Hindronces On The Pathway To God’s Presence
Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast.
And every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward; how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord.
And was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?
Read and Learn More Bible Verses about the Presence of God
Hebrews 2:1-4
We have already established that deep within the soul of humanity is a latent desire to come into God’s presence. But that desire, put there by God, is not enough to overcome the hindrances that block the pathway.
Although the hindrances are many, the main obstruction to God’s presence is the unredeemed nature of man.
To worship God from the depths of the human soul is to discover worship in its purest form, unaffected by the world around; and it is deeper than any mere human emotion. For the unbeliever, worshiping God is impossible.
The sinful nature is repelled by the purity of God’s nature and seeks other consolations. These two natures are incompatible, which is the practical outcome of alienation from God.
Even the believer experiences obstacles that challenge his pursuit of God. The greatest challenge facing every Christian is to overcome these hindrances on the path to God’s presence.
John, the Beloved, understood this and encouraged us with these words: “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4).
Certainly, the opposition is there and it is real, but it is not of such a nature as to keep us from God’s presence. We can overcome all the wiles of the enemy and anything he puts in our way.
The most important thing we can devote ourselves to is giving attention to the things of God to save our souls. This must be an active, persistent, and deliberate intent on our part, regardless of the difficulties that lie in our path.
Too many people have made coming into God’s presence not only complicated but also unattainable, discouraging many from trying. It is not a journey for the indolent or those addicted to entertainment and the coarse pleasures of the flesh.
The fact that there are hindrances only emphasizes the value of coming into God’s presence. If experiencing His presence were without obstruction, it would be without enticement as well.
Someone has well said that whatever is without cost does not have value. When we think of coming into the presence of God, what could be more valuable than that? Certainly.
The importance of coming to God’s presence is worth overcoming every obstacle along the way.
Wouldn’t you think that something so attractive would be at the forefront of every inquiring human being’s desire? There are stumbling blocks along the way.
However, they are of such a nature as to keep out all but those who have an impassioned desire for the presence of God—a desire stronger than the draw of anything else in life.
Penetrating the holy presence of God is the reward of fighting the good fight and overcoming all obstructions in the way. This all-consuming desire for God’s presence goes a long way in tackling the major hindrances a seeker might find.
When the goal is in clear view, the obstacles become trivial. Let’s take a look at the main obstacles that can keep us from pursuing God and see how we can move around them.
Manmade Errors
Perhaps the greatest ‘obstacle preventing us from coming into God’s presence would be the errors propagated down the years. People have not come right out and said them in so many words, but they think about them. And what we think, so are we.
Error Fill Religions Lead To God
One manmade error is thinking that there are any number of religions that are good in varying degrees. Therefore, why should We give more earnest heed to the message of Christianity? Well, God has spoken through His Son and said, “Hear ye Him.”
And Moses said, “This is that Moses, which said unto the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear” (Acts 7:37).
Jesus Christ is not another teacher; He is the final teacher and the last Word of God to men. What He has said closes all other arguments.
Error Man Has No Spiritual Responsibility
Another manmade error is the belief that there is nothing to be disturbed about because Christ carries the supreme authority of God. Therefore, everything is taken care of and we don’t need to be bothered.
Christ does carry the supreme authority of God, but to ignore that authority is a grave offense. Some will say, “God will take the initiative; I do not need to do anything.
I believe that God will always be the aggressor.” By the way, I believe that, too; but remember, God has already taken the initiative when He sent His holy Son, Jesus Christ, into the world.
And when He sent the Holy Spirit down to take the things of Christ and show them unto us. So God has already taken the initiative.
If God cannot disturb us, He cannot move us. If He cannot move us, He cannot save us. If He cannot get us concerned about the things of God, He cannot do anything at all for us.
Error The Message Needs To Be Palatable
John and Charles Wesley were men with a deep concern for the seriousness of spiritual matters. We sing the Wesley hymns about being concerned and moved, but we do not half mean them.
We ought to mean them because we ought to give them the more earnest heed, which means careful attention. We ought to read. We ought to listen.
We ought to search. We ought to examine and reexamine. And it ought to be done in earnest. We ought to put away levity, flippancy, and fun.
The curse of everything today is that it has to be funny. If it is not funny, it is not popular. But there is nothing funny in God seeing His race wander away in the night.
There was nothing funny about His sending His holy Son to be born of the virgin. There was nothing funny about His persecution and crucifixion.
There was nothing funny about the coming of the Holy Ghost; nothing funny about the judgment and the resurrection of the wicked dead.
Levity, flippancy, or fun has no place when we consider the things of God. We ought to give the more earnest heed to the things that we have heard.
The great labor of the Church has always been to get people to give serious attention to spiritual matters.
A great many pastors and preachers do not worry about this at all, because they do not expect anything and, therefore, they do not get it.
But a man of God, with the burden of the Holy Spirit on him, will want to stir the people to serious attention.
Until serious attention has been given to the claims of Christ, it is for us as if the Bible had never been written.
Medicine sitting on the shelf and never taken has never cured anybody. Food left in the refrigerator and never eaten has never nourished anybody. Heat not turned on has never warmed anybody.
And the Bible itself, though it is nourishment, though it is light, though it is warmth, though it is medicine to the soul, yet it never helps anybody where there is no serious attention given to it.
And when we do not give serious attention, it is as if Christ had not come into the world and died for mankind. He might as well have not come and died as for us to neglect all that is meant by His coming and dying.
The Curse Of Our Contemporary Culture
Every Christian faces some hindrance in seeking the presence of God. Contemporary Christianity is so taken up by the world that pressing on to the deep things of God becomes rather difficult.
Our contemporary times stand in the way of anybody taking his or her spiritual life seriously. So many things are thrown at us; it takes a very resilient soul to resist the onslaught.
Perhaps the most dangerous situation confronting Christians today is what I call cauterizing the conscience. That is, making a person insensitive or callous to the world around him.
In practical terms, he experiences a deadening of feelings toward morals. Quite simply, this moral insensibility is a lack of feeling. You cannot feel the whole moral question.
The strange paradox is that a person may be troubled by his inability to feel, yet he cannot feel. Even among those who consider themselves Christians, there is very little outrage at the immorality of our times.
The source of this dangerous condition is the semi-anesthetization caused by the act of sinning. When a person sins, he anesthetizes his conscience, to a certain extent. I call this the cauterizing of the conscience.
If you cauterize a thing, it will hurt at first, but after it heals over, you have no feeling there. Where the cauterization takes place, there will develop a hard shell, a thick skin. Sin does that.
It cauterizes the conscience, and soon it does not bother us that we are sinning. This is the work of the blinding agent of the unholy one we call the devil.
I do believe in the devil and that he blinds the minds of those who believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ might shine onto them (see 2 Cor. 4:4).
Then there is spiritual lethargy, an unnatural inward drowsiness when faced with the claims of God. Yet, we hear a speech on the dangers of our times and we immediately want to know how we can get to a fallout shelter.
We hear a program on cancer, and we examine ourselves and wonder if that last pain was cancer. We are always concerned about superficial things but rarely concerned about spiritual things.
Thomas a Kemp wisely observed, “We give all our attention to things that do us little good, or none at all; vitally necessary things we don’t bother about them, just give them the go-by.
Yes, all that goes to make man drives him to meddle with outward things, and if he doesn’t soon recover his senses, is only too glad to wallow in material interests and pleasures.”
Moral insensitivity and spiritual lethargy are two great curses because they keep us from taking earnest heed to our spiritual health.
Unless we are serious about our approach to God, we will be hindered every step of the way. These two things can only be corrected by a sound conversion to Jesus Christ.
Giving God Leftovers
Then there is the preoccupation with making a living. Jesus called it the “cares of this life” (see Matt. 13:22).
If everyone would put as much earnest time and give as much serious attention to seeking God as they put into making a living, they would become much finer Christians, and soon people would wonder what happened.
If women would give as much earnest heed to the claims of Christ and the needs of their soul as they give to their house, their cooking, and their family.
At the end of the week, they would have made such spiritual advances that they would be ashamed of the way they had been living before.
The simple fact is that God gets the leftovers, never the main meal. God never gets anything new. He gets the handme-downs. We give to God that which we do not need instead of giving to Him that which we need.
And thus earning a crown for ourselves. If we were as concerned with our spiritual condition as we are with our homes our businesses and our income, we would go forward spiritually at a great rate.
The beautiful thing about it is that we would not neglect our homes to do it, and we would not neglect our businesses to do it. You do not have to choose between making a living and going forward with God.
You can do both. There is time to do both. You do not have to choose between keeping your house decent cooking your meals for your husband and going on with God. You can do both.
An excellent example was a woman by the name of Susannah Wesley, who had 19 children. John Wesley was the eighteenth child. She kept that house spic and span and was known as one of the greatest women of faith of her time.
She decided she could look after her family and still make spiritual progress. Her domestic duties did not distract her in the least from her spiritual pursuits.
The same goes for students. If they would seek the face of God as earnestly as they seek books, they would find themselves growing grace like grass by the watercourses.
Constantly Seeking After Pleasure
Another hindrance is the constant seeking after pleasure. There are the physical pleasures: comforts, various vices, food, and the rest.
And there are mental pleasures, such as social pleasures, gambling, amusements, and the reading of fiction. There are aesthetic pleasures: art, music, higher learning, and sophisticated culture.
All these put together simply give pleasant sensations, the same sensation a baby gets by sucking his thumb. The whole human race has simply grown up seeking pleasure so we are a race of grownup thumb-suckers.
We give over our time to acquire a pleasant sensation when we ought to give over our time to the advancing of our souls.
Peter says, “Save yourselves from this untoward generation” (Acts 2:40). We may not be in earnest, but God is in dead earnest. God, the Father, was in earnest when He planned and finally accomplished the work of redemption.
God, the Son, was in earnest when fie sweat great drops of blood in the garden of Gethsemane. And God, the Holy Ghost, is always in earnest when He comes to dwell like men.
We ought to give the more earnest heed lest we drift away from it; lest we should let it slip. If you notice in the margin of some Bibles, it says, “Lest that anytime we should let them slip” and “run out as a leaking vessel.”
