Closer Than you Think: Face To Face

Sunday can feel electric, but by Wednesday the glow is gone and we start counting the days until the next service. We’re putting honest words to that cycle and offering a better way forward: living from the presence of God instead of living for the next encounter. That one shift can change the trajectory of your spiritual life, not by adding more religious pressure, but by rebuilding what God wanted from the start: a real relationship.

We walk through three biblical snapshots of “face to face” faith. Enoch doesn’t sprint toward God in occasional moments; he walks with God faithfully until communion becomes his normal. Moses comes down from time with the Lord radiant and doesn’t even realize it, because true transformation is overflow, not performance. Then we look at Peter and John standing before the Sanhedrin, and the leaders can’t deny it: these ordinary men have been with Jesus. That’s the mark of daily communion, the kind that makes courage, peace, and spiritual authority grow over time.

We also get practical about what this looks like at 6 a.m. on a Tuesday with work, kids, and a packed to-do list. Sustained prayer doesn’t have to be fancy; it can be a running conversation with God, Scripture read to meet Him, and worship woven into normal moments. We end with a simple challenge: five minutes with God before you touch your phone, because the power isn’t in the minutes, it’s in who meets you there.

If this helped you, subscribe, share the episode with a friend who’s tired of chasing the next spiritual high, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What would change in your life if you started tomorrow with those first five minutes?

Transcript

Five-Week Recap And The Landing

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Five weeks. We've been at this table together for five weeks. We started by asking when the last time you felt close to God. We talked about the fact that intimacy was God's original design. Wasn't religion or ritual, but actual relationship. We talked about how God always initiates how He's been calling your name long before you knew enough to answer. We got honest about what it costs to be called a friend of God. And last week we sat together in the silence in the dry seasons. And I hope you heard the truth that silence is not the same as absence. Today we're going to land, and the place we're landing is the place this whole series has been pointing toward. Not chasing encounters with God, not living our lives from service to service, or from conference to conference, or from mountaintop to mountaintop, or waiting for the next moment where you feel fire again. But something different, something better, yes, something that Moses had, something that Enoch had, something the disciples had, and something that is available to you right here and right now, right in your ordinary Tuesday morning, unremarkable daily life. Living from the presence, not for it. Welcome to the Christian Cafe. Let's finish this thing. Well, not season finale, but episode finale of closer than you think. Today we're gonna talk about face to face. This is gonna be exciting. Yes, it is. It's gonna be wonderful. So let's go ahead and get into this right quick.

Living For Encounters Or From Presence

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I want to draw a distinction today that I think could change the entire trajectory of our spiritual life. There are two kinds of believers. The first lives from for encounter with God. They need the service to be good, they need the worship to be powerful and to sound good. They need the preacher to bring it. They need the prayer meeting to be electric. And when those things happen, they are just fine. They are alive, they are on fire. They are convinced that this is the season. They post about it, they testify about it, and they go home determined that everything is about to change. And then Monday comes. And by Wednesday, the fire is gone. And they spend the next week waiting for Sunday just to feel it again. Ever been there? Yes. The second kind of believer now doesn't live for the encounter. They live from it. They carry what they've been given. And the difference between these two people is not talent or calling or spiritual giftedness. The difference is this one of them has learned to walk in a sustained, daily communion with God outside of the services, outside of the conferences, and outside of the moment. What do we call that? We call that a relationship. Everybody say that with me. Relationship. That is the whole thing about what we have been talking about in the very beginning of this series we've been talking about closer than you think. See, God is there. But the reason we go from conference to conference, service to service, and lose the fire that we get in these things is because our relationship with God is not where it really needs to be. I know there's some of you shaking your head saying, Amen, brother, amen. And then there's other of you saying, you don't know what you're talking about. Well, we're going to learn a few things today when we finish this up. And we're going to learn about a couple of people in the Word that they knew what it was about to have a relationship with God. They knew exactly what it meant to be close to the one that we call Father, that we call Lord, that we call King of Kings. They knew about that.

