One of the features
that first drew me into the late 20th century renewal movement was
my hunger and thirst to be “touched” by the presence of God. Feeling dry and empty, I began to earnestly
seek after an experience of the living presence of Christ wherever I caught
wind of it. I found a home with renewal
groups and leaders who expressed this same passion to pursue the “manifest
presence”. Initially, we would bounce
from one conference to the next, hoping to get “zapped” with ever fresh
encounters of the power of God. As we
kept seeking, we found that the Lord was just as likely to gently “soak” us
with his intimacy and rest on us with his peace.  His “deeper work” was not always dramatic,
but it was certainly precious. I
embraced this journey wholeheartedly and always will.

However, did you
notice how many quoted catch phrases there were in the first paragraph? Renewal, as with any movement, develops a
lingo of its own–it’s own version of Christian-ese, meant to be descriptive of
the path we’re on. Using language to
express what’s happening along the way is valid, but as we incorporate common
phrases into our spiritual vocabulary, our descriptive clichés can degenerate
into prescriptive spiritual technologies.
It behooves us to examine how the language itself begins to affect our
theology and our experience. With that
introduction, I would ask you to please weigh the following warning that I
believe the Lord gave me [03-11-03] concerning some of our most current and
perhaps cherished renewal jargon.

1.   
Beware of “pushing through the barrier”
language. Our worship-leaders, prophets,
and teachers often exhort us to “press in” until we get a “break-through”.
Pentecostals used to call it “tarrying” … Baptists held “watch-night” meetings.
There is a truth to this that looks like persevering, persistent prayer. Initially,
we hoped to sustain a devotion that would overcome real obstacles to intimacy
that the world, the flesh, and the devil lay before us. However, I have watched the repeated call to
“press in” begin to re-create the very veil that Christ tore apart for us once
and for all. It has begun to undermine
the bold, free access that Jesus purchased for us into the Holy of Holies and
before the Throne of Grace. It builds an
imaginary wall for every meeting, thus giving us a task for that meeting:
breaking through the wall. The social
dynamic is that the leadership senses (or rather, erects) an emotional wall,
which the congregation unites to pop through via its zealous worship or
repentance or prayer. There’s a
catharsis that’s very satisfying in that.
But if it blocks passage through the open door that God has promised to
all who believe, then it is an emotional breakdown—not a spiritual breakthrough.
All that we’re “breaking through” at that point is a cellophane barrier
of our own unbelief in the rent veil.
Unfortunately, because it’s a belief, it DOES have the power to keep God
(or you) out. Those who don’t get their
breakthrough (or rather, meltdown) leave frustrated and defeated.

In
our church, the worship leaders and intercessors were noting the increasing
difficulty in “breaking through” in spite of their urging of the congregation
to “press in”… until we made this
declaration: there is no veil.

2 Cor. 3:16-18 But whenever anyone turns to the
Lord, the veil is taken away. Now
the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And
we, who with unveiled faces all
reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with
ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

We
received this prophetic message: “There
is no veil. And when you realize that there is no veil, you’ll see that it is
not the veil that opens, but your heart.”
(cf. Luke 23:45)

Heb.
10:19-23 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy
Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living
way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have
a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us
from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us
hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.

2.   
Beware of “God-chasing” language that ironically distances
His presence from the very midst in which He promised to dwell. His Spirit is forever with us, in us, and will
never leave us, according to promise of Jesus Himself. While God-chasing
language accurately describes the hearts that seek earnestly, it can degenerate
quickly into a never-ending, carrot on the end of a stick quest that undermines
the imminence of God. Those who seek
hard after God are blessed, not because seeking is a spiritual virtue in and of
itself, but because they find the
One they are seeking. Based on a powerful encounter with God and his desperate
desire to know Him more, Tommy Tenny derived God-chaser language from the meteorological
storm-chasers. His desire to pursue God became a wild obsession that we ought
to bless. But when the analogy becomes our theology, we reduce God from
ever-present friend into an illusive tornado that we’re hoping to glimpse
occasionally on the horizon. This is in contradiction to the doctrine of the
immanence of God: His very-nearness is already established as a grace-gift by
the finished work of Christ.

To get a sense of how destructive this can be, I witnessed
a renewal meeting in which the evangelist called the whole church forward if
they were “hungry for God”. He then called on them to cry out to the Lord …
louder, then louder … he assured them that He was “just outside the door”. They cried if louder and he roared over them,
“Come on people, He can’t hear you … call louder!” At this point, a friend and I looked each
other and both felt simultaneous searing pain in our heads. We left.
When our hosts arrived home two hours later, they were rejoicing. They had a big “break-through” and everyone
was weeping in repentance. It was “beautiful”. It completely reverses Tenny’s experience,
where the congregation rushed forward, weeping and repenting because God graciously came, not in
order to make a reluctant God come.