Other versions have “we should drift away from it.” A great many people have leaking hearts and spirits.
Letting Truth Leak From Our Heart
We neglect “so great salvation” by drifting from it. And how do we neglect it? We get the truth in our hearts, but we let it leak away. It is a heartbreaking truth that some hearts are leaky, and their good resolutions all trickle away.
People remain sober until New Year’s and then on New Year’s Eve, they lose their sobriety and start making resolutions. “I resolve that I will be kinder to my wife this year.”
“I resolve that I will give regularly to the church.” “I resolve that I will pray regularly every day.” “I resolve that I will not let a day go by that I do not read the Holy Scriptures.”I resolve that I will seek to know God better.” “I resolve…”
But the heart is a leaky thing, and before the first of February, the average person’s resolutions have all evaporated.
The good intentions, the strong wine of spiritual desire when you heard a man preach whose words touched you particularly; suddenly you can see the strong desire for God.
And you long after the strong wine of spiritual desire, but your heart is like a sieve, and pretty soon it all leaks away. Soon there is no desire left at all.
The difference between spiritual things and earthly things is that the things of the spirit are so modest.
The things of the spirit are not pushing in on you; they are not singing commercials to you; they are not knocking on your door and urging you to buy; they are simply waiting for you to notice.
Jesus did not lift His voice nor make Himself heard in the street. He did not cry aloud but was calm and quiet. People came to Him for the truth. But the things of the flesh are so insistent, so clamorous.
Before you are up in the morning, they are clamoring at you, trying to get you interested in buying what they are selling or doing what they have decided you should do.
Everybody is singing to you, urging you, pushing you—by example, by precept, by instruction, by advertising, and urging—trying to get you to go certain ways and do certain things.
Our Lord is never intrusive, but the things of the world are intrusive. Here is the point I am trying to make: If you are going to give attention to the things of God and save your soul.
You are going to have to have a good intention, a good resolution, and then see to it that you do it. Do not let the devil prevent you.
You are going to have to take yourself by the scruff of the neck, shake yourself, and say, “Now, I don’t know what others are going to do, but as for me, I’m going to seek the face of God.
I’m going to see if I can be a better man next week than I was last week, and a better man next month than I was last month.”
God meant it when He gave us the Law. Christ meant it when He died and rose on the third day. The Holy Ghost means it when He quietly speaks to your heart.
How much more will we be judged if we heed not the truth that they were judged that heeded not the Law? “For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward.
How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him.
God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?” (Heb. 2:2-4).
Some confess, “I intended to … later.” However, there was no later time.
“I didn’t understand,” they say. But they understood enough at the time.
“I was too busy.” But at last, they found Rime to die.
Somebody else says, “Nobody in my crowd paid any attention to these things,” but it is always so.
The saving voice of God speaks to a crowd of men, but only one here and there hears it. When the voice of God spoke to the antediluvian world, only Noah and his family heard it. The rest of them perished in the flood.
Somebody else says, “If I pay attention to this, I’ll lose my job’.”. Chances are, you will not, but if you do, any job you lose saving your soul certainly will be a wonderful bargain.
Somebody else says, “I want to have some fun yet. And then I’ll become a Christian.”I will not answer that. It is too meaningless, too lacking in significance to warrant any serious answer.
Another says, “I was afraid of what people would say” Afraid of what people would say? What about what God says?
Society is an elaborate conspiracy to make us alike. Society is in a conspiracy to make us all bad; not too bad, because if we get too bad, we become a problem to the police.
But not too good, for if we get too good, we are fanatical, so they say. So society wants to keep us nice, trimmed down, going to church, supporting boys’ clubs and girls’ clubs and hospitals.
Certainly, those things are all right. The general society wants to keep us just good enough not to be a problem to the police but bad enough not to bother their conscience.
I hear the voice of God calling us to a higher kind of life. The book of Hebrews is an urgent, vibrant, living book that speaks to those who are on the border and says, “Go on over. You can dare to do it.
Go on over.” And it speaks to those who could not quite make up their minds whether they wanted to obey and believe God, and says, ‘You dare obey. You dare believe.”
Whatever causes us to overcome all hindrances is handsomely rewarded when we break through to the glorious sunshine of His blessed presence.
Love Divine, nil Love Excelling by Charles Wesley (1707-1788)
Love divine, all love excelling,
The joy of heaven, to earth, come down;
Fix in us thy humble dwelling;
All thy faithful mercies crown.
Jesus, thou art all compassion,
Pure, unbounded love thou art;
Visit us with thy salvation,
Enter every trembling heart.
Breathe, oh, breathe thy Holy
SpiritInto every troubled breast;
Let us all thy grace inherit;
Let us find thy promised rest;
Take away the love of sinning;
Take our load of guilt away;
End the work of thy beginning;
Bring us to eternal day.
Carry on thy new creation;
Pure and holy may we be;
Let us see our whole salvation
Perfectly secured by thee;
Change from glory into glory,
Till in heaven, we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.
Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, translated by Ronald Knox and Michael Oakley (New York: Sheed and Ward, Inc., 1959).