Sometimes God seems a million miles away. The idea of being close to Him seems impossible. And yet all along, He is closer than the deepest secret of your heart.

It is great to be with you at the beginning of another fresh week, I’m so excited. I was talking to a man the other day, in Africa. Over the last few years his country has been going through a bloody strife and conflict. So many people – men, women and children – have been killed in this war. And he’s been in the army. I can’t imagine the atrocities that he’s experienced and he said to me, “You know Berni, after everything I’ve been through, I just can’t believe that there’s a God, and if there is, He certainly isn’t interested in the lives of everyday people like you and me.”

It’s like that sometimes isn’t it? We look at the circumstances of our lives, our own lives, lives of people right around the globe, and those circumstances, they’re so powerful, they’re so compelling. We end up wondering, well, where the heck is God? Is He interested in my life really? If God is God, how can I get close to Him? Well that’s the question we will be exploring this week on the program, from A Different Perspective.

If I look back on my life, when I was a teenager at school, I had everything; a good home, I went to a good school and later in my high school life, I encountered Jesus. I believed I had a relationship with Him. I committed my life to Him. But then, well, then I grew up! And you know what it is like when we’re teenagers, we have a sense of being idealistic; we’re dreamers. Somehow for me it was easier to believe in Jesus as a teenager than when I grew up into adulthood. You know, you have the responsibility and the money and the mortgage and the career and the car and stuff, and for me God was pushed into the back seat.

I still believed in God but I decided to head off in a different direction. I was grown up; you know I had matured: I didn’t need that Jesus stuff. The longer I allowed that to go on – and it went on for a long time, a couple of decades – the less real He seemed. Reality is about what we are living in. If we are walking every day with God, if we are walking every day with Christ, we are praying and enjoying our relationship, that’s real. But if we are focusing on the here and now, if we are focusing on other things, if we let our senses be filled with the sights and smells and sounds of creation, the Creator fades from our view.

Now that’s not just a ‘God’ thing, it happens in every relationship. A husband and wife can get married and love each other and enjoy each other, but if they begin to focus on a whole bunch of other things that crowds their marriage relationship out, eventually – sadly, as happens in almost half of all cases – that marriage will fail, because we need to have that relationship as a part of our present reality.

Well, it’s the same thing with God. We can be focused on a whole bunch of other things and still kind of believe in Jesus; still have that belief somewhere in our heads. But the longer we leave it on the shelf – the longer we focus on other things and not on that relationship – the less real it becomes. And of course, because Jesus is not a physical reality – He’s not here in the flesh and blood the way a husband or wife is – then we can get to the point, which is the point I got to in my life, of thinking, “Well, does He still exist, is He around?”

And the crowd has faded from view then circumstances take a turn for the worse. Maybe we lose our jobs or there’s a broken relationship or we have money worries or we just don’t have a good sense of our own well-being – whatever it is and at that point we go, “Hang on, where’s God, is He real? Look at my mess! How can He let this happen? Does He really care about me?”

I think that is something that every person goes through in their lives. In whatever our spiritual journey and spiritual search looks like, God is a million miles away. What happened? Where did He go, why is it like this? I got to that point, after a couple of decades and then ten years ago, the best that I could pray when my life was falling apart; the most that I could muster in terms of faith was, “God, if you’re real, if you’re out there, I need you – now would be a really good time – if you exist.” That’s all I had; I just didn’t know any more, because for so long I had been walking in a different direction. For so long I had been focusing on other things that He wasn’t real anymore. He was a maybe that was the most I had.

And the question was, “What did I have to do to get close to God? What do I have to do? What do I have to do? What do I have to do, is what we keep playing in our heads, over and over again. Let me share with you an outrageous statement from a man named Paul, one of the Apostles of Jesus Christ. He wrote this two thousand years ago. And the reason it is so outrageous is Paul was a Pharisee; he was a religious separatist. He was so much into ‘religion through works‘ I can’t begin to find the words. And yet after he met Jesus Christ, this is what he wrote, “But now through Jesus, you who were once far off,” (I wonder if he is talking to anyone today?):

You who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. (Ephesians 2:13)

He came to proclaim peace to you who were far off as well as the ones who were near and through that we have access, through Jesus, in one Spirit, to the Father. (Ephesians 2:17-18)

You who were once far off! You who once thought God was a million miles away. You who once thought you had to shout through this huge void for Him to hear you. In other words the only thing we have to do is to believe that Jesus died for us. That’s what he means by, ‘You who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ’, because the simple, the simple story that is all the good news that we ever need, is that all of our failures, all of our wrongs, all of our junk has a price. That price was paid for by Jesus on the cross. That’s what the blood thing is all about. Blood was a symbol in the Hebrew culture for life. He paid with His life; He spilt His blood for us, to pay for our junk.

Now Christians have heard this stuff so many times, it’s parse’, it washes over us sometimes and we end up believing it in our heads but what about believing in this with our hearts? Believing in the fact that Jesus died and rose again to pay for my sins, my wrongs, my junk. To take that deep truth, and let it sink in, drink it in, soak it in, so it becomes a part of us. There’s peace; the separation is over, there’s no more distance. That’s the promise. We who were once far off are brought near by the blood of Christ.

It’s time to start living our lives in that outrageous promise. If you won millions in the lottery, would that change the way you lived your life? Well, this is better than winning millions in the lottery, this is more than that. This is believing that we are set free for eternal life. The war is over, peace has been declared and it may not feel like that, but that’s the promise that we can believe in. There’s no more gap – far off becomes near. It’s like a marriage covenant, a marriage promise. It’s a promise that God will never leave us again.

Father, I pray that each one of us would know this promise with our hearts. That we would learn to live in it and to walk in it and to rejoice in it, because it is a fact – it is a promise that cannot be changed. “But now through Christ, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” What a promise!

Imagine living in the same place as God. I mean, imagine if God set up home, not just with you, but … in you. Well, that’s exactly what He’s done.

This week we’re taking a look at the whole question of, well, how do I get close to God? Some days he can seem a million miles away. Life’s like that, it’s busy, it’s hectic, it’s quiet, it’s lonely, it’s outrageously happy, whatever. And no matter what season of life we happen to be travelling through just at the moment, a luxury resort or a wilderness experience, it’s sometimes the case that we don’t feel close to God at all.

Yesterday on the program we looked at God’s promise, that if we believed that Jesus died for our sins, then we’re brought close to him through that. That promise is kind of like the marriage promise that a husband and wife make at their wedding, only from God’s perspective there is no divorce, he’ll never break it. It’s a promise that we can live our lives in. Today we are looking at the next step, after the marriage promise. Setting up house together, living together with God. Looking at that relationship between God and us from A Different Perspective.

Weddings are wonderful, you know, they’re celebrations, everybody gets dressed up. Not only the bride and groom and the family but everybody comes along, and they get dressed up and you have this beautiful ceremony which is about a man and woman deciding, in front of everybody, to make that promise, that declaration that we are going to spend the rest of our lives together. And you have the ceremony and they sign the register and there are flowers and photos and a feast. It’s just fabulous.

I remember back to our wedding when Jacqui and I were married, a few years ago now and it was just unreal. I mean, being a typical bloke I said, “Well, why don’t we just go to church on Sunday morning and have the wedding as part of the Sunday service and we can have coffee and fairy bread after.” Well, not surprisingly, Jacqui didn’t quite see it that way. We went the whole hog, we hired a white marquee and put it up on the vacant block next to the church and friends and family came along. By the way, I still had fairy bread served up to her on the bridal table; we’ve got a video of her eating this fairy bread!

But anyway, it was just a wonderful celebration of a man and a woman falling in love and deciding to spend the rest of their lives together as husband and wife. But you know the best bit for me was when the car came to pick us up and we left everybody behind. I still remember that feeling, we hopped into the car, we had a car taking us to the airport so we could fly off to our honeymoon and waving to the people and driving off thinking, “This is by far the best part of the wedding – was leaving the people behind”.

It’s not so much that I didn’t enjoy the wedding, it was great, but heading off together as husband and wife was awesome. Just us, and we headed off on our honeymoon to the south island of New Zealand. Now you know that God is alive and well when you visit the south island of New Zealand. What a fabulous place. And so we went through that process of becoming one, of making a home together.

Now imagine, imagine if you will a wedding celebration where you have all of that but afterwards, instead of heading off together, the husband goes back to his old home and the wife goes back to her old home. They’ve made the promises, they’ve had the celebration, but they never make a home together. Now we have some friends called Lyle and Kathy, and Lyle and Kathy were married just recently. He’s an Australian and she’s from the Philippines and because of the immigration laws in Australia, after they were married, she was forced to leave the country even though they were married, she had to leave. And for three months, until it was all sorted out, they had to live apart, even though they were married. Now they were devastated. It was the most awful time for them but you know something? That’s how some people approach their relationship with God.

