Journey to Oneness with God - The Invitation

Nathan and Bob are hosting a podcast called Love-Shaped Life. They are excited to share their experiences and teachings about living a love-shaped life with God. They discuss the privilege of being in God's presence and how he values and knows each individual personally. Unlike meeting a dignitary, God invites everyone to be in his presence and it is free of charge. Jesus emphasized that God cares for each person and there is no need to fear. Hey, I'm Nathan, and I want to welcome you back to the Love-Shaped Life podcast. This is Season 1, Episode 2, and our dream here on the podcast here at Love-Shaped Life is to see, experience, and live God's love. I'm Nathan, by the way. Again, this is my friend Bob, and we're here with part one of what we're calling a pod-an-ar, and the title of this pod-an-ar is Journey to Oneness with God. By the way, before we get into the pod-an-ar, how are you feeling? This is Episode 2, brand-new adventure, brand-new—this is literally Season 1, not just brand-new, this is brand-new podcast, Season 1. How are you feeling? I'm not sure if the word excited describes how I'm feeling, because living a dream is a better way to term it. Because living a dream, to be able to share with people and walk alongside people what God has taught us along the journey of life, to see the beauty of who He is, and then to be able to share that and help other people experience that. I mean, again, see, experience, and live a love-shaped life. I mean, it's a beautiful one. So here we are. We live in a dream. God's brought us here, and now we're doing it. Step out. Yeah. How are you feeling? You know, I was just thinking, as you were talking, that we've been talking about it for a while. I mean, for 20-plus years, we've talked about, kind of tossed around ideas, and for both of us, it's solidified through experiences. We talked about it in our first episode, just the tough journey that kind of pulled the pieces together for us, those valleys. And so it's incredible to be here. We were preparing yesterday and just getting excited, or processing through, and saying, man, this is it. This is the core. This is the thing that we want to share, because we've discovered it works. And so it's exciting to be here in part two. Or I should say, not part two, but episode two. This is part one, again, of our Padanar, and that Padanar, again, is Journey to Oneness with God. We're going to talk about why we titled it Journey to Oneness, some hints of that from our first episode, our all-time first episode, John 17, but we're actually going to talk more specifically about this idea of journey to oneness. In our notes, we've got this reference to President, seeing the President. And I remember, I've got terrible phone reception at my house. I live within the city limits, but terrible phone reception. Bob knows, so he'll call me, and I try to answer, and it's all like skipping, I know how that is. Sometimes you're on the street. You have to leave your house, and you talk to him on the street. So one of these times, I was down the road about a half mile, mile from the house, and I was sitting in my car, and there were two police cars, some kind of patrol agency, sheriff or something like that, state police, something like that. At the intersection, one of them came up to my car, and he's like, what are you doing here? I said, I'm sitting here, because I've got bad reception at home. And as I watched... Suspicious. Yeah, he was suspicious. And I was curious, because this isn't a normal, everyday thing, and I found out that President Joe Biden was going to drive down the road just about a tenth of a mile from where I was sitting, or less. A thousand yards from where I was sitting, he was going to drive by. And when he came by, massive motorcade, motorcycles, and cars. And so, access to the President of the United States is limited. And you're talking about Barack Obama. Tell us about that. Well, again, you point out that when a president, or any president, right, comes to town, any dignitary comes to town, there's high security. Roads are blocked off. Helicopters. There's helicopters, there's policemen all over the place. They have to make sure this person is safe. Yep. Insulation. Insulation. Oh, where there's a big gap. I was sharing with you a story that I had read from a book by Dr. Joseph Kidder. And so, he was mentioning a time when former President Barack Obama was hosting a campaign dinner. And it was $50,000 for a plate. So, if you wanted to attend dinner, it was $50,000, and what you got to eat was chicken, asparagus, and a piece of cake. And I'm sure there was something to drink, but that was what you got for your $50,000. But if you wanted to sit, like, within view of the president, so you could see him and he could see you, well, that would cost $100,000. Wow. Yeah. $100,000. Just to see. Just to see. Just the line of sight. Just the line of sight. But if you wanted a selfie with the president. Doesn't make sense. You want a selfie with the president. And pull out your cell phone and take a picture. $250,000. Okay. Yeah. Chances are, he would probably never remember your name anyways, because they see so many people, right? Yeah. Chances are, he'd never remember your name. Right. So, that's just the nature of a dignitary, right? Right. Like a former president. I know that former Queen Elizabeth, before she died, it was very difficult to get in the audience of Queen Elizabeth. If you did, you had to go through a lot. You had to go through training, you know, to even get into her presence. You had to know what to say, what not to say. Palace protocol, right? To get into her presence. Wow. Wow. But, when we come to the scripture, right, we see that the God of heaven is inviting every human being, not only to come into his presence, but to live in his presence. That's crazy. Yeah. And what's even more amazing about it, Nathan, is that, you know, again, the creator of the heavens and the earth, his mental capacity, his mind capacity, the Bible tells us, and