Even Bert

As a worship pastor who spends much of my time seeking ways to help others discover and express intimacy with God, I have had no shortage of personal experiences from which to draw my own beliefs about such matters.  That He has left me His Word as the compass and authority for my life would be gift enough. But He is not limited to its pages.  At times, He meets me through the words of a hymn or poem, viewing a stunning work of art, or listening to a symphony. Often, He pulls back the curtain and shows off some of His amazing handiwork in nature when I am not even looking for it.  But the revelations of greatest impact that have made me want to know Him more have actually been in listening to His still small voice.  No, I’m not talking about “voices”, lest you begin worrying that the porch light’s on but nobody’s home.  I am referring to those quiet, inner spirit kind of nudgings that God give us through His Spirit, that actually comfort, exhort, and in some cases direct us.  Jesus himself said in John 10: “My sheep hear my voice and I know them, and they follow Me.”

If God desires intimacy with me, surely it is a living, active, and current thing.  Much, if not most, of my knowledge of Him comes from His Word, and all subsequent “leadings” must agree with that revelation. But His ability to communicate with me is not limited to that collection of dogma, family history, and love letters.  In other words, He still wants to connect with me moment by moment…by His Spirit.  But this form of intimacy takes time to develop.  Like any other close relationship, time is of the essence. 

Describing what he calls “The Cycle of Intimacy,” Wayne Gordon, a pastor of an outreach ministry in urban Chicago says this:  “Knowing God is a process that can no more be exhausted than the exploration of the universe.  There is always another blazing aspect to discover in God.”  He speaks of the cycle of intimacy with God as outlined in John 14:23: ‘If anyone loves me, He will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.’”

Here, then, is the cycle:

1. The more we get to know God personally, scripturally, as He really is, the more we will fall in love with Him.

2. The more we fall in love with Him, the more we will want to hear His voice, to please Him with our lives, and surrender more of ourselves to His love and power.

3. The more we walk in obedience, the more God will make Himself known to us and manifest His presence in our lives.

Notice I didn’t say, the more we obey, the more He will love us.  That is simply not possible, for God is love.  But with listening and obeying will come intimacy…intimacy with the living God.

While I could share vast numbers of examples in my life where my response to God’s voice was all too passive and impotent, I do recall learning a valuable lesson from God about this cycle of intimacy when I encountered a man named Bert.  Bert was a crusty old curmudgeon I happened to be visiting in the hospital several years ago in Chicago.  I was serving a church there as the pastor’s assistant, and as luck would have it, when the pastor left town things often happened that I was not equipped to handle.  Not in the flesh, anyway. On one such occasion,  I was called to Bert’s bedside by his daughter, who, knowing he was near death, asked that I come pray for him.

Bert was not a believer, mind you, at least not to my knowledge.  He wasn’t a church goer—not of our church or any other.  He wasn’t even a nice man.  He had few friends, his family had all but disowned him, and on a previous visit, he had told me he wanted to kill the doctors who he blamed for his wife’s recent death.  As I walked into his room that afternoon, I was struck by my utter lack of qualifications to help this situation or bring any comfort to anyone.  I was also struck by the fact that there was no one there to comfort, for there lay Bert…alone, in a coma, the death rattle from his advanced emphysema growing increasingly slower and weaker. 

And then it happened.  As clearly as anything has ever been communicated to me, God revealed to me that Bert was not beyond redemption, that before he slipped into eternity he needed to experience God’s unconditional favor, and that he had sent me to be the messenger.  But I would not get off with merely reading aloud a few scriptures.  No, the Lord wanted me to literally get up on Bert’s bed and hold him in my arms and just say over and over, ‘God loves you, Bert, He will forgive you, Bert.  Trust Jesus, Bert.’

Of course, then the dialogue began, “God!  What if someone walks in?  Or worse yet, what if Bert wakes up?!”  Despite the protests, I knew what I had to do.  As I lay there hugging and loving this crusty, rattling old man, I learned a new depth of God’s unconditional love for me, for all of mankind. If His pursuit of me, of us is that strong, that He will send someone to our deathbed so that we might know and experience His embrace to the end, what manner of love is this? 

In my experience with Bert, loving God merely meant taking the risk of looking a little silly.  But when I laid him to rest three days later before a grand total of six mourners, I longed for more opportunities to experience this wonderful God.  Through His Spirit, God had revealed Himself to me in a way that caused me to love Him more and want to go deeper with Him. 

Our God wants to come close, and not just to hug, but to heal. “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” The offer is to the whole world.  Even folks like Bert.

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