Yesterday we looked at the effect of what’s like a marriage promise, between us and God. When we accept Jesus. When we say, “I believe that Jesus died for my sins”. That’s like a marriage promise. God says, “because of that, because of your faith, you are now brought near to me. You, who were once far off, are brought near, through the blood of Christ.”

That was yesterday. I believe. But today, well what about living together, I mean we can believe and say, “Yippee – isn’t that wonderful,” celebration, and then go on and live life as though nothing has changed. As though believing in Jesus isn’t a new life. It’s as crazy a notion as a man and a woman getting married and going back to their old lives and living in separate houses.

Come on. Setting up home together when you love someone and you’ve made that life long promise and commitment is wonderful. But, yes it’s an adjustment and a sacrifice and it’s not easy some days but its God’s plan, not only for a husband and wife but for each one of us, when we believe in Jesus Christ. Listen to what Jesus says, if you would like to look it up it’s in John, chapter 14, verse 23. He says:

Those who love me will keep my word and my Father will love them and we will come to them and make our home in them.

Isn’t that outrageous? Isn’t that so different from the notion that you can believe in God, you can believe in Jesus, but keep him at a distance. It’s a picture, it’s a beautiful picture of Jesus saying, you love me, we’re going to come and make our home in you. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, indwelling us because we’ve taken the step of faith. God comes and dwells in us. A few years ago I was talking to a young, Jewish lawyer about this very question and he said, “Hang on, isn’t that an invasion of privacy?” I guess living together is a bit of an invasion of privacy. But when you love each other, you want to be together.

And here Jesus is saying, you love me, I’ll come and live with you, I’ll never leave you, everywhere you go, every minute of every day, I will be with you. That’s the second part of God’s promise, that he will come and make his home in us. God’s address on planet earth is Berni Dymet; God’s address on planet earth is you if you believe in Jesus Christ.

The marriage vow, the first part, is I believe! But I don’t love my wife with my head; I love my wife with my heart. In the same way, I don’t love my God with my head, although I think a lot about that relationship. I love my God with my heart and because it’s a heart relationship, the next logical step is that we should live together in a home, in a close personal relationship that’s real and that is the promise of God.

Those two promises of God are so important when we say, “How can I get close to God?” and the answer is – to believe in his promises even when it doesn’t feel like it. This is where God makes the rubber hit the road. He may feel like a million miles away, but when he does, you know something; you know what happens to me when I feel as though God is a million miles away? I fall back on the promises of God, He has brought me close through the blood of his Son and he has made his home in me. That is God’s unbreakable promise that He will not change.

Tomorrow we will look at what that feels like during the cut and thrust of life and we’re thinking, ‘Where is God?’ but when I’m at work I don’t think ‘Ah, I wonder if Jacqui still loves me?’ No matter what happens during the day, there’s some days I’m busy or she doesn’t feel well, and no matter what happens, we don’t run around in a flap thinking, where is she? Or where is he? Of course she loves me, of course I love her. It’s a promise and God’s unbreakable promise is that HAS made His home in everyone who believes in Jesus Christ.

Life moves at quite a rapid pace these days for most of us. And yet the amazing thing is that God is out there right in the middle of that cut and thrust with us. Don’t believe me? Well, stick with me as we unpack that on the program today.

For most people these days, life, well it’s pretty hectic – family, work, mobile phones, email, taking the kids here and there – somehow we seem to be working longer and playing less and for the most part life’s fun, it’s great, it’s vibrant, there are possibilities and there are opportunities, and well, some days there are tensions and stresses, that’s the down side I guess. But somewhere in the middle of all that it’s like, well, where’s God today? I wonder if he’s going to show up?

But it’s only a fleeting thought because we’re so busy, our minds are focused on the stuff that we’re involved in, then you get to the end of the day and you feel drained, and you wonder, “Why God didn’t show up today, what’s the matter with me? Isn’t he interested? What do I have to do to get close to God?” Now that is a very good question and it’s exactly the question that we’ll be exploring today from A Different Perspective.

