What is true fellowship with God?

It is not the tingling of the hands or the hairs of your neck standing up. It is not the flitter of your closed eyelids or any relaxed respiration - though all these things maybe present while in the presence of something 'other'. However, this is still not fellowship, it is not even the signs of fellowship. It is not by the flesh, it never starts with the flesh - it is always by His Spirit.

We must not confuse His Presence with His Fellowship. It is possible to be near God and not know God; it is possible to enjoy His Presence but never let His essence and character possess us. We can be tourists looking for another experience, another march up to the top of the hill with the Grand ol' Duke of York with the trumpets in tow - but never enter the holy citadel. We may admire its imposing gates of pearl and its immense walls of pure crystal from the outside, but then it's just an object in our lense and the conceit of the eye is to control what it sees; what should be truth to us suddenly becomes a lie in our own mind, and we deceive ourselves. We say: I have experienced God. We might as well have dipped our finger into the still waters rather than go down completely into the River Jordan. Our world is saturated with synthetic and simulated experiences of one kind or another. We go from one meeting to the next looking to re-live something past and it becomes nostalgic and if we ever experience it again we reminisce; we look over our shoulder at something we should flee from: the reduction of God to a series of senses. It is not by flesh . . .

God is not in the earthquake nor in the storm, nor even in the dark clouds that shroud his immense light from the known universe. These are all 'things about the thing'. We must concern ourselves with the Root and not the leaf, the cause and not the symptom. We could build a whole life around these 'things' and never know the 'thing' itself.

God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with Him . . . we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship . . .. (1 John 1:5-7)

There is no fellowship without light; light that searches and knows; light that deals and exposes the shadows of the heart we have long since been blind to; light that prepares and prepares; light that reveals every secret. Fellowship with God is exposure to God's searching and testing, standing still for His plumbline to stop swaying, falling upon Him to be broken, being spun to be moulded, being poured out to be refined in the fire. Fellowship is not knowing God's secrets but allowing God to deal with yours so there is nothing between you. God longs to remove from you all that stains and casts a shadow so that there is nothing between you, that He might enjoy you for Himself. This is the highest calling of man, not that you might enjoy God in your flesh but that God might enjoy making you like Himself for darkness has no fellowhsip with light; only light fellowships with light.

Prepared in Obscurity

God prepares in the desert, in the quiet places out of the way of gazers. They disappear and then reappear. You cannot set your clock by them and they may seem inconstant. An earthly kingdom is not theirs and they will appear feckless in the ways of the world. They have not come to tend gardens but to the Lord. And - like an iceberg - the unseen dealings of their God are hidden from public view:

"Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"

"We know your parents!"

"Your brothers and sisters are here with us!"

"We know who you are! You're nothing special!"

Hidden is Bethlehem and the manger, the wise men, the shepherds and the angels but also the long trip into Egypt. Few will see these things. So don't get all antsy when you are not seen, for when you are hidden then you are with God in the secret place to abide. Obscurity is the birthing ground of the men and women of God: Moses, Gideon, David and little Israel. They begin and end in obscurity so that God will give them a lasting epitaph. And their praise is not from men but from God.