This
amounts to a type of Neo-Baalism that reminds us of the false-prophets on Mount Carmel. Like
Elijah, we don’t need to beg or manipulate God into coming. Rather, at most we
simply ask Him to come and He does because He said He would. But generally, we
need only become thankfully aware that He has come, that He is very near all
the time, and especially whenever we gather in His name.

Matt. 18:20 For where two
or three come together in my name,
there am I with them." Acts 17:27-28
God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him
and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and
move and have our being.’

Even IHOP and the 24-7 prayer movement can become a
new religion by which we try to make God come through our fervency, rather than
acknowledging that He is here,      with us whenever we call on His name,

         with us whenever two or three
are gathered in his name,

         with whomever has a broken
heart or a contrite spirit,

         with the weak, the humble, the
lowly, and the least of these.

It’s
not a matter of chasing him. Rather, that He calls us to continually abide in
him who always abides with us and in us.

3.   
Beware of “hungry for God language” – This is the biblical language of David:

“My soul thirsts for you, my flesh yearns for
you, in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water.” “As the deer pants for the water, so my soul
longs for you.” It’s an accurate description of his desire for God. But not merely as a perpetual spiritual
state. Rather, he remembers a time when
the Lord had filled him with joy and his Spirit in the sanctuary. Now, hiding in the wilderness, he looks
forward to returning to the tabernacle and to his people where once again, they
will worship together and be replenished.

But I’ve watched dissatisfied thirsty souls who believe their
intense thirst is a sign of spirituality and who try to sustain that sensation. When their thirst is sated, they are alarmed
and assume they have lost their first love or have lapsed into apathy. In
truth, God is only looking for spiritual thirst because He intends to satisfy
it. If hunger and thirst never lead you to be filled with Jesus, you will eat
and drink somewhere else (like at Bath-sheba’s bathtub). How different this is to Jesus words to the
woman at the well.

John 4:13 Jesus
answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but
whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give
him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

John 6;35 Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of
life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will
never be thirsty.

A
word of exhortation: if you’re thirsty for God, you’d better start drinking.
And if you’re still thirsty, ask for more, and keep asking for more until you
are filled. The command is NOT Blessed are those who hunger, because that’s
really spiritual. Rather, blessed are those who hunger, because they will be
filled. Paul makes it this simple: Keep on being filled with the Spirit. When we
persist for any length of time in pressing-in, God-chasers eventually lapse
into striving, then weariness, then lethargy—which is a sort of lack of energy
from being sick—like a listless baby.
The awful fact is that lethargy is a look-alike to apathy, and when you
look apathetic, you will be tempted to guilt, and beat yourself up for a lack
of passion. Or worse, your pastor may
verbally beat the flock for what he perceives as apathy. He may try to “revive the baby by spanking it”
and then when it cries, he concludes they’ve had another “break-through”. Many,
many of the prodigals we know left precisely because of that. One of our
members came to me confessing her apathy. She claimed that she had lost her “passion
for Jesus” and therefore must be apathetic. I asked her, “So you don’t care
about Jesus any more?” She wept and said, “Of course I do!” I asked why she
thought she was apathetic then, and she replied, “Because I don’t feel any
passion for him.” For her, it was one or
the other. In truth, the Spirit of God
has a much broader range of experience than passion. He also does silence. And rest.
And praise. And play. And joy. And
warfare. And peace. Being spiritual is much broader than staying
passionate. It is keeping in step with
whatever the Spirit is doing with you. When your leaders scold you and exhort
you to further pressing in, you may not have become apathetic at all. You may
have just become weary of striving and have a desperate need to sink into the
resting place, to cease striving, to be still and know that He is God. The Spirit will not endorse this kind of
self-made, religious effort to repent hard enough, spiritual constipation, and
because He’s not energizing it, we end up resenting Him or the church.

Solution:
Not: identify every obstacle, remove it through repentance
(be good enough), exert whatever spiritual energy it takes in fasting and
prayer to finally break through … Gal. 3:3

Rather:

–    
proclaim and
believe in the torn veil

–    
proclaim and
believe in the present King and his kingdom

–    
rest together
in each other’s presence as he loves on you, strengthens you, instructs you,
and leads you

Pray for:

–    
pray off the
sickness of striving

–    
pray off the
lethargy and weariness and pray down peace and rest

–    
pray off the
condemnation of those who assumed they lost their passion and their first love
(“I don’t care about Jesus”).

Then learn what it is
to abide in Him and He in you. Become
God’s resting place and let Him fill your humble heart:

Isaiah 66:1-2 This is what the LORD says: "Heaven is
my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for
me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things, and
so they came into being?" declares the LORD. "This is the one I
esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.