What do I have to do to get close to God? We’ve been looking at that over these last few days. On Monday we saw how the first part of God’s promise to be close to us is like a marriage vow. God said, “Those of you who were once far off are brought near by the blood of Christ”. In other words when we believe, when we believe that Jesus Christ died for us on the cross, not just kind of a distant head belief, but when we believe with our hearts, with our lives that this Jesus the Son of God died for us, we are brought close through the faith in Christ – promise of God. And the second one we looked at yesterday; if we love him and obey him, He and the Father will come and make their home in us, with us – amazing promise!

It’s like a marriage you know, you propose and you then have the vows, and then husband and wife come together and set up a home together, and this is the same pattern that God’s following here. They are foundational promises that we can stand in, and walk in, and live our lives in. They’re not for some distant belief, they’re not for some heady knowledge, something that we put on the shelf and forget about. ‘Ah yeah I’ve got an insurance policy somewhere in the top draw, I believe in God, when I die I’ll be cool’ no! God wants to make his home with us, God has made his home in anyone who believes that Jesus Christ died and rose again for them. Even when we’re out there, especially when we’re out there in the cut and thrust of life.

Let me ask you something, you’re a mother, you’re changing pooey nappies, bubby’s got nappy rash and teething and you haven’t had sleep, whatever happened to being able to go to work, whatever happened to adult conversation? My world’s falling apart. Let me ask you, is God in that place? Is God in that place where that mother who’s going through that whole dirty nappy, sleepless night thing? Or maybe you’re at work and you go to a tough meeting, the politics are running rife, you’re under threat and you’re so tense you could cut the air with a knife; you’re tired, you’re threatened, you’re at risk.

Let me ask you something, is God in that place with you? Come on is God in that place? Or whatever your place is today and tomorrow and the next day? If you believe in Jesus is God in that place with you? Do you believe it or don’t you? See that’s what I mean about living our lives in those promises. It’s not good enough just to believe them from a distance. God wants us to believe in them in our lives, God wants us to believe that He has promised to be with us and make His home with us if we believe in Jesus. He wants us to believe that right in every circumstance that we walk through in life, good, bad, beautiful, ugly, Jesus is there.

Now in my life I’m basically involved in full-time ministry doing what I’m doing now. But I also still do a bit of secular IT consulting work, that’s the background that I’ve come from, and it’s a great contributor to our ministry. Now some of the organisations that I walk into to do that little bit of consulting work, they’re tough organisations, the pressure is on.

I can be sitting in a meeting in some flash big board room looking out over the harbour and the city with a view, and you press the button and they bring in the coffee, and there are two million dollar paintings hanging on the wall, and you’re dealing with tough, complex, corporate issues with these client organisations. And if you ask me, ‘Berni does your wife still love you while you’re in there?’ The answer is, ‘Well darrrr, of course she does’.

I mean I may only be able to give her a fleeting thought in the middle of all that cut and thrust but you know in a split second I can just picture her, and think of her and the knowledge of her love for me just warms me, you know I can be cold and lonely and I just get that sense, I’m going home to Jacqui. It’s a joy, a delight and maybe during a break, well I’ll give her a quick call on the mobile, maybe send her an sms, just hear her voice and connect with her and have a quick chat, might be only 30seconds, but in the cut and thrust of life I can do that. I can connect with her even though she doesn’t sit in that boardroom with me having the meeting. So even if I can’t call her, even if I haven’t got time to think for five minutes about her, I can remember her love in a split second and it’s fantastic. We can be close when we’re apart. It makes sense, you know what I’m talking about.

Well it’s exactly the same with God only God goes one step further. Jacqui can’t be with me in that meeting but God is. Sometimes if you’re a mum changing a dirty nappy and you’re husband’s off at work, he can’t be there in the middle of the day when you’re dealing with all that stuff but God can, God is. God’s there he’s sitting with me in that meeting. And God is one big step closer than Jacqui can ever be when I’m not physically with her; He’s in that room. And when I sit in that room and it’s tough and my mind’s working at a million miles and hour, and I’m trying to help my clients, and maybe the politics is difficult, in a split second, in a quick fleeting moment, I can turn my spirit towards Christ and just know that He’s my Saviour. And can I tell you that is the most incredible joy and peace that I can’t find words for. His Holy Spirit just floods over me and fills me.

