Drawing Near to God #8

Drawing Near God Overview

In this eighth installment of the Drawing Near to God series, the pastor explores what it truly means to draw close to God — not only in comfortable, emotionally charged moments, but especially in the midst of opposition, distraction, and personal struggle. Anchoring the message in James 4:7-10, he unpacks the Hebrew root of the phrase ‘drawing near,’ revealing that it literally means to offer sacrifice — whether through fasting, prayer, giving, or worship. The sermon examines three dimensions of hearing that Jesus teaches in Mark 4:24-25, Luke 8:18, and Psalm 46:10: what we hear, how we hear, and the importance of getting quiet before God. Drawing from Jeremiah 29:1-13 and the story of the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, the pastor challenges believers to confront cognitive dissonance, false inner voices, and unresolved heart wounds that block intimacy with God. He shares personal testimony about finding deliverance and emphasizes that faith is birthed when God’s voice moves from the head into the heart, as Romans 10:17 teaches. The message closes with a powerful call to practice the presence of God, quoting the writings of Brother Lawrence, and invites every listener to allow God to cleanse and mature them from the inside out.

Drawing Near God Outline

• 0:00 – Introduction: Drawing Near in Opposition: The pastor opens by challenging the common assumption that drawing near to God only happens in ideal, peaceful settings, and introduces the call to press into God even amid difficulty and distraction.
• 5:30 – The Hebrew Meaning of Drawing Near: The Hebrew word ‘halit’ is unpacked to mean offering sacrifice. Drawing near to God through fasting, prayer, giving, and worship is reframed as a deliberate act of sacrifice rather than a passive feeling.
• 13:00 – Three Ways Jesus Teaches Us to Hear: The sermon examines Mark 4:24-25 and Luke 8:18, exploring what we hear and how we hear, and the spiritual consequences of allowing negativity, gossip, or bitterness to filter our reception of God’s word.
• 22:00 – Be Still and Know: Psalm 46:10: The pastor teaches on the power of getting quiet before God so His voice rises above the noise of circumstances, people, and inner turmoil, allowing faith to travel from the head down into the heart.
• 32:00 – Jeremiah 29 and God’s Plan Amid Captivity: Using Jeremiah 29:1-13, the pastor shows that God calls His people to thrive even in difficult seasons, warning against false prophets, doom-and-gloom voices, and self-defeating imaginations.
• 43:00 – The Samaritan Woman and Cognitive Dissonance: Through John 4:9-24, the pastor illustrates how unresolved inner wounds lead to patterns of avoidance and withdrawal, using the woman at the well as a picture of breakthrough through honest encounter with Jesus.
• 53:00 – Inner Anointing vs. Outer Anointing: The distinction between outer gifts and callings versus the inner anointing that comes through intimacy with God is explained, emphasizing that true strength is built from within by yielding to God’s cleansing work.
• 59:00 – Brother Lawrence and Practicing God’s Presence: Quotes from Brother Lawrence’s ‘The Practice of the Presence of God’ are woven in to encourage believers to cultivate a continuous, humble, and loving conversation with the Lord in every season of life.
• 1:05:00 – Closing Call: Confess, Be Cleansed, Draw Near: The pastor closes with Proverbs 3:1-4 and a direct exhortation to confess sin, allow God to cleanse the heart, and commit to half an hour of Bible reading and half an hour of quiet before God daily.

Scripture References

James 4:7-10, John 10:27, Mark 4:24-25, Luke 8:18, Psalm 46:10, Romans 10:17, Proverbs 4:20-22, Jeremiah 29:1-13, John 4:9-24, Proverbs 3:1-4

Key Takeaways

• Drawing near to God is an act of sacrifice — every moment of prayer, fasting, giving, and worship is an intentional step toward intimacy with Him.
• What you hear and how you hear it shapes the spiritual fruit of your life; choosing to dwell on negativity, gossip, or bitterness will erode even the good things God has given you.
• Getting quiet before the Lord allows His voice to rise above every competing voice — circumstances, people, and inner fears — so that faith can take root in your heart rather than remaining in your head.
• God has plans for your peace and your future as declared in Jeremiah 29:11, but unaddressed inner wounds, false imaginations, and cognitive dissonance can steal that plan from you.
• Humbling yourself before God must come before resisting the devil — submission to God is the foundation that makes spiritual resistance effective and lasting.
• The inner anointing — who you allow God to make you on the inside — matters more than external gifts and callings, because it is the source of enduring strength and character.
• Just thirty minutes a day in Scripture and thirty minutes of quiet before God can radically transform how you see your circumstances, your relationships, and yourself.

Drawing Near God Notes

Drawing Near Means Offering Sacrifice

The sermon opens with a striking insight from the Hebrew word for drawing near, which carries the meaning of offering sacrifice. This reframes nearness to God not as a feeling that arrives under perfect conditions, but as a deliberate act of the will. When a believer fasts, they sacrifice food to pursue God. When they pray, they sacrifice time. When they give, they sacrifice finances. Understanding this definition transforms routine spiritual disciplines into powerful acts of proximity. The pastor emphasizes that the most important moments to press in are precisely when life is difficult, not when everything is comfortable.

The Filter of a Wounded Heart

One of the sermon’s most penetrating teachings concerns how we hear, not just what we hear. The pastor draws from Luke 8:18 and shares a personal testimony of reading the Bible cover to cover while incarcerated, yet only being offended by a minor point in Romans because his heart was full of unresolved issues. This illustrates how inner wounds, bitterness, and undealt-with offenses act as filters that distort everything we receive — from Scripture to relationships to correction. The healing of the inner ear requires the healing of the inner heart, and that comes only through humility and honest confession before God.

God’s Voice Above Every Circumstance

Psalm 46:10 is applied with unusual depth in this message. The pastor explains that the command to be still is not passive resignation but an active positioning of the heart to allow God’s voice to be exalted above every other voice — the voice of people who oppose us, the voice of difficult circumstances, and the voice of our own fears. He connects this to Romans 10:17, teaching that faith is not birthed by intellectual agreement but by the repeated, meditative hearing of God’s voice until it moves from the mind into the heart, producing a supernatural transformation like a seed dying in the ground before bearing fruit.

Jeremiah 29 and the Danger of Inner Noise

The Jeremiah 29 passage is used powerfully to address how believers can sabotage God’s good plans through the voices they allow access to their inner world. The Israelites in Babylon were surrounded by false prophets of doom, and God warned them to reject those voices, build lives of fruitfulness, and pray for the peace of the city — because their wellbeing was tied to it. The pastor connects this directly to modern patterns of grumbling, complaining, and catastrophizing, warning that these attitudes do not merely reflect circumstances — they create them, and they can erode the very blessings God intends to give.

The Samaritan Woman as a Model of Breakthrough

The story of the woman at the well in John 4 is used as a pastoral case study in cognitive dissonance. Her repeated pattern of failed relationships, her isolation from her own community, and her instinct to deflect the conversation into theological debate all reflect a person seeking peace without process. Jesus does not condemn her but instead confronts her gently with truth, exposing the pattern so that healing can begin. The pastor notes historically that this woman, Photina, went on to plant over ninety churches and died a martyr — a stunning testimony to what God can do when inner walls come down.

Practicing God’s Presence Every Day

The sermon closes by drawing on the writings of Brother Lawrence, the seventeenth-century French monk who practiced continuous conversation with God even while washing dishes in a monastery kitchen. His words — that it is possible to live in the very sense of God’s presence under even the most difficult circumstances — serve as both a challenge and an invitation. The pastor urges every believer to commit to thirty minutes of Scripture reading and thirty minutes of quiet before the Lord each day, