Pressing CLose

UV 1690/10000 Pressing Close
But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord GOD, that I may declare all thy works.
Psalm 73 v 28

We draw near to the Lord not for His sake, not because He needs us but because we need Him. It is good for us to draw near to Him as a man needs to draw near to the fireplace on a cold wintry night. We need Him as plants need sunlight. We derive our spiritual food, air and energy from Him. His breath in our nostrils is the bread of our life. He sustains us. He elevates us to new levels of understanding and aspiration. Without Him our lives are cold, purposeless and powerless.

After drawing near to the Lord or in other words after commencing a personal relationship with God through Jesus, His Son, we place our complete trust in Him and His Word. His Word describes the myriad ways in which the Lord works in our lives. Each verse in His Word is a rung of the ladder that Jacob saw in his dream connecting heaven and earth. We climb the stairway to heaven using the specific verses from scripture. Our trust in the Word gives opportunities for the Lord to act in our lives. Using the Word He moulds our inner being. He makes possible what we desire and what is impossible in human terms. Each promise verse in scripture enables us to hop paradigms or patterns of living. The excellent or extraordinary or the miraculous will operate and often manifest in what we think, speak and do. The Word in us becomes the work of the Lord. He does works in us, for us and with us. The works in us refers to the removal of our limiting beliefs and the inner transformation of our being. The work for us refers to the benefits or blessings, spiritual, material and physical that we need. The work with us is our purpose in life to declare who the Lord is and to declare His works.

Our testimonies are our stories or our declarations of the works of the Lord in our lives. It is the narrative of our lives to influence others in our generation to draw near to the Lord that they too be similarly blessed. Most people hesitate to draw near to the Lord as they fear Him out of a sense of guilt even as Adam and Eve hid from Him after their temptation and fall. When we fear Him out of a sense of reverence for His awesomeness, we do not hesitate to draw nearer and nearer to Him as we experience His tender mercies and His love. The woman with a chronic problem of bleeding pressed close to the Lord to touch Him and be healed. So also we need to draw closer and closer to Him, so that we can hide in the hem of His clothes like a child. The woman being healed was one of the rare occasions when Jesus involuntarily healed a person. Similarly, when we are always walking close and pressing close to the Lord, even without us praying or the Lord listening, answers and miracles will be released from the very presence of the Lord.

Prateep V Philip