You know when this first started happening I smiled and people would say, ‘What are you smiling at?’ So I had to teach myself not to smile when I have those moments, because it’s such an awesome experience. God is in that place and because I am walking in his promises, because I can recall that, because his spirit is in me, ah it’s awesome! And now I don’t need a mobile phone to talk to God; I can have a quick prayer in an instant with God, anywhere that I am. I can just say, “Ah thank you Lord that was awesome’, or sometimes I’m in a meeting and I go, ‘Help, God’ that’s all that I think, and God is in that place. Maybe ‘Lord I just don’t know what to say, what should I say?’ And in a split second God is in there with me.

And whatever your situation is; nappies, or business meetings, whatever, God is in that place with you. It’s a promise, it’s an unbreakable promise, he will never leave you or forsake you if you are someone who has placed their faith in His Son Jesus Christ.

And when we start walking in those promises, wow what a radical transformation in life, something that became distant head knowledge becomes real. Because we stand in the middle of what we stand in, we sit in the middle of what we sit in, we walk in the middle of what we walk in and we know that Jesus Christ is with us, and there’s a peace, and a joy, and a comfort, and a help that words simply cannot describe.

One of the things that many people struggle to do these days is to disconnect from the hubbub of life, and get to that quiet place with God. That’s a pity, because it’s in that quiet place that we discover the most amazing, intimate, relationship with Him.

It’s great to be with you again today. This week we’re taking a look at how we can get close to God in the midst of a busy life. So far this week we’ve looked at two of God’s key promises about our relationship with him, promises that we can stand on, walk in, promises that we can live life in. And yesterday we took a look at how we can be close to God right in the middle of a busy day. If you’ve missed those programs I’ll let you know a little later how you can listen to them again.

Today, well today we’re going to take a look at the whole attitude of ‘I’m so busy I don’t have time to pray’, yeah right!! ‘No, no you don’t understand, I just don’t have time’. Hmm.. Ok… well let’s have a look at that from A Different Perspective, because many people, well that’s just the reality of their lives, and then they wonder why it feels like God’s a million miles away.

It’s kind of like the husband and wife relationship, over these last few days we’ve really been looking at our relationship with God in parallel to the relationship between a husband and wife. Because when you look at that marriage relationship, really it’s a metaphor for the wonderful rich relationship we can have with God.

On Monday we looked at God’s promise that anyone who places their faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus, that is that Jesus died for them and rose again to pay for their sins, is brought near through Christ, so you who were once far off are brought near through the blood of Christ.

And Tuesday we looked at how God wants to move in with us. The natural next step of a man and woman getting married is that they make a home together and God’s the same. Jesus said, ‘Look you know if you love me and you obey my commandments my father and I will come and make our home with you,’ imagine that!

And yesterday we saw how we can take those two promises, the promise of being brought close through our faith, the promise of God making his home in us, and live them out by connecting with God in the middle of the cut and thrust of the busiest of our days. We looked at how we can do something about those promises, and live in the promises, and walk in the promises. But no relationship can get by on a fleeting phone call or an sms message.

It’s great that we can connect with God in the middle of a busy day; I do it all the time. But a husband or wife who live marriage that way, well like almost half the marriages that’s going to end in divorce because we need more than just fleeting interactions, as nice as those are. Why is that? Well because a close relationship relies on a deep intimacy, an intimacy that comes from being together, spending time together without any other people, without any other distractions.

As I said the other day when Jacqui and I were married, it was a wonderful wedding, we just really enjoyed the celebration but by far the best part for me was when the car came to pick us up and we left all the people, the reception, and we headed off on our own because that was our time. That’s when we became husband and wife with no one else around.

That’s the whole idea of a honeymoon is that you can have intimacy, and rest, and time to be and to become husband and wife. But here’s the thing about intimacy, a one-off, a honeymoon is not enough. A honeymoon won’t sustain a marriage, intimacy needs to be constant and ongoing, it’s a natural part of a loving relationship between a husband and wife. There’s a deep connectedness that when we experience that emotional and physical intimacy between a man and a woman, well it’s that deep closeness that we all yearn for.

And when intimacy breaks down, then little by little the relationship breaks down, and when the relationship breaks down intimacy becomes much harder because the trust goes. And so this whole intimacy and relationship thing, if one of them breaks, it becomes a downward spiral. The loss of intimacy leads to a loss of relationship, which further feeds and reinforces the loss of intimacy. If it’s true between a husband and wife it’s also true between us and God.