it's in Psalms 147, verse 4, that he's able to count the number of stars and call them all by name. Right. And, as you mentioned in our previous episode, those stars, we're still counting them. We're still counting them. I don't even know if we have an official number. We're still counting them, and it's just on the back of his hand, oh yeah, there's so many. Yeah. And the beauty of it, God knows them all by name, but he knows your name. He knows my name. And he knows every human being's name. Yeah, so this is quite different from, say, the president. I want to see the president, right? Yes. I want the plate in the same room with the president, or I want to be able to look up from my chicken dinner and say, hey, there's the president. I want to catch his eye or get that selfie. That's what I want, but he's not interested. I mean, he doesn't know me from Joe Blow. So he's not interested in being with me, but we're talking about the God of the universe. And we were talking before we started rolling today. You had asked me, what do I think about that? And I don't even know how to process that, that I am of such personal value and personal interest to the designer, the founder of the universe, that he actually wants to be with me. So I'm ahead of the story, because this is the whole thing. The invitation is the name of today's podcast, this first in the pod-nar, is the invitation. And this invitation is, it's not like me, and I'm like, boy, how do I sign up? How many forms do I have to submit to get in the lottery to see God? And pass through security. He's the one who's struggling to say, Bob, I want to be seen by you. I want a conversation. I want to be your friend. Will you accept that? So it's totally reversing of the roles. I'm not scraping to get on God's radar screen. It's actually reverse. He's the one who's trying to cut through the noise and say, listen, I want to have an audience, a personal encounter with you. Wow. Yeah. That's powerful. That's the invitation. That's what he's inviting all of us to. In Matthew, the 10th chapter of Matthew, Jesus mentions this thought. He said, are not two sparrows sowed for a copper coin, and not one of them falls to the ground apart from your father's will, that God even realized when a sparrow falls to the ground. He's that capable and that sensitive that he cares even when one bird, tiny little bird falls to the ground. Then he says, but the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear. Therefore, you are more value than many sparrows. And he was speaking into a time where human life was cheap. Jesus was contrasting the cheapness, the disregard. You crucify, what, 10 people in a day because you want to get the attention of the townspeople. You just throw them up on crosses. You could throw away people. Jesus was painting, hey, listen, I want you guys to understand that my father's totally different. This God of ours, even the church could throw people away. If you didn't have enough money to impress the religious leaders, you're nobody. If you couldn't afford the temple exchange to exchange your little money, get ripped off at the temple money exchange, if you couldn't afford that exchange to buy the sacrifice that the religious leaders approved, nobody. You didn't matter in the religious scheme of life. You were just a number, just somebody who could enrich the pockets. And Jesus, so Jesus is saying, listen, you got to understand, God considers you of such value that he counts your hairs. That was Jesus resetting the bar, trying to say, you matter to God. God is not indifferent to your existence. Yes. And some of us have less hairs than others. That's true. So he knows the very hairs on our head. But you remember what he says here, do not fear. You know, as human beings, we experience a lot of fear in our life, right? There's a lot of fear. And in fact, that was the command that Jesus spoke the most to people was do not fear because he wanted them to know that there's no need to be afraid of God, that God cares for you. And that's when he said, do not fear, therefore, you're of more value than many sparrows. Every human being is of value in the eyes of God. So you don't have to buy a plate to get in to have a meal with God, right? So there's no cost. If you don't have $55,000, $100,000, $250,000, it doesn't matter because it's all free, 10 cents, right? They're all free. This is the creator of the heavens and the earth that's inviting us into his presence because God is love and the nature of love is it gives, right? The nature of God's love, it's a giving love and he's a relational being. And we're going to talk about like that's the whole thing today in our partners to talk about this longing of the heart of God as I think we've probably said before or heard this longing of God to know and be known. Oh, yeah. To know and be known. Yeah. Because the greatest desire of the human heart is to love and be loved. Yeah. And God knows that. Yeah. And that's the most amazing thing back to what you just said that God knows you fully and loves you. Yeah. Just for who you are. Yeah. And values you for who you are. Yeah. With all your weaknesses, wherever you're at, the creator of the universe, you're a value in his eyes. Yeah. And he's inviting us. Yeah. To come into his presence. Yeah. And I think it's worth pausing right here and speaking to you as the listener, I don't know who you are, where you're from. God knows you and you are a person in his eyes of astounding value. Amen. And I just want you to just soak that in, to let yourself believe the fact that you matter. He's not looking to make money on you. He's not looking to build his, to pad his social media account. He's not looking to pad the numbers in his religious organization. You as a human being, a single, solitary human being, wherever you're at, whatever your rap sheet is or isn't, are of astounding value to God. That's beautiful. His motive is absolutely pure. Right. Right. No strings attached. No strings attached. Totally unselfish motive. Yes, you're a value in the eyes of God. Somebody