When the Glory of God Becomes Precious Again
There is a grief that only people who have known the presence of God can understand. It is the grief of remembering when Jesus was enough. Before we learned how to explain everything, before we knew where to stand, what to say, when to lift our hands, and how to recognize the movement of a service, there was wonder. There was a time when His name could undo us.
Somewhere along the way, many of us became familiar with holy things. We learned the language of revival without remaining revived. We learned how to speak about hunger after we had stopped coming to the table. We learned how to preach about the secret place while quietly becoming strangers to it. Perhaps the most frightening condition of the human heart is not open rebellion against God, but learning how to continue around the things of God after the wonder of God has faded.
I am not writing to condemn the Church. I am writing because I believe God loves His Church too much to leave us satisfied with something less than Himself. The answer is not greater shame. The answer is not pretending we can earn our way back into His presence through enough prayer, enough fasting, enough tears, or enough spiritual activity. The answer is Jesus Christ, crucified for our sins, raised from the dead, seated at the right hand of the Father, and forever sufficient to bring us near.
The glory of God must begin there.
At the cross, we discover that glory is not merely brightness, power, trembling, miracles, or moments when the atmosphere becomes heavy with the awareness of God. We discover a King wearing thorns. We discover holy hands stretched upon wood. We discover the Son of God refusing to save Himself because He has determined to save us. We discover that the glory of God is most clearly revealed in the face of Jesus Christ, and that the face of Jesus is the face of crucified love.
This is where faith must be anchored. Faith is not human determination dressed in religious language. Faith is not pretending pain does not hurt, sickness does not exist, or unanswered questions do not trouble us. Faith is the settled persuasion that God is faithful because He has revealed His character in His Word and ultimately in His Son. We do not believe because circumstances are kind to us. We believe because God cannot lie.
There are believers who need to hear this again. You are not trying to persuade an unwilling Father to become good. You are not standing outside the house hoping that enough spiritual effort will convince God to open the door. Through the blood of Jesus, the door has been opened. Through the finished work of Christ, we have been brought near, made righteous, given access to the Father, and made the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.
Faith receives what grace has provided.
But if we are not careful, we can learn the truths of redemption without allowing those truths to lead us into communion. We can know who we are in Christ and still neglect the Christ in whom we have been found. We can confess our authority, quote promises, resist the devil, pray for the sick, and defend the integrity of the Word while slowly losing tenderness toward Jesus. Truth was never given merely to make us correct. Truth was given to bring us into fellowship with the One who is Truth.
I wonder how many people remember the last time they were alone with God and wanted nothing from Him.
No answer.
No breakthrough.
No opportunity.
No healing.
No open door.
Just Him.
There was a time when some of us could sit in a room with an open Bible and suddenly realize that an hour had passed. There was a time when worship was not preparation for preaching. There was a time when we did not need someone else to create an atmosphere because gratitude had already created an altar in our hearts. There was a time when we whispered the name of Jesus because we loved the sound of His name.
And some of us miss Him.
We still believe in Him. We still serve Him. We still defend truth about Him. We may even minister to others in His name. But somewhere beneath the activity, beneath the responsibility, beneath the sermons, conferences, songs, meetings, and expectations, there is a quiet ache in the soul that remembers what it was like when Jesus was our magnificent obsession.
That ache is mercy.
God is not exposing our emptiness to humiliate us. He is awakening hunger because He intends to satisfy it with Himself. The Holy Spirit does not reveal our distance so we will run away in shame. He reveals the places where affection has grown cold so we will return to the fellowship purchased for us by the blood of Jesus.
The great necessity of the Church is the glory of God. Not a manufactured atmosphere. Not emotional manipulation. Not exaggerated testimonies, borrowed encounters, or spiritual language designed to make ordinary men appear extraordinary. We need God Himself. We need the reality of His presence to become more precious to us than our reputation for carrying it.
When the glory of God becomes precious, ambition begins to die.
A man can build something large and still have a small interior life. A woman can become known for prayer while secretly struggling to pray when nobody is listening. A preacher can learn how to move a room while forgetting how to be moved by Jesus. The most dangerous moment in ministry may be the moment when our gift continues working after our heart has stopped trembling.
This is why we must return to the secret place.
Not to earn power.
Not to become impressive.
Not to collect stories about encounters with God.
We return because we were created for communion.
The secret place is where the Word becomes more than material for sermons. It becomes bread again. It is where we stop reading Scripture merely to find something to say and begin reading because we want to know the heart of the One who spoke. Faith comes by hearing, and there is a confidence born in the heart of a believer who has become persuaded that God’s Word is true.
The Word and the Spirit were never enemies. We do not honor the Holy Spirit by becoming careless with Scripture, and we do not honor Scripture by becoming suspicious of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit inspired the Word, reveals Christ through the Word, and teaches believers to walk in the reality of what God has spoken. We need minds renewed by truth and hearts made tender by the presence of God.
We need faith again.
Not arrogance.
Not denial.
Not pretending every mystery has been solved.
Faith.
Faith that believes Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Faith that lays hands on the sick because compassion refuses to make peace with suffering. Faith that speaks to mountains because Jesus told us to believe. Faith that can stand in the hospital room, pray with confidence, refuse to accuse God, refuse to surrender His goodness, and continue trusting Him when tears are still running down our faces.
