All Eyes, All Ears

I've been thinking about a Bible study I went to several weeks ago per a friend's invitation. I was excited to go, excited to really dig in and learn some things. More than that, though, I wanted to go for this friend of mine. He hungers for God, but he came into the church through fear of his own flesh and never really got past that. The meeting took place in a man's garage (so far, so good). There are 6 others, my friend, and myself. Great guys. We get to know each other a bit, laugh, tell some stories. And then we get all serious to read a chapter of Ruth and go down this list of questions like "Why did Naomi tell Ruth to go to Boaz?" "What character traits does Ruth possess that are good?" "Have you ever given up something you wanted in order to server God? Explain." And the whole time we're going down this list of questions all serious-like, I'm getting the feeling that we're really missing something amazing here. One man, Rich, pipes up and says sort-of out of the blue in a real moment of honesty, "I don't have faith in God like Ruth did in Naomi." Seems like that made some men uncomfortable. I was like, "Hell yeah! That realness sets me free! Way to be done with the religious bullcrap!"

Then, something awesome happened. God showed up. Several of the men kept taking these rabbit holes to talk about hearing from God, discerning His voice, all that, which had nothing to do with the topic at hand. The leader was trying to get everybody back on course, but couldn't evade the desire set out there to talk about walking with God and hearing from Him. There was a lot of weird stuff said, like, "I know when God talks to me because what he tells me is the very thing I most don't want to do in the world."

Huh?

Then I decided to pipe in. To one guy's thought, "Wouldn't it just be cool if God would just speak to us? I wish He would." I said, "But isn't that exactly what Jesus promised? I mean, check out the disciples. These guys walked intimately with Christ for three years. Granted, most of the time they were dumbfounded, but they walked with Jesus, learned from Him the art of living. Jesus taught them to live in the Kingdom and to be His own. He called them his friends. To Peter, he gave a name and a place and restoration to his heart. To John, he invited him to recline against his breast. And Matthew - this scalawag got to leave all his money-minding hustling on a dime and follow the Living God up and out and into all that was real and true and most alive. And Jesus Himself said it was better if He go so that the Spirit would come and be with us, teach us, remind us, counsel us. That sounds pretty damned intimate!" And then I talked about how David walked with God like this. One of my favorite Psalms says, "Lord if you wake me in the morning with your loving voice, then I'll go to bed at night trusting in You. I'm all eyes, all ears before you." And then again in Psalm 119, something about "God, I'll remember ever word You've spoken to me about life; I'll treasure them; I'll not let go of them." Finally, I just talked about some of my own experiences with hearing from God and how intimate it gets and how inviting it becomes. Yeah, I'm taken by Him. Yeah, I want to go down to the village. Hell yeah.

It was a thrill to see where God wanted to take things, and then just go with Him there. Other men started speaking up about the same thing, about their own experiences walking intimately with Christ, as if they had permission finally to actually desire communion and friendship with God.

I love pushing past the religious bull that I see around me most days, push past that into something Real.