may have told you along the way that you're of no value in the eyes of God, right? Somebody may be belittling you right now, but the creator of the heavens and the earth in his eyes, you're a value. And like you mentioned, just pause for a moment and let it sink in. Let it sink in that the God of heaven who is love, you're a value in his eyes. Beautiful. So God is inviting us all to live in his presence. Every human being, that's the invitation, right? There's no subscription fee. There's no security clearance. There's no lines to wait in. He's just simply saying, come, right? And you know the beautiful part? The buffet table is much better than chicken and asparagus. That's right. That's right. In fact, King David said in Psalm 16, verse 11, he said, in your presence, talking about in God's presence, is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore. Can you imagine that? In God's presence is fullness of joy, not condemnation, right? Not guilt and shame, but fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore. Yeah, and that word fullness, well, let me just pull it from the NIV here. Same text. You make known to me the path of life. This is the rhythm of life. This is the way of life in God's universe, right? You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. There is this hunger that we all have for something to fill, and we search, and in fact, we have later. We've got some lyrics later on. I don't think it's in this podcast, but this searching, this longing, let's fill it. We spin through social media, just video after video after video. We check our likes. Whatever it is, we're looking because there's something that longs to be filled, and here's the God of the universe saying, listen, when you hang out with me, your life is bursting with this deep, satisfying joy, like this life permeated or soaked joy. It's meant to get to the deepest core. Fullness. There's fullness. Yeah, just filled up, and in fact, the biblical picture is overflowing. There's so much depth and fullness that it just cascades over and out of a life, leaning into God's presence. Leaning into God's presence, and like the text goes on to say, there's pleasures forevermore. You're talking about earthly pleasures oftentimes. We have it today, it's gone tomorrow. It's just a flickering moment, and we're experiencing. Isn't that the look of social media, right? You get it. You spin through. I find myself, I can get out there, oh, I just want to spend a few moments looking through some reels, some short videos, and so I start, and then an hour later, I'm still spinning through videos, but I've got to do it again tomorrow because once I'm done spinning and I go to sleep, and I'm like, man, I got to bed too late, but it's not long before that happens again because it's short term. Sure. There's that fix, but it's short term. Short term. That's the thing, short term, and it doesn't matter whether it's drugs or whether it's material things or jumping from one relationship to the other, whatever. We're longing for something to satisfy, and God is saying with the invitation to come and live in my presence. I'm going to give you fullness of joy, but I'm going to give you a pleasure that will never end. Just keeps on giving. Just keeps on giving. Yes. That's incredible. Forevermore, it is incredible because that's the buffet table that when you come to eat and drink of the fountain of life, like you said, I like the way you mentioned it from that scripture verse. It's a rhythm of life. This is the way God created us. This is the way God designed us, so he's just inviting us to come into that rhythm, to receive life from him. Give it, right? Receive it and give it. And food and drink are metaphors used in scripture about this nourishing of the soul. We all need food, like daily. I mean, we'll spend lots of money on plates of food. We'll spend money, whatever it is. But food is a big thing. Whole networks devoted to food. And Jesus took our physical hunger and said, listen, I'm providing something that can feed the soul. That can feed the soul where you won't even have to get another meal. It's so full that you'll just be able to live in this unending supply of deep satisfaction. Wow. Wow. I think of that scripture verse where Jesus said, whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely. Freely. You're drinking freely of the fountain of life. He's not forcing it on you. Yep. In fact, it's an invitation. Yep. You don't have to take it if you don't want to take it. And then he said, whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him. Never thirst. Yeah. Will never thirst again. Right? Never thirst. Yep. So there's a satisfaction. Satisfaction. So, yeah. So the place to find satisfaction in life is accepting the invitation to live your life in the presence of God. In fact, this desire to live in God's presence goes all the way back. If you look at the story line of the Bible, it goes all the way back to the beginning from the Genesis story. Right. So when God builds the world, as we find in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, first chapters of the Bible, God's building this world. And he builds this world with spaces, right? There's what, three spaces? Yes. Three days full of creating the space, right? And in that space. And he fills it. He fills the earth filled, and ultimately. The plants. Yep. The animals. Yep. He fills all those spaces. And then he creates Adam and Eve. People. And basic people. So this is a space devoted to the flourishing of relationship. I think this is a very important concept for us to recognize that the designer, the builder, the constructor of the universe built the whole thing around relationship. And not dysfunctional, sort of locked in, prisoner, slave, whatever. But free agents, free willed beings living in this rhythm of love defined relationship. Right. And again, looking at the Genesis story, God would come and walk with them in the garden. I mean, he would walk with them. He's the author of relationship. He created Adam and Eve to be in