Enoch And The Daily Walk

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Let's look at Enoch just a moment in Genesis chapter 5, verse 24. It was the simplest verse in a chapter full of genealogy. Now, how do you say there's something in that chapter? If you've read this chapter, you know exactly what I'm talking about. But in a list of names and dates and death notices, this one man gets a different ending. It says, Enid walked faithfully with God, then he was no more, because God took him away. See, he walked with God. He didn't sprint, he walked with God, not periodically, and then sat down. He walked consistently, daily, year after year. Did you hear what I said? Daily. And the relationship became so sustained and so continuous, so face to face that one day God simply just took him. There was no death. One translation puts it like this: He said that walking in close fellowship with God, and we can translate that word fellowship to relationship, then one day he disappeared because God took him. God desired to spend more time with Enoch because he constantly and daily, year after year, walked with him and prayed and talked with him. That God says, our communication, this distance is too much. I need you face to face. I need you to come to me. So God took him. That was it. See, that is the picture of living from the presence. Living from the presence. In other words, in order to live from the presence, you've got to be in the presence. It's not something that only takes place, a conference that starts and ends. Or a service that starts on Sunday morning at 10 o'clock and is over by 12, and we've had a good service, and then all of a sudden the next day, we're not there in the presence no more. Do you get my drift here? Do you get what I'm trying to throw down? Because that's what it's like. There is a place in God that we can be that we're always in his presence and always communicating with God. And I'm trying not to get ahead of myself, but this is some good stuff here.

Moses And The Unforced Radiance

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Face to face with Jesus. Now let's look at Moses. He was on the Mount Sinai, coming down from Mount Sinai after his time with God over in Exodus chapter 34. He's been up on a mountain with God 40 days with undiluted divine presence. In other words, it wasn't watered down. It was it was awesome. Probably the most awesome presence that you can ever think of. And when he comes down, the text says his face was radiant. And he didn't even know it. He wasn't performing. He wasn't trying to look holy, in other words. He had just been with God and it changed his face. The scripture says when Moses came down from Mount Sinai, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord. My my my. He wasn't aware, guys. That's the key phrase in this verse. He wasn't aware. He wasn't carrying the glow as a badge or performance. It was just the overflow of the time spent with God. You can't manufacture that. One day, one conversation, one hour of honest communion at a time. Right? I it's amazing, you know, that you know he didn't realize what he was doing. He didn't realize that what he had just experienced with God had caused such a glorious, radiant face. Wow. See, Paul captures the ongoing nature of this transform transformation in over in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 18, and where it says, and we all who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. See, being transformed is present tense. It's ongoing. Not a one-time encounter, not a single conference or a revival moment. It's an ongoing, continuous process of beholding, of keeping your face tuned toward God and being progressively changed into his likeness. See, getting to be like God is not going to happen in one conference. It's not going to happen in one service or one youth camp or anything like that. But it's an ongoing thing. We just can't pray up one service and say, hey, I'm there. Let's go, God. I've, you know, I've spoken to you face to face. Now I'm good. I, you know, we don't need them more. No, it don't happen that way. Do you think if Enoch had done that, the events that happened to him would have happened? I don't believe so. I don't think that would happen. I believe that, you know, the more we spend with God, the more we learn about God, the more that we get into his word, we learn more about God. We'll say, I'll say, brother, I've read the Bible over and over again several times. You know, there's nothing else serious to learn. Well, first of all, we're looking at it wrong. If we go into the attitude that I've read this and I've read it, read it and don't get anything, then we're looking at it wrong. Because in the word, there's always something, there's always a revelation that we didn't see before. It's called growing with God through the word. And that's what we need. We need to constantly be trying to get close to God, trying to know what he's like. And it's not going to happen just in one conference. It's going to be something that continually happens.

