July 23, 2007

"When you come before God, how does He look at you? The accuser [Satan] wants you to see a Father who is harsh, demanding, never satisfied with your performance, mostly disappointed with you and frustrated with the rate of your spiritual growth.
Nothing is deadlier to the secret place than a false idea of how God views you; and nothing is more powerfully energizing than when your mind is renewed in the word of God and you come to understand how He looks on you. When you gain ownership of the fact that God is smiling on you, that He is desiring your company and that He longs to be intimate with you, then the truth of that reality starts to touch your emotional chemistry and you actually begin to feel attractive to God [and loved!]. This attainment has the power to change everything about how you relate to God.
It all starts with understanding how God feels about the cross of Christ. Revelation 5:6 describes Jesus as a Lamb standing before the eternal throne "as though it had been slain". In other words, the death of CHrist is as fresh to God's mind as the day it happened. Time will never erase from before God's eyes the immediacy of the horror of Calvary, and the powerful atoning work of the blood of CHrist. God is eternally and infinitely passionate about the His Son's Cross. Those who place their faith in this great demonstration of love come under the intense favor of God Almighty. Your faith in Christ's sacrifice unlocks the infinite passions and delights of an exuberant God who yearns to be joined to your heart in eternal affection. Because you have set your love upon the One whom the Father has set HIS love upon, you have an automatic "in" with God...you're His child, you're family!!
When you know you're attractive to God, you come into His presence with boldness. You come into his presence the way He wants you to, with a lifted face, with expectant eyes, with a delighted smile, with an eager voice and with a burning heart. [Reminds me of how our children come to us when they are small, fully trusting....and God says we must come to Him as a little child]
He doesn't enjoy you any less because you struggle. He knows your weaknesses, He sees your failures, but yet He owns you as His child and enjoys you even when you fall!! He loves it when you pick yourself up and keep stepping forward again and again into His arms. How comforting to know we can bring the entire package of our inadequacies and shortcomings into His presence and know He lovingly embraces us and delights in us! He enjoys us at every stage of the maturity process.
In John 17:23 Jesus prayed to the Father "That the world may know that You...have loved them as You have loved Me". Think of it! God loves us just as much as He loves His only begotten Son! He feels the same way about us that He feels about his holy, spotless, selfless, Son. Incredible!!!!!
God feels much more passionately about me than I do about Him. Even when my passions are burning hot and bright for Him, they do not approach the intensity of His love for me. Here is one way I've noticed this to be true. The intensity of my love is very limited because I can only think upon one thing at a time. So when I work or go about the duties of my day, cognitive thoughts of God actually disappear from my mind. My mind will return to the Lord a few hours later, but for certain periods of time I'm not even thinking about Him. BUT He never stops thinking about me! ['How precious are your thoughts of me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are MORE in number than the sand'! Ps 139: 17-18. Have you ever tried to count the grains of sand in just one handful of sand?! There are thousands! Then look around at the beach you are standing on and as far as your eye can see both ways and out into the ocean and multiply that times all the beaches in the world!! And even that does not account for the thoughts God has toward you!!!!!!! AWESOME!!] His eyes are constantly riveted on me and His mind is incessantly focused on who I am and who He is making me to be. When I return to thoughts of Him, the immediate witness of the Spirit is "I've been here all along, waiting for you. I love you so much!"
He waits for you to come to Him! He waits all night long watching over you, waiting for you to rise, hoping that He might be the first thought of your morning. You don't have to wonder if He wants you to come into the secret place . He has been waiting for you and He'll continue
to wait for as long as it takes because His heart is bound up in your life. 'Lord, may I never again withhold myself from your embrace'!

From : SECRETS OF THE SECRET PLACE by Bob Sorge