Jesus said this, he said “look”, he was talking about some of the religious leaders, these people who were into public displays of their religiosity, people dressing up and praying out loud and in effect saying, “Look at me, look at how super spiritual I am”, Jesus said “No, no, no, no. When you pray go into your room, close the door, pray to your father in secret, don’t babble a whole bunch of meaningless words and phrases. Pray like this, ‘Father, my Father in heaven, hallowed by your name’.” And that’s when Jesus taught his disciples what we call today the Lord’s Prayer.

The radical thing though, that Jesus talked about here, was calling God, Father. He actually used the Aramaic word Abba and Abba means, in our language we would say, dad. Dad is a really familiar, loving, respectful term, right? And it was almost heretical, in fact it was heretical for Jesus to refer to God as dad as Abba because for the Jews in that day, they wouldn’t even utter the name of God on their lips because they held God in such reverence. So for Jesus to come along and say well, ‘pray like this… Dad you know hallowed be your name’, well no wonder they strung him up and nailed him to a cross.

For Jesus it wasn’t about outward appearances of religiosity, for Jesus it was about a very deep, private, intimate time. When you pray, go into your room, close the door, pray to your father in secret. Let me be blunt. Do you want to have a close relationship with God, and that awe, and that joy, and that peace? If you want that relationship you need intimacy with him, to share your deepest secrets, your deepest needs of your heart in a quiet, private place regularly every day. It’s not a chore, it’s not about wasting time. This is fun, this is intimacy, this is joy, this is peace. Let me ask you do you have time to eat? Do you have time to sleep? Do you have time to work? Do you have time to watch TV? How we spend our time is purely a matter of priorities.

For me I have a busy life, and so I’m up at four or five in the morning because I’m at my best at that hour of the morning, that’s just me, I’m just a morning person always have been, I am at my best, everyone else is asleep, it’s quiet, I’m alert, it’s an awesome time to pray. Now that may not work for you. Maybe for you, you’ve gotta get up early in the morning and commute, well Jesus is on that train, Jesus is on that bus, that can be your time where you just close your eyes and pray. It’s as private as my study at four o’clock in the morning because no one else knows what you’re praying. Well maybe it’s the half hour after the kids go to school, or instead of watching that inane show on TV, how many times do we go to the television at night and go, ‘Ah there’s nothing on, isn’t it useless, isn’t it hopeless.’ Well what if we use that time to spend with Jesus? How much do you want to experience an intimate relationship with God? How much?

Jesus said, ‘The most important thing that you can do in life is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment’ said Jesus. It’s the most important thing in life, and it’s the thing that Jesus died to give us, he died so that we could believe in him and be brought close to God. Come on! Wake up! How much do you want to get close to God? If you want to have a close relationship we have to have intimacy, and intimacy takes time and Jesus calls that prayer.

If God wrote you a letter, would you bother to open it? Would you read it? Would you turn His words over in your heart? Would it cause you to ponder His great love for you? Well, as things turn out, He has written you a letter. It’s called God’s Word, the Bible. Have you opened it? Have you read it? Have you pondered it in your heart?

It is great to be with you again today. We’ve all seen those movies that start with a message in a bottle. You know, it comes across the ocean, it’s washed up on the beach somewhere, and then the person finds the bottle. Now let me ask you something, if you were the person that found that message in the bottle, what would you do?

Here are your choices: (A) Ignore the bottle. (B) Pick it up and throw it back into the ocean. (C) Take it home and forget about it. (D) Open the bottle and read the message. Mmm, let me think about that, A, B, C, D.

Well obviously we would grab the bottle and we would open it. Who knows how long it’s been in the ocean or where it’s come from or who wrote the message or what it says? I mean how awesome, a message in a bottle. And what if you opened the bottle and discovered a love letter? A love letter written, in one sense, to anyone and everything but in another sense a love letter written specifically to you. Now that would be amazing, wouldn’t it?

As long as people have had pen and ink and paper, there have been love letters. I mean, love letters or cards or flowers. They’re a really special way to say, “I love you”, they say I love you in a way that nothing else does and anybody who has been through a courtship hopefully, probably, will have the odd love letter tucked away somewhere.

