, pushing through all the obstacles that would keep us from God. Jesus is our greatest example of what it means to push forward for the sake of relationship. Just as Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before Him, of opening the way for us into a relationship with Him, and the Father through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in us, so we must endure. Phil. 2:12 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, We have to ask ourselves if we will allow our selfish sin nature to keep us from a burning relationship with God. That self- righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-loathing, self-admiration or any other of the self’s in us that keep us from the true depth of love we can experience with God. Gal. 5:24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Will we not stop and recognize the things in our lives that keep us from God, the things that weigh us down. Will we allow the light of God to shine into our lives and expose those things that are weighing us down, holding us back, so that we may confess and turn from them? Eph. 5:8-17
We will only experience this when we experience God moving in our spirits, by allowing Him to go to work in us to destroy all that would keep us from the depth of relationship we long for. 1 Peter 1:2 who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood: Someone you love suffering through withdrawal from drug addiction, lots of pain. Heb. 12:3 Jesus suffered at the hands of sinful men, we will suffer a great deal of pain and opposition from the sin nature when we are withdrawing from it, giving ourselves over to God. That suffering will be a cleansing from that which for so long kept us from God, as He tears away the things that separate us from Him. So what should we do in the times of pain and suffering while the sin nature is being torn away? Hold tight to our faith in Christ. That alone will get us through. Remember that in the times Jesus suffered and was tempted, He went to the Father in faith through prayer to gain the strength He needed to get through. Heb. 2:13 “I will put my trust in him.”
When Jesus prayed to the Father it shows us that He lived by faith just as we do. We also need to pray in those times when we are tested and tempted, to gain the strength to get through.
Just as Jesus suffered the pain of the cross, crucifixion, so we must take up our crosses and suffer the death of our sin nature, which keeps us from pursuing God. Phil. 3:10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, This needs to be our mantra, that no matter how painful it gets at times it will all be worth the pain. Fix the fix. Don’t get trapped in the idea that this is something we can get accomplished ourselves, we can not do it on our own. God must be the one to do the work in us. We are only to trust Him and give way to His work in us. Phil. 1:6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. We must confess all the sins revealed to us by Him, repenting of them, turning away from them, rebuking the self life, considering it crucified. Gal. 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
If we want to enter into the Holy of Holies, behind the veil to be with God we must insist that He do the work in us that needs to be accomplished, crucifying the sin nature in us. Taking up our cross is giving ourselves’ over to God completely, surrendering to Him.
A.W. Tozer puts it this way; “The cross is rough and deadly, but it is effective. It does not keep its victim hanging there forever. There comes a moment when its work is finished and the suffering victim dies. After that is the resurrection glory and power. The pain is forgotten for the joy that the veil is taken away. We have entered in actual spiritual experience to the presence of the living God.”
This is what we are to focus on, Col. 3:2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. The goal of all that we will suffer is the depth of relationship available to us with God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It will take us allowing Him to tear away the veil of sin nature from our hearts so to open us up to the beauty of depth of relationship never known before. It will all be worth it as it says, for the joy set before Him He endured. This can be our joy as well.
Benediction: Eph. 2:4–7 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
