The Presence is Greater than the Pressure

Those who most effectively minister to God are the ones who allow God to minister to us. 

• We love God because he first loved us. 
• Everything we create he created first. 
• God’s first interaction with us is messy and dirty. He knelt in the dust, making man in his own image. 
• Psalm 103 “he remembers that we are dust.”
• Heaven and earth coming together, life began with a face to face encounter. 

Before God asked us to fulfill our purpose he blessed us.

• He knelt and adored us. That’s why we have the power to adore him.
• Worship means - to kneel down. Worship is a position of the heart, not a genre of music. 
• Before Jesus released his disciples, he made them food and knelt down and washed their feet. 
• God’s design is that we would give from the overflow of what He gave to us. In the Hebrew day, the day begins in the evening. So you begin from rest.
• Adam’s first day in the garden God had a “day off.”
• Be fruitful and multiply He said BE not DO
• Performance says I am what I do. But we are what HE did. 
• Our battle is over the voice we listen to, because the voice we listen to is the voice that defines you. 
• The snake in the garden passes Eve this suspicion that God isn’t actually for them. And they allow this voice to become their reality. 
• The become ashamed.

But the response of the father is to come looking for his children. He is calling them by name and their identity.

• In another garden Jesus prayed, not my will but yours be done. 
• Jesus was offered the same temptations.
• God was pleased with Jesus before he entered his ministry. 
• The same voice of the accuser, “did god really say? Are you really the son of God? IF you are the son of God.”
• The first thing that God says about Jesus is this is my son in whom I am well pleased. And the accuser comes and asks about Jesus’ identity. 
• If God created the heavens and the earth with his voice, he can recreate us with his voice. 
• I find the voice of my father in the psalms

Insecurity vs. weakness

• He wanted to be in a garden with us, and a garden requires constant maintenance
• Insecurity is when we look to us for strength
• True sonship embraces the weakness we feel and looks to the father for strength. 
• Step away from the voice of fear and step into the voice of the father.
• Shame says you’re not enough. But the father says you are my beloved son/daughter.
• Jesus says come to me all you who are weary. I will put my yoke on you. 
• Dependency was not Jesus’ shame, it was his honor. 
• So many moments in life, so many worship sets, we are trying to impress God. But fathers are obsessed with their kids and just want to be with them. 

Do you believe God enjoys spending time with you?

• God is inviting us to walk with him in the midst of our messiness and dependency on him.
• “God’s more concerned in what we become than what we do.” - Dallas Willard. 
• In Him ministering to us, the pressure may increase in life, but the presence is greater. 
• Personally I journal my thoughts and he responds back to me. 
• Change starts to happen when you repent for a mindset, not behavior.

- Jonathan Helser