God-Chasing, Pressing In, and Other Veil Language by Brad Jersak

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.