relationship. He created the whole family unit to operate in a relationship. And beyond that, he created communities, right, to live in these relationships. All a reflection of him. Of him. Yeah. And we don't have time to unpack it, but scripture indicates there's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which is the original community. That's probably all we can say about that today, but that God himself lives in the rhythm of community. Right. Right. So here we see in the Garden of Eden, God's desire to live, right? He created the heavens and the earth, and he creates Adam and Eve, and he gives it to them to be stewards, right, of the heavens and the earth, but he still walks among them. But then we come into Genesis chapter 3, and this is where we see this being that comes into the picture, that begins to plant a lie in the mind of Eve, right, about God. So he sees a relationship going well, and that threatens him. He wants to divert that relational energy from God to himself. Again, we could go a long ways on this. Talk to us about how does he go about that? What is he doing? How does he instill, sort of begin to fracture that relational dynamic in that created world? So in Genesis chapter 3, the story starts off in verse 1, Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, Has God indeed said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree, which is in the midst of the garden, God said, You shall not eat, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. Then the serpent said to the woman, Ye shall not surely die, for God knows, in the day that you eat, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So here, what was he doing? He was implanting, subtly planting doubt in their minds about the Creator, that he didn't have their best interest in mind. He's not looking out for your good. He's not looking out for your good. In other words, he has selfish motives. He's really a selfish being. He's not looking out for your good. He's hiding something from you, and then he's really lying to you. Wow. So subtle. What's crazy is, I feel like that still is the frame through which we generally see God. God's in it for himself. God's looking out for God. And we're sort of incidental or manipulated as part of this picture, but God's really in it for himself. I remember thinking, like, this was the worldview that I kind of lived in, even though on paper and in the things I said, I didn't see God this way. But in my heart, I really held a view, generally, of God as controlling, manipulative, overbearing. And this is the thing, essentially, that's introduced all the way back in Genesis, in this fall story, in this rebel angel convincing Eve and then Adam to join the side of the rebellion. And he does it through fracturing this relationship by saying, basically, God's not in it for you. Whatever you think, it's all a smokescreen. God's in it for God. So again, as we look at the Bible, we realize that this serpent was the devil and the fallen angel that came down from heaven. So here he is, implanting these lies about God. You mentioned about how a lot of people still have that picture to get today about God. Well, it's interesting what the devil does is he takes his character, who's a liar and a deceiver, and uses force and coercion and manipulation. These are attributes of him in his kingdom, and he flips it on God. So he actually takes who he is, and he paints a picture of God as if that's who God is. And people buy into that picture, just like Eve bought into the picture. He ate into the fruit, and then Adam ate, and then a change took place. And it's interesting. We talk about things like gaslighting. We talk about the psychological phenomenon of narcissism, not just being a self-interested person but literally having a psychological, a brokenness where one is so internally fragile that they're constantly organizing their world as a kind of cheer squad to make them feel good about themselves. And here is the devil, in a similar sense, manipulating Adam and Eve, manipulating our first parents to begin to see him as the one worthy and to flip that image, to paint God in his own self-interest so that he could turn Adam and Eve against God and onto himself. He could become the good guy by crafting a false story, a false narrative about who God really is. And we believed it. They believed it. We still believe it. They believed it. And as you know, the story goes, the Bible says, So the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise. She took the fruit and ate it, and then she gave also to her husband, and he ate it. But their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sowed fig leaves together and made themselves suffering. But listen, here's an interesting part of the story. And then they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees. Then the Lord called to Adam and said, Where are you? So he said, I heard your voice in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked. Of course, then he goes on to say, Well, who told you they were naked? They tell the story. But what's interesting here, again, is God comes back to look for his friends. Oh, that's incredible. Before you go there, I think it's valuable to recognize that shame originates, this sense of shame and nakedness does not originate with God. It originates with the rebel angel. That there is this thing that when he gets them to leave, to join the rebellion, that is the starting place of this deep sense of shame, not because God inflicts, like it's not that God throws a wet blanket over the Garden of Eden. But in fact, it's essential to the nature of rebellion to begin to experience the shame and to feel that monkey of shame sort of jump on your back. That begins, not with God, begins with the rebellion. And somehow there's a break inside that gives way to this, what becomes a perennial human experience of shame. Well, the relationship was broken. It was this relationship of love flowing from God into them and then back to God. And all of a sudden they believe this lie about God and they're