There are mysteries in this present age. There are prayers we have prayed while watching circumstances move in the opposite direction. There are graves beside which believers have stood with broken hearts and unanswered questions. Mature faith does not require us to lie about those moments. Mature faith looks through tears toward the empty tomb and declares that death, suffering, sickness, and sorrow will not have the final word.
Jesus will.
The resurrection means the glory of God is moving history toward a day when every enemy will finally be placed beneath the feet of Christ. Until that day, we pray for the sick. We cast out devils. We preach the gospel. We comfort those who mourn. We resist darkness. We believe the promises of God, and when we encounter mysteries we do not understand, we refuse to build a theology that makes God less good than Jesus revealed Him to be.
The authority of the believer belongs inside this story. We have been made alive with Christ, raised with Christ, seated with Christ, and commissioned to represent Christ. Authority is not permission to become fascinated with ourselves. Authority is the privilege of making Jesus known.
The safest person for God to entrust with influence is the person who no longer needs influence to know he is loved.
There is freedom in that.
You can pray for someone and never tell anybody you prayed.
You can give and remain unknown.
You can carry revelation without needing everyone to recognize you as deep.
You can watch God use another person to answer the prayer you have been praying and rejoice because you wanted Jesus to receive glory more than you wanted credit.
This is what the presence of God does to ambition. It does not make us passive. It makes us pure. We still believe greatly, pray boldly, expect miracles, preach with conviction, and confront darkness with the authority of Jesus. But somewhere deep inside, the question of who gets noticed has been settled.
Jesus must increase.
There are moments when I wonder whether we have become too easily satisfied.
We celebrate crowded rooms while heaven searches hearts. We call meetings successful because people came, songs were sung, sermons were preached, and hands were raised. But did we love Him. Did we obey Him. Did anyone go home wanting Jesus more than they wanted another meeting.
These questions trouble me because I know how easy it is to love the things surrounding God.
It is possible to love preaching about Him.
It is possible to love singing about Him.
It is possible to love being known as someone who knows Him.
And still miss Him.
That thought should bring us to our knees.
Not because God has abandoned us.
Because He has not.
He is here.
The Holy Spirit lives within the believer. We have become temples of the living God. We are not begging a distant God to cross an impossible distance. Through Christ, the distance has been overcome.
Perhaps what needs to change is not God’s willingness to come near.
Perhaps what needs to change is our willingness to become aware again.
To close the door.
To put the phone in another room.
To open the Bible without needing to produce anything from it.
To say the name of Jesus until our hearts remember why we first loved Him.
I believe God is awakening hunger in His people. Not hunger for another movement we can name. Not hunger for another personality we can follow. Not hunger for experiences we can advertise.
Hunger for God.
There are people who have tasted enough success to know success cannot satisfy them. There are ministers who have stood before crowds and gone back to empty rooms with tears in their eyes because they know public usefulness cannot replace private communion. There are believers quietly discovering that the ache they tried to silence with entertainment, achievement, ministry, and activity was always an invitation to return to the One for whom they were created.
The Father is not asking us to pretend we never wandered.
He is asking us to come home.
Come home to the Word.
Come home to prayer.
Come home to the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
Come home to faith that believes God.
Come home to the cross where every accusation against us was answered by the blood of Jesus.
Come home to the empty tomb where despair lost its authority to write the final chapter.
Come home to the simple, terrifying, beautiful reality that God Himself is our reward.
I do not want to become so familiar with the language of His presence that I forget the sound of His voice.
I do not want to preach about surrender while protecting parts of my heart from His leadership.
I do not want to speak about faith while quietly allowing disappointment to teach me more about God than His Word.
I do not want to use the name of Jesus publicly and forget how to whisper His name privately.
And when this life is over, I do not want the greatest testimony of my years to be that people knew my name.
I want to have known His.
There will come a day when the meetings are over.
The microphones will be turned off.
The books will be closed.
The crowds will go home.
The platforms will belong to somebody else.
Our bodies will return to the dust, and everything we built that was born from human ambition will be exposed as terribly small.
But Jesus will still be beautiful.
Jesus will still be worthy.
Jesus will still bear the scars of the love that brought us home.
And perhaps, when we finally see Him, we will realize that every moment we thought we were sacrificing something to follow Him was actually another invitation to receive the only Treasure we could never lose.
The glory of God is not merely something I want to see.
It is the reason I want to live.
May we believe His Word until unbelief loses its hiding places.
May we know the Holy Spirit until communion becomes more necessary than recognition.
May we carry the authority of Jesus without ever becoming impressed with ourselves.
May we pray for the sick, preach the gospel, love the broken, resist darkness, forgive our enemies, endure suffering, and worship through tears because the Lamb who was slain is worthy.
And if God gives us influence, may we lay it at His feet.
If He gives us miracles, may we point to Jesus.
If He gives us hidden years, may we love Him there.
If He gives us nothing that the world considers impressive, may we still wake in the morning with gratitude because through the blood of Jesus Christ we have been given God.
I think that is what I have been trying to say.
After all the sermons.
After all the songs.
After all the striving.
After all the years we spent looking for something greater.
There was never anything greater.
There was only ever Jesus.
If you feel led to partner with what God is doing through this ministry, we invite you to sow into this work as the Spirit leads. Your generosity helps us continue to share His love and truth with others. There is no obligation only an opportunity to join in what God is building. Thank you for considering being a part of this journey.
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