I'm sitting in a busy coffee shop right now, pausing to look around.  There are strangers, chairs, and the clinking of glasses.  There are conversations, laughs, babies and water.

And God is in it all, holding everything together as we're forever floating and connected in an ocean of purest love.  

Do we all recognize this ocean of love?  No.  But it's there.  It's real.  He is real—loving the world before time began.

(Stop and look around you right now.  Is anything in your line of sight REALLY separated from God?  Can it be?  Meditate on this question for a moment, letting it sink deeply into your heart with the Holy Spirit–the Spirit of truth.)

Pre-Jesus.  Pre-salvation.  Pre constant open heavens that never shut again in the New Testament, David writes this little doozy in Psalm 139:

Where shall I go from your Spirit?
    Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
    If I make my bed in Sheol (hell), you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
    and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
    and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
    and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
    the night is bright as the day,
    for darkness is as light with you.

I'm a worship songwriter, and I guarantee if you're in mainstream church, you've sung a few of the songs I've been apart of and probably didn't know it.  For years, I just sung along with the crowd because a famous worship leader had debuted the song, or because the words were simply on the screen.  But a few years ago, as my HEART began coming alive and I was actually experiencing, seeing, hearing, and feeling God as real as the chair I'm sitting on, many words sung in songs started to perplex me.  And I couldn't sing many of them anymore.

Why am I ONLY singing about God on the outside of me, around me, pouring over me—instead of the reality of Him living inside of me?

Why am I asking God to set me on fire….when my heart is a FIREBOMB of the Holy Spirit that I can never put out?

Why am I lifting my hands as if to reach for someone distant, instead of lifting them in surrender to the One who is permanently filling me within?

Why am I begging the heavens to open when scripture says they opened onto Jesus, and no where in the Bible does it say that they were ever shut again?  So if the heavens are forever opened over Jesus…and Jesus lives in me and I live in Him, aren't the heavens forever opened over and inside of ME?

There were so many songs where we were begging Him to do something that He'd already promised He'd done in His word.   There were so many lyrics that implied that He wasn't there, and that we needed to do something to get Him to float down from on high and finally be with us.

Every day for the past few years, I stopped looking for God on the OUTSIDE of me first, and instead, began connecting with the God who lives on the INSIDE of me.

And friends, this changed everything.

I promise you…if you can't feel God, see Him or hear Him, it's because you've avoided the place that He lives to commune with you—and He lives inside of your heart.  I avoided my heart for years because it was too full of pain, but the more I realized He was waiting for me INSIDE of my pain….the more I found a very real, tangible God waiting in the place I had shunned and ignored.  I learned to close my eyes and begin visually meditating on scripture, sinking deeply into the temple of my heart (like I teach in Heart Made Whole) to actually CONNECT with a very real God who lives inside.  The more I did this, the more I found He wasn't JUST on the outside of me like I had once believed.

He was one with my very bones.  My skin was not strong enough to repel His essence.  My sin could never separate me again because of the blood of Jesus.  God had woven Himself into the fabric of my DNA.  We were so twisted and tangled into eternal oneness, that I never had to feel separated from His presence again if I chose to stay CONSCIOUS of my reality….

EVERY PART OF ME IS ONE WITH GOD because HE made Himself One with me.  

In Luke 17:21, Jesus is talking about the kingdom to the Pharisees, and they are asking when the kingdom of God will come.

Jesus's answer probably knocked their socks off.  The Pharisees were probably like many of us who file into church services WITH THE MINDSET that God's presence and kingdom isn't there until we invite it to come, singing and begging the sky to open to pour out a seemingly absent being.

“neither shall they say, Lo, here! or, There! for lo, the kingdom of God is within you.”  (ASV)

(Stop.  Close your eyes.  SEE that reality…..The kingdom of God isn't something you have to invite.  IT'S HERE, NOW.  It's INSIDE OF YOU.  Friend, YOU are the open heaven that the world needs.  The only closed heaven you will ever experience is in your mind and heart.)

The more I sink deeply into the temple of my heart (the sanctuary made to meet with the divine) I live from a place of fullness—not deficit or lack.  I see no emptiness inside of me—because God lives in every part, even the dark parts where I haven't chosen to acknowledge His love!  

The only problem I will ever face is my PERCEPTION of separation from God.

(Selah)

“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Romans 8:38-39

Is God on the outside of you? ABSOLUTELY.  Does He span the entire universe, in EVERY molecule, every cell, every atom, and every sub particle that we can see?  YES, and let's keep finding Him there.  But friend, it's time the church STARTED connecting with Him like He's on the INSIDE of us, too.  And that means…..we must begin teaching, singing, and writing from this Oneness.

When you start full of God, you begin to overflow.

When you start in abundance, you feel His increase.

When you abide in the consciousness of unity, you begin to see Him EVERYWHERE.

Can you do what I did, and learn about your heart?  Are you willing to live with your heart open to love at every moment, staying consciously connected to a Spirit of Truth who fused Himself into unity with your being?  When you worship this week, will you do me a favor….and close your eyes and SEE the truth….the reality of His presence inside of you, and that you begin FULL?

I refuse to close my eyes in worship and see blackness ever again—especially when, “God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.” (I John 1:5–NLT)  Instead, every time I quiet my heart in meditation (receiving) OR in worship (pouring out), I close my eyes, put my hand on my heart, and SEE God within me enthroned on the alter of my heart.  I seek His face, feeling His breath on my face.  I go inside MYSELF to meet with GOD….because my heart is a temple of connection He created for us to commune together.  

If you want to ask God to come, make sure you do it from a perspective of fullness…..realizing that when you ask Him to increase, I believe you're simply increasing your awareness that His fullness is already in everything, waiting to be magnified, recognized, glorified and released onto the earth.  Yes, there our outpourings of the Holy Spirit, where the awareness of the Presence is as thick as honey.  Yes, the hosts of heaven are ascending and descending on the son of man (John 1), which means…they're also ascending and descending on you.

But you never begin empty.  You begin FULL….and then INCREASE of awareness of the fullness of God.

Please learn to meet God inside your heart.  Please learn to stop living in lack, because beautiful one, the only lack you experience is in your mind.  You are full.  You are whole.  You are fused and weaved into ONENESS with the most powerful being in the universe….and the only way you can live separated is within your perception.

Make sure and pick up your copy of Heart Made Whole and learn how to live connected to your own heart, staying connected to the heart of God who lives INSIDE of you!
xx,

Christa