distrusting him. And once that's broken, shame comes in. Shame comes in. It's not because God is inflicting on them, saying, well, here's the result of your disobedience. It's just the consequences of breaking outside of the circle of this love-shaped life, where God was pouring his love into them and it was flowing out through them and back. So here comes God looking for them. He's looking for them. He calls out to Adam, where are you? We want to notice something here. God didn't change. God did not change. He did not change. He was still the same loving, compassionate, tenderhearted being, just like he is today. Same way. God doesn't change. Our behavior doesn't change God. Our behavior doesn't even change the way God reacts towards us. The only thing he knows is unselfish love because that's who he is. So God is unilaterally loving, like he can do that and he does it irrespective of however we behave or respond, do or don't do. God's just going to love. He's just going to love. That's who he is. Right. Now the devil has made it out to think that because your behavior changed, God changes. Right. But that's the lie. That's the lie. You're talking about lie. You're right because the picture is that now God is angry with you. So now he's punishing you. So your guilt, your shame, whatever you're going through, is God punishing you. Inflicting you with like, hey, you messed up, you broke this thing, so now you're going to pay for it. So let me weigh you down, hold you down until you say, mercy. Like the game, right? He says, you know, squeeze the hand or twist the arm or whatever until you cry mercy. We have that vision of God. Well, the key word is cry uncle. Cry uncle. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a lie. And the truth is that our sins doesn't change how God responds to us, right? So the garden that we talked about, the original creation, is God creating a physical space in which relationship is meant to flourish under the rhythm of love or within the rhythm of love. Right. That's broken when Adam and Eve believe the lie about God, but God still in his coming to them reflects his own interest to continue to have that relationship, creation relationship. Amen. After the rebellion, God still is saying, listen, my position towards you, right? That's what you told us. That's what scripture said, is I want to be with you. Wow. That's why he comes in the garden. He's like, where are you? What happened? Yeah. Tell me what took place. I haven't changed. What happened to you? Same thing today, right? So God's coming after us. He's pursuing after us, right? The Bible's clear on that, that God comes after us, right? He's not waiting for us to come back to him. No. Not waiting for us to get our act together and come back to him, because it's only by his grace that he can save and restore. So as the story goes on, we see what happened was when God asked Adam, asked him, what happened to you, right? And he tells them in verse 11, he says, who told you you're naked? Have you eaten of the tree which I commanded you not to eat? And they blamed the serpent, right? They said it was the serpent's fault, but also they blamed each other, right? Actually, before it got to the serpent, Adam said it was my wife's fault. So their relationship changed. Yeah. That's crazy. So when they believe the lie, the whole thing starts falling apart. The whole thing fell apart. Their relationship towards God fell apart. The relationship with each other fell apart. So are we saying then, this is just a big picture, are we saying then that the big dream of God in what I call the redemption project is putting all these pieces back together, our relationship, family relationships. And the core of that is that the relationship that God longs for us is restored. And as that's restored, then our connections, our relationships are restored. Exactly. That's the whole plan. In fact, once you understand Genesis chapters 1 through 3, the rest of the Bible is just unpacking that story. In fact, in Genesis 3, verse 15, where God says to the serpent, I'll put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. We don't have a lot of time to get into the whole details of that, but really what he was saying, what God was foretelling was that God was going to create a plan, right, to destroy the effect of the devil's plan and restore, right, and restore that relationship. So I'm going to, so he's promising to engage in a process of undoing what's been done by the rebellion. Right. We know from the Bible story that that seed that he was talking about was the Messiah that would come. Right, it was Jesus, right? It was Jesus, right. The anointed one. He was the Christ. He was the one that would crush the serpent's head, but it would bruise Jesus' heel. In other words, in his humanity and the cross, he was going to suffer in order to restore humanity back into the relationship with God, right? So the invitation, right, the invitation, the relationship that was broken with Adam and Eve, now God is saying, listen, I'm going to make a way. I'm not giving up on you or anybody else. I'm making a way for you to come back. The invitation still holds. That's awesome. So we're going to touch on the Jesus story in a minute, and you kind of went there, but I want to dial back just a little bit because there's a big chunk of history that goes by, right? And then a guy named Abraham comes on the scene, and eventually, in his lineage, his downline, family downline, there's a people called Israel, and they're led out of Egypt. They end up in the wilderness. The first place kind of God ends up taking them is to this place called the Sinai Desert where Mount Sinai is, and in that place, he communicates something very profound to them, and that's in Exodus 25, and what God communicates to them is this, let them make me a sanctuary and get this for the purpose that I may dwell among them. So here's the God creation, this space for relationship. The rebellion happens. God comes saying, listen, what happened? Came to be with them. History unfolds, and