Ordinary People Marked By Jesus

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In Acts chapter 4, verse 13, Peter and John are standing before the Sanhedrin court after they've been arrested for telling all the people that Jesus Christ was the way to get to heaven, preaching the gospel that Jesus had left before them. These were the most educated, most theologically trained religious leaders in all Israel. And these two fishermen, they're holding their own. They weren't educated. But the leaders, they noticed something about Peter and John, and they couldn't explain it. Verse 13 says in Acts 4, it says, when they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, they were just ordinary men, they were astonished, and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. Now, how do you think that they were able to perform the miracles and see the people saved if they had not been with Jesus? Again, this did not happen in one conference. How long were the disciples with Jesus before he left the earth? A very long time. And they continue this work. See, that is the promise and the imitation of living from the presence. When you carry him, when you've been with him, people notice. Right? They notice if you're a true child of God. Not because you're you're trying to display something, but because you can't spend consistent time with the living God and come away unchanged. It is impossible. It is impossible to spend time with God and not be changed by the power of God. Amen.

How To Practice Presence On Tuesday

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I want to get practical for just a minute because uh because I think this is where we leave people behind. We preach about walking with God, and then we don't tell people what that actually looks like at 6 a.m. on a Tuesday when you've got work and the kids and a to-do list, and the last thing that feels possible is a sustainable communion with the presence of God. So let me get real with you for just a moment. Living from the presence doesn't mean living in a prayer closet. Did you hear me? Living from the presence doesn't mean living in a prayer closet. Enoch just didn't disappear for 365 days and come out glowing. He walked with God in the middle of his life, raising children, working his land, doing what people in his world did. But in it all in all of it, there was an orientation. There was an awareness. There's a difference in the posture here. Visiting God means you go to him when you need something, when you're in trouble, when it's Sunday, when the crisis hits. Answer to yourself. But God already knows. Right. See, it means we learn to have a running conversation with God throughout our day. We're not performing prayer, we're just talking. Tell him what what you're seeing. Asking him what he thinks. Noticing the moments when his peace shows up and the moments when unease in your spirit says, pay attention. See, most of us think we have to be reverent to talk to God. Our Father, which are in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Oh Holy Father, God, Father, Jesus. No, that's not the case. See, Adam talked to God just like he was an ordinary man. When God came to the garden, it wasn't, oh holy father, thou, thee, them. It was like he was talking to his best friend. He was in a relationship with God. He he treated him like he was just one of the guys. See, we should do the same thing. Just like he's our close friend. And we you know, remember we talked about, you know, God called us friend. God can only call us friend if we are in a relationship. Did I say that? He can only call us a friend if we're in a relationship with him. See, it means we read scripture, not just to check the box to do it, but because you're actually looking for God in the text. You want to know what he's like, you want to hear his voice. You're reading to meet someone, not to complete something. It's not a bucket list, guys. If we want to know more about God, we've got to get in his word because to know him is to communicate with him, right? And it means we let worship be a lifestyle, not a soundtrack. We find moments in our ordinary day to say, This is good. You made this, thank you. That three-second acknowledgement is worship, and it keeps our heart tuned in the right direction. Amen. Here's what happens when we do this consistently. We stop being reactive, we stop making decisions out of panic, and we stop being destabilized by what the world is doing because you're anchored in someone who has already seen the end. Amen. You develop a spiritual sensitivity to other people notice but can't explain, right? We become a person of unusual peace in unusual circumstances. Are you not at peace about what's going on in the world right now? You should be. We should all be at peace about it. Because, like I just said, God's already seen the end. He knows what's going to happen, he knows what has to happen in order for his recoming. So we should be at peace with that. Yeah, I know it's hard. I'm not saying it isn't, but we should be, right? Our authority in prayer grows because we're praying, we're not praying as someone trying to get God's attention. We're praying from a place of relationship from the inside, from the heart. And I believe this is what God is calling the church into right now. Not more events to go to, not more programs in our church services or church, and not bigger platforms. I think he's calling us into a deeper, quieter, more sustained walk with the actual presence of God. People who carry him into every room they enter. Amen. Because if we're carrying him to every room, Every room that we enter to be like Peter and John. The Sanhedrin saw that they had been with Jesus. See, that's what happens when we're living from the presence. Amen. That's what changes cities. That's what changes families and the atmosphere. It's not the performance of the church. It's the presence of Christ in people. Right? I would love to tell you I experience living in the presence every day of my life. The sad part of it, I can't. This is an area in my life I struggle with. And if we are all honest, we all do too. We use excuse. Well, life happens. We get busy. We don't have time for this. But think about that statement. Think about that. We've got time to do everything else. We've I've always heard my daddy always told me growing up that we find time to do things that we love to do or want to do. I'll just leave that right there. A little words of wisdom from my dad, and I hear it all the time in my head. I will tell you that when those days I do walk in the presence of God, things are brighter and days are joyous. But my desire is to be like Enoch and Moses and walk with God every second of every day. I'm working on that. It is a continuous thing, and it it is. We the minute we stop, we'll never live from the presence. We'll always be going from conference to conference, revival to revival, trying to get our wood stirred up and be on fire, and it lasts for a couple of days and right back where we're at. We need to be enix. Five episodes. And it's all been pointing to here. You were made for this. Not for religion, but for a relationship. Not for church attendance, but for communion. Not for occasional encounters with God, but for a walk that never ends. The God who designed you for intimacy has been pursuing you since before you were born. He called you by name.

