I am a daughter of God, through the blood of Jesus, living with the daily help of the Spirit.

Since I first felt God’s love wash over me in 1979, I’ve been on a journey of getting to know this magnificent Person who made me and redeemed me, then came to live with me. Along our journey, He grew me into a teacher.

Today, in 2018, I perpetually find myself between people who are starving to have more of the life God offers, and a God who is holding it out to them, faithfully, every moment. Between them is a barrier, much more powerful than it has to be.

The main barrier of many Christians is a lack of faith in how fully God has given Himself to them in His personal Presence and love.

On the one hand, God

This amazing God! Here is what I know: the one true God we worship has a moral core of goodness that He wants to reveal and show off, every minute of every day. To do this, He must have a recipient of all His love and desire to bless. His supreme value is to give life and nurture life, life that looks like Him. Thus, He made you.

God is right proud of who He is. He revels in the glory of being wise, and powerful, and good to the core. The object of all that power, wisdom, and goodness, is you.

What is the power for, if not to create and sustain a people with your goodness?

What is wisdom for, if not to enhance the life and fruitfulness of your student?

What are goodness and love for, if you have no one upon whom to pour it out?

God loves his glory. His glory is revealed in relationship. He made you just for that. To reveal Himself, to nurture you with all of who He is, and to reproduce Himself in and through you. All in all, you and God need one another to fill the world with His glory.

On the other hand, You

Here some of you sit, on my other hand, shaking your head at your inadequacy. Trying to worship and honor God, surely, but from a distance. Because you’re not sure God is really that close. Even if you believe He is, you doubt your worthiness. Or you are intimidated by how to do real relationship with an invisible God, and fear being too “familiar” with this holy God.

Yet you crave all the abundant life He has promised. You believe in it, but think of it more like a canopy of God’s goodness kind of hanging over you from heaven, than His personal Presence sitting with you on the couch.

And your faith in God’s faithfulness wavers when you are less than perfect, which is pretty much every day.

The longer I walk in my calling as a teacher for the Lord, the more focused my task becomes: to destroy the barrier in your mind separating you from the Lord who is joined to you at the heart. To remove all fear of the Holy Spirit and encourage you to fully embrace His indwelling; to rest in His love. I want to help you break through that barrier and go for it.

When I no longer find people who are self-banished from God’s Presence by self-consciousness and doubt, I can rest from teaching. Sadly, I imagine my life on earth will end before that ever happens, so I write books to leave behind.

You could save me so much work and give God indescribable joy if you would just run into His arms now, and live there every day.

Get religion out of the way

Lest you think me mad, consider Apostle Paul’s words to the people of Athens:

People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I

walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god.

So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.

From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.

‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.

Acts 17:22-30 (NIV)

The Apostle Paul and I have something in common: we both address people who are already religious. And we both want you to repent.

Repent of what, you might ask?

Of treating God as if he were an unknowable, distant deity. For God has given us an incredible revelation in His Word, of His heart to share life with His creation, for their joy and for His glory.

God gave himself to man the day He created us. When we messed up, He gave himself to us again and again through progressive covenants that kept us joined to Him, until the day when Jesus would come and, by His sacrifice and blood, make it possible for us to finally and eternally share life with God. Those who believe and receive God’s offer of relationship, are offered God’s Spirit as constant companion, teacher, friend, and general purveyor of God’s love and life.

I awaken every day to my ever-present Friend and His New Covenant promise that I will know Him. When I live as if I really believe Him, everything Jesus promised comes: the peace, the wisdom, the soul’s rest, the security.

What Who you hunger for is within reach

It was never God’s intention for these to come to us apart from knowing Him. He wants the joy of giving you these things. He loves revealing Himself to you, and is thrilled when you believe Him, when you turn to Him for life, and not elsewhere. Sometimes, you even need to close your Bible so you can pay more attention to Him, to God the Person right with you. Jesus complained to the Pharisees of his day:

You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

John 5:39-40, NIV

As a teacher, I’ve got my nose down in the Bible and books about God every day. He meets me there often, but when I look up and turn my attention away from those, away from the church building, from all other constructions around my faith and life, and just say, “I love you, Lord. I need you. I’m so glad you are with me. Help me know you more…” — God is honored. He knows I believe, because I talk to Him like a real present person.

When you move past the continual need to convince yourself of God’s attitude towards you, and show up for that relationship, real God-life blooms.

What keeps you from knowing God?