we find God again coming to the human family saying, make a place for me, a tabernacle, a tent for me, because I want to be with you. Wow. Isn't that beautiful? It's incredible. That's amazing. I mean, you think he would just say, I'm not going to bother with you guys anymore. I'm done, man. You're bothering me. That's what we do as human beings. If somebody's bothering us, we're not going along with them, just get out, right? We get fed up and just get out, but God doesn't quit, just like he doesn't quit on any human being today. If you're listening to us today, we want you to know that God will not ever give up on you. He's always pursuing you. He's always seeking to draw you back to him. This is the truth about God. This is the beauty about God, that he meets us where we are to bring us back, and this is the storyline of the Bible. And that's the invitation. That's the invitation. Over and over and over and over again in today's discussion, you're going to hear that simple invitation of God saying, I'm here. Will you let me come in? It's not me sending a bunch of invitations to God. I just think we need to emphasize that, that God is the one saying, listen, I want to be known by you. Can I come in? Yes. Can I come in? You know what? I'm saying that because in a sense, it's not an invitation of God saying, hey, come over to my house. It's God coming close to us and saying, may I come over to your house? Yes. Right? The temple comes down. No, it doesn't come down. The idea is given by God to build the tabernacle because he comes to visit. He wants to be with us, so the invitation, in a sense, is God coming to us and saying, may I come in? Yeah. May I be with you? May I be with you. It's interesting because he's asking, right? Right. That goes to the very heart of God, that God is the author of freedom, right? He doesn't use manipulation. He doesn't use coercion. He doesn't use force. He uses freedom. You choose, just like he did with Adam and Eve. He gave them the freedom to choose. Unfortunately, they chose a different direction, but he still worked with them when they made bad choices. That's the only space that love works in, right? If love is really the thing that is the fabric of the universe, the essence of God, it's inseparable from the capacity to reject. You've got to be able to accept or reject or it isn't love. There's a little saying, a man forced against his opinion is of the same opinion still. Listen, we cannot, if somebody came in here now and put a gun to our head and said, love me, right? We may get down on our knees. But it's not real. It's not real. Because we're just doing it because we're scared to death and we don't want to be shocked. We want to see that right. But God doesn't operate that way. God is the author of freedom. In fact, the scripture says where the spirit of the Lord is, there's liberty, right? So God is offering every human being this invitation, like you said, to come down to invite you into his presence, giving you complete freedom to decide yes or no. You choose whether you want to accept it. And when we see God for who he really is, it's hard to resist. It's hard to resist, not to step in, right? Not to come into his presence and accept that invitation. Because there's freedom there. As we mentioned before, there's pleasures forevermore, right? There's fullness of joy in the very presence of God because he cares for you. That's right. And this may mean that you just need to shelve or dump everything you think about God. Just push it off and just dump it and let God redefine. Let God tell you his story because there's so much garbage, so much nonsense that permeates the religious world, permeates the secular world about God. And really just say, okay, you know what, I'm just going to dump that. I'm going to let God tell me a story and then I'm going to decide if I'm on with God or not. That's beautiful. You know, most of us have cell phones and we enjoy our cell phones. We do so much on our cell phones. We can do our banking, we can text our friends, we can check out social media, we can go to the news. Everything's on the cell phone. So when the cell phone's acting up, we tend to get frustrated sometimes, right? So one of the keys that I've learned anyways, and I'm not very much of a techie kind of guy, but if you just reboot the phone, turn it off and turn it back on, it clears up most of the problems. So what you're talking about is forgetting and dumping everything. It's just reboot. God is saying, listen, reboot. Reboot your mind of how you see God and your perception of God and how you think he sees you and just look at who he really is in Scripture. See, here's what you don't want to do. You don't want to lose the wonder and delight of knowing God because of somebody else's nonsense in life, right? I don't want to miss out on the potential of a flourishing life with God because of somebody else's story. I want to make that decision based on the truth about God, who he really is. So that's why we just got to let it go. Whatever your childhood is, whatever you get from somebody else, just let it go. It doesn't matter. Get the real story. Yeah. Give God a chance. Give God a chance. Give God a chance, right? The Bible says to taste and see that the Lord is good. Because he's good. Because he is good. Yeah. Give God an opportunity. Yeah. I love that. Reboot, throw all the baggage away, and let's just relook at who he really is. And starting in that Genesis story, we see that God didn't change when Adam and Eve sinned. We see that God has provided a way to bring us back through the Savior of the world. And we see that through that history, as Israel was going there, God said, let them make me a sanctuary and build a temple that I may dwell among them. And you remember when they were traveling through the desert, they had a pillar of fire at night to keep them warm because the temperature would drop so much. And during the day, they had a cloud to keep them from the intense heat. God never left them. He was caring for his people. He was where they