I hope that people who are married have some love letters that they can look back on, not so far back in the distant past either. Love letters are a wonderful thing. There’s one love letter though, that’s more special than any other. It begins something like this:

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was barren with no form of life, it was under a roaring ocean covered with darkness but the Spirit of God was hovering over the water and God said, “I command light to shine” and light started shining.” (Genesis 1:1-3)

Then a bit further, somewhere in the middle, it says something like this:

“For God, he loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that everyone who has faith in Him will have eternal life and never die.” (John 3:16)

And, this Jesus said:

“If anyone loves me they’ll obey me and then my Father will love them and will come to live in them.” (John 14:23)

And right towards the end, this is how the love letter finishes:

“I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The first heaven and the first earth had disappeared entirely and this new Holy city was coming down from God and I heard a loud voice shout from the throne, God’s home is now with his people. He’ll live with them and they’ll be his and he’ll be theirs and yes God will make his home among his people and he’ll wipe away all their tears from their eyes and there will be no more death or suffering or crying or pain. Those things will be gone forever.” (Revelation 21:1-4)

That’s an awesome love letter and of course you will probably recognise that they are little chunks out of a huge love letter that, these days, we call the Bible. Now I remember, not so long ago, when people would say Bible and I’d think, ‘Oh my goodness – Bible bashing, fundamentalism, old-fashioned, irrelevant, hard to read, how can I even begin to believe in that stuff’. But when you read those little bits and a whole bunch more of the Bible, what you discover isn’t fundamentalism at all.

Fundamentalism, you know this dogmatic expression of religion, was never Gods idea. It’s something that human beings have taken and twisted Gods love and truth into. Now when you read the Bible, what you discover is the most awesome love letter, the most amazing plan that God has for your life and my life, here and now and eternally. It’s this huge story of Gods engagement of humanity and we progressively see his love and grace unfold until we meet the person of Jesus Christ.

Now, I definitely had negative images of the Bible. Absolutely. I just couldn’t understand how anybody could even begin to believe that stuff and you might say, “Berni, that’s heresy – I believe every word.” Well, great but there are lots of people who say they believe every word, who have one of those thick books at home somewhere on a shelf collecting dust.

Now let me get right in your face here, some people will say, “Well, why does God seem like He’s a million miles away” and they’re the same people who say they believe in God but they’ve got their love letter sitting on a shelf collecting dust. And my answer is; “He’s not – you’ve just put him on the shelf.”

I deliberately am speaking to some people today to shake you out of this attitude that the Bible in an optional extra to a walk with God. The Bible is alive. It’s Gods word and it’s alive and when we approach that book and open it up and say, “Father I believe this is you talking to me today. I believe this is your will for my life. I believe that your Holy Spirit wants to shine your love and your light and your grace and your wisdom into my heart today through the words on this page.” That thing becomes alive; it is the living word of the living God. It’s that message in a bottle.

The Bible was written over a 1500-year period starting around about 1350 BC and ending towards the end of the first century AD. There are three different languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek in the Bible. It has many different authors from different cultures, in different time periods, and different backgrounds with different things going on when those different books of the Bible were written. The Bible’s been translated into hundreds of languages and you know something, it’s been copied by hand, before Gutenberg, there was no printing press.

The only way to create copies of the Bible was, for people called scribes, to write the whole cotton picking thing out, by hand, over and over and over again. And the scholars, the historians, the textual critics will agree that there are almost no errors in this thing. There are a handful of uncertain words in some non-critical passages but by and large, this is an accurate, very accurate, in fact in historical terms it is the most accurate and well attested to historical document that we have from antiquity, by a country mile. It’s the story of God; it’s the story of who God is, what His plan is, who we are in Jesus Christ and how we should respond.

It’s this vast, amazing, profound love letter personally guided down though the waves and oceans of history over the last three and a half thousand years, well, like a message in a bottle, like a love letter and now it’s placed in our hands, it’s placed in your hand, it’s placed in my hand. God has gone to an enormous amount of trouble to preserve his love letter for you and me, here and now, today. Well you know, I’m just too busy to read the Bible. Do you see how feeble that is? Do you see how inappropriate that is? No wonder it feels like God is a million miles away.

All the time, he just wants to speak His promises into our hearts, whisper His love into our ears, His grace into our lives and the one principle means that he has chosen to do that, His love letter, the Bible – well, we’re just too busy. God has brought us near through faith in Jesus Christ. God has set up his home in us through his Holy Spirit. God is with us in every moment of every day, right through the cut and thrust of life. God calls us to an intimate relationship and God has a love letter, that love letter is called the Bible. God is there, He is crying out to us, “Be close to me too.”