The Five-Minute Challenge And Closing

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Here's your final challenge as we close out this final series of closer than you think. And I want you to take this one seriously. Starting today, I want you to do one thing differently. Not a whole new routine, just one thing. Before you pick up your phone in the morning, before the notifications, before the news, before the emails, before the coffee, give God the first five minutes of your day. Not to be spiritual, just to acknowledge that God, you're here. I know you're here. And I want to talk with you today. That's it. Five minutes. And then tomorrow, maybe it becomes seven, and then ten. And before you know it, you've built a habit of orientation of starting every day with your face turned toward him. And that orientation will change everything else. As I said, if I do that every single day, my days are so much easier. But there's some mornings I get up that I don't want to get up. I've had a hard day, I didn't sleep good that night. Yeah, I know it's an excuse. And that's what I'm working on. That's when I say I don't do it every day, but I'm working on it. And see, it's not because of the five minutes, but because of who shows up in the five minutes. Amen. He's closer than you think. He always has been. And I believe with everything in me that the best of your walk with God is not behind you, it's ahead. This is not the finish line, this is the starting line. So go walk with him. Amen. Haha. Well, guys, we did it. Five episodes closer than you think. I want to say thank you genuinely for being at the table with me for this series. This one came from somewhere deep. I believe God is somebody specific in mind for every single episode of this series. And I'm just honored to be the one who used to deliver it to you. If this instant if this series has impacted you in any way, if something shifted in your relationship with God over these five episodes, I would love to hear about it. Drop me a comment, comment, send me a message, find us on Facebook, YouTube, and anywhere you get your podcast. Let me know what God did. Because your story might be a thing that convinces somebody else to push play on episode one. I would love to post your testimony on my Facebook page of what God is doing in your life. So drop me an email at the ChristianCafe2022 at gmail.com. I would love to post things like that. Let other people see what God's doing in other people's life. And if you have a prayer request, put that there also. I would love to pray for you. All five episodes of Closer Than You Think are available on my webpage at www.theChristianCafe.bussprout.com. Share the whole series with somebody who needs it. Amen. I'm so excited about the next series that's coming up, and it's one I think you're going to like. One day I was thinking about cooking something, and in the ingredients, it told me to pour olive oil in the mix. And as usually, sometimes I think about how things are done or made, and I'll look up the you know, uh maybe a YouTube video or something that uh shows how to make things. Um and I got to thinking about how olive oil was made. So I looked it up, and there it was. I know, crazy. Right. Well, you are talking about me. But I don't want to spill the beans, but you'll just have to join in and listen because we're going to talk about the crushing produces fresh oil. The crushing produces fresh oil. You don't want to miss this, it's powerful. Amen. Well, from this host, from the Christian Cafe, until next time, stay close. He's worth every shit.

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Join us next time right here on the Christian Cafe and see what God is serving up fresh for you.