were. Yeah, he was caring for them. And that's the same way that God cares for you and for me and for every human being. That's right. Because that's who he is. That's right. So then we come to Matthew. We have the tabernacle and the wilderness. God said, let them make me a sanctuary. I want to dwell among them. Let them make me a tent, a house. I want to be with them. And then we come to Matthew 1, and Jesus is born. Matthew 1 says, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall call him Emmanuel. And that name simply means God with us. So here it is, God again showing up in the story to be with us. God going out of his way, and there's no way to really even capture what that means, going out of his way to be with us. And you're talking about what a fancy term, incarnation, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. God incarnated, right? That's the theological term, right? We're talking about the creator of the universe becoming a human being, to become one of us, to dwell among us. Join our family, right? In fact, one translation says that he moved into the neighborhood. Moved into the neighborhood. I think that's Eugene Peterson. Yeah, yes. Yeah, yeah. Moved into the neighborhood. He moved into the neighborhood. That's right. So God moves into the neighborhood. That's just really, again, giving us this picture of God, of how much he cares. Yeah. Because why would the creator of the heavens and the earth, who sustains it all, become a microscopic embryo inside a human being's womb, Mary's womb? It's all because of love. Longs to be known. Yeah. To know and be known. He wants us to see the truth of him, so we could fall in love with him, so we could accept the invitation to come. And this is all part of the big redemption project, right? And the end of that redemption project is captured in the last book of the Bible, Revelation, with this language of God dwelling with us and us dwelling with him. Maybe you can read that. Revelation 4. Before we do that, I just want to mention in 2 Corinthians 6.16, where the Apostle Paul says there that, where God, through the Apostle Paul, said, I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Again, journeying through the New Testament, beyond Jesus' life, Paul still reiterating the same storyline of God's desire to be with us, of God's desire to walk among us. You know? Yeah. It's beautiful. So that's the final book of the Bible, and that final, you know, when the heavens and the earth, God creates the heavens and the earth, and this is what he says. Everything's made new, right? And then the Bible says that, and I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, behold, the tabernacle of God was with men, right? And he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his people. God himself will be with them and be their God. Oh, that's beautiful. What was lost in Eden, right? The physical presence of God, but yet God was still wanting to be present, right? In a spiritual sense, God is present. As close as you can be. As close as you can be. But then when we travel down through, and the new heavens and the earth, again, we're once again living in the very physical presence of God, because this is who he is, this is his invitation, again, to human beings, that he wants to live in our presence. That's amazing. And he's inviting us to live in his presence. That's awesome. What an invitation. What an invitation. We don't have to wait in line. We don't have to go through security systems. Right. Listen, we just come to God. God has made provision for us through our Savior to have our sins forgiven, to have our guilt removed, to have our shame removed, and rebuild us, right, so that we can experience that joy, right, the pleasures forevermore, living in his presence, the joy. And that joy, I think, that he's bringing is living in his presence of being loved, but also experiencing what it's like to live in the rhythm of love as a lover in this rhythm of relationship defined and expressed in the context of radical other-centered love. I really appreciate the way you put that, Nathan, about the rhythm, right, because life is a rhythm, right? We're living, and we go into daily living, and daily living isn't easy sometimes, where we have a lot of pressures, a lot of stresses that come at us, but reality is God's desiring for us to go through that journey with us, right? That's right. But we still have to choose that, Lord, I'm going to accept that invitation. I'm going to accept your invitation to live in abiding your presence, and please live in my presence, live in me, and live in my presence. So we have, in this podcast, decided, in this pod and hour, five-part series, decided to share four key principles, you might call them, to living in, to seeing, experiencing, and living in the center of God's love. Those four principles are these. The first one is to see, and that principle is about seeing God's beauty. We've touched on that, but seeing God's beauty. Number two is meditating, processing. What does the idea of God being beautiful mean in how it interfaces with my life? Getting rid of all that baggage. Right. And taking in the new. That's right. Getting rid of the old, taking in the new. That's right. And then number three is accept. So now, how am I really embracing the truth of God's love? And then the fourth one is resting, living a life at rest in the overflow of God's love. We believe that's the core of life at its best, to see, to meditate, to accept, and to rest. Yes. That's the see, experience, live in this rhythm of being radically loved and becoming a radical lover. That's what the pod and hour is about. This is the invitation to say, hey, we want to invite you into that life. God's saying, hey, I'm here. Can I come in and let you live that life? It's good news. It's good news. So two, three, four, five episodes of the pod and hour are devoted to each of those. See, what's the next one? Meditate, accept, and rest. That's the four next episodes. You know, Nathan, there was a story that was told that I really appreciate