The Path of Simplicity // Taste and See That He Is Good, Part 3

We all try to put our best foot forward in life. Fair enough. But eventually, we can find ourselves trying to impress people rather than being ourselves. So – should we try to impress God – or is it come as you are?

One way or another, we all try and put our best foot forward. When we go for a job interview, we make sure that we're dressed well and our hair is combed and we go in with a smile and we say the right things. When friends come over to visit, we tidy up the house. And in one sense, there's nothing wrong with that. But we live in a world, well, it rewards us for how we look or what we do or the size of our pay packet. You know what I mean. And so we can end up on this treadmill.

Whatever that looks like in our different circles or cultures, way deep down inside, we end up believing that life is about – impressing people. That's why so many of the experiences available out there in the spiritual marketplace are about getting off that treadmill – relaxation, massage, meditation, aromatherapy, feng shui to design a tranquil home. But what about God? Is having a relationship with Him about keeping up appearances or getting off that treadmill?

This week on "A Different Perspective", we're looking at the whole subject of experiencing God. If you were with us the other day, we talked about the fact that there are two ways of knowing something. We can know it as fact, as head knowledge. And we can know it in experience. We can know that we should eat more fruit because it's healthy for us, it's good for us and it will reduce heart disease and diabetes. We know that.

But it's not until we experience the fruit that we go, "Wow! That's really good!" Three thousand years ago, David said:

Taste and see that the Lord is good. (Psalm 32:8)

In other words, experience Him for yourself in a relationship.

Yesterday, we spoke about desire. The need for us to have a God-given desire to want to have a relationship with Him. Any relationship needs to have an element of desire, a spark, a flame. Without desire a relationship goes nowhere.

As the deer pants after streams of living water so my soul pants after you our God. (Psalm 42:1)

Some psalmist wrote that three thousand years ago.

Today, I'd like to talk about one of the biggest obstacles to experiencing and enjoying a relationship with God. It's the feeling that deep down inside (somewhere), "Well, I'm just not good enough. I have to get my act together before I can go and talk to God." It's that idea that somehow sitting down with God to pray is … well, it's like a bit of a job interview. You put your face on. You wear the right clothes. You say the right things. You smile. It's about appearances. There's a formula, you know, we need to impress God

Well, is that right? Do we need to put on good clothes to talk to God? Do we need to impress God? Well, let's see what Jesus said. If you're interested, you can find this quote in the very first book of the New Testament, Matthew's gospel, chapter 11:25-26. This is what He said. He said:

"Father, Dad" He loved calling Him Dad. "I praise you because you have concealed your ways from the know-it-all(s); from the people who think of themselves as being sophisticated and intelligent. But you spelled them out clearly to ordinary people."

Question: What sort of people do you like to socialise with? I mean, do you like to hang around with hoity-toity people, the know-it-all(s), the people who always have a face on and they're part of the set? Or would you rather hang around with plain, ordinary people, no face, no pretence, what you see is what you get, no effort to impress.

Well, it's pretty obvious, isn't it? I mean it's much nicer to be around people, who are just themselves, who just relax, who don't have a need to always compete. And put their best foot forward.

Well, so why wouldn't God feel exactly the same? It turns out that He does according to Jesus. And so we go to God, when we stand before God and say, "Lord, here I am".

There are some really good things in our lives, some things that we do well, some things that we're enjoying. And there are some pretty lousy things sometimes in our lives. Things that in our heart of hearts we know that we're doing the wrong things that we know we could do better – failures, hurts.

And we have a choice. We can either stand in front of God and try to impress him and put a face on. And what Jesus said was, "Father I thank you that you have hidden and concealed all your ways from the know-it-all(s)" – the people who think of themselves as sophisticated. So, if we go to God like that, here's a promise from Jesus, God will hide Himself from someone who comes to Him like that. Or we can go to God just as we are.

But here's the crunch a