from our friend, one of our friends, Ty's book. He talks about a newlywed couple. They were just married and the bride's father had bought them a honeymoon suite, right, and on the top floor of a hotel that would actually cost $3,000 a night. And this is what was purchased for them. So after the wedding, it was late, and the couple leaves the ceremony, you know, they leave the reception and they go to the hotel. They had keys ahead of time. Nobody was at the desk. So they get on the elevator, they go to the top floor, they come to the room, and you know, being the new husband that he was, he picks his bride up after he opens the door, carries her across the room, and they were just in shock. Hmm. Why were they in shock? Because they were imagining this huge room that was a penthouse suite, only it was small. It was small, and in fact, the bed was a pull-out couch, and so they were in shock. So $3,000 for a pull-out couch. Well, $3,000 for a pull-out couch. What a letdown. Yeah, what a letdown. And they were so disappointed, and they were actually angry, but they decided since it was so late, and they didn't want to spoil their beautiful night, they had just got married, so they decided to spend the night, right, and then go deal with it in the morning. So the next morning, they go downstairs. They tell the manager how they're upset, and the manager says, I think I know the problem. Come with me. They go back up to that top floor. They go to the same room. They open the door, and the manager said, did you open this door? And they said no, and he opens the door, and beyond that door was a huge room, picture windows that overlooked the whole city. There was a buffet table with all kinds of food. There was rose petals that went along the carpet and actually led up a set of stairs to the master bed, and near that platform, there was actually a jacuzzi, and it was absolutely gorgeous. It was breathtaking, and the bride, she was saying, oh, if we had just opened the door. Oh, if we had just opened the door, because beyond the door. As you were telling the story, I'm thinking about the comments we made earlier about not letting someone else's view of God steal the opportunity of knowing Him, and I just think of how many people, they walk in, the elevator doors open, they look around, they say, man, this is crazy. Look at this little cramped room. I can't live in here, and they leave before pausing long enough to recognize that maybe this little room isn't the point. Maybe there's more. Let's open that door. Well, the devil's done a good job at creating wrong pictures of God, even through religious circles. Oh, and maybe mostly through religious circles. Maybe mostly to create a small little room. Yep. Touch not, taste not, handle not, whatever's in that room, right? But beyond that door, there's the God of heaven who has so much more for us, but we have to choose to open the door, right? So that's what we want to say to people who are listening today, that even though God has such a beautiful experience out there for you and for me, for all of us, we still have to choose to accept that invitation, and we just want to encourage everyone to accept that invitation. Say yes. Just say yes. No matter where you're at. That's right, and it doesn't mean, we were talking the other day about this, it doesn't mean that you have to decide today you're going to follow God for the rest of your life. It doesn't mean that you have to make this big, big, massive decision. It just means that you say, okay, yes, I will take the next step. You can always stop walking. You can always turn your back later, but yeah, I'll take the next step and see where it leads. And then you can decide after that, oh, this is okay, I'll take the next one. So that's literally all we're asking is just take the next one. Take the next step. You're not committing to anything. You're not giving up the life you have now. You're just saying, okay, the disciples, Jesus just said, follow me. He didn't say to Peter along the seashore, Peter, are you willing to be crucified upside down for me? He just said, Peter, follow me. That literally meant just walking with Jesus to the next town, to where he spent the night. That's all it meant. It wasn't a commitment of his whole life. It was just one step at a time. That's literally all you're going to do. Just lean in. Just one step and just see where that takes you. Just see where that takes you. Now, Nathan, we have something that we do. We wanted to offer people to help them in that journey. Can you share with us? Yes. So accompanying this podcast, available on the website loveshape.life is a booklet, and the booklet contains the basic teaching that we're going to cover in these next four paudinars, including pieces from today. It also contains some simple worksheets to help you process. We'll be talking more, and you'll understand how those fit in. So booklet, free booklet for you. We would love for you to have that. We're also offering the opportunity to be part of a Journey to Oneness cohort, and on the website loveshape.life, there's the opportunity to express interest in that. And loveshape.life cohort is basically this, teaching where we're processing these things in greater detail, what we're covering in the paudinar, but in greater detail, we're doing that in the context of peers, so others experiencing this together, processing what does this look like? How do I experience this together? Or in a group setting. In a group setting, yes. A digital group setting. A digital group setting, and then offering one-on-one coaching to help, on a personal level, process through, step through, how do I leave the baggage behind? How do I get over these hangups? How do I get over my dark picture of God? How do I leave the stuff behind and lean into this God who loves me radically? Beautiful. That is the Journey to Oneness cohort. If you're interested again, just visit the website loveshape.life. And until next time, until next time, lean into a loveshape.life. That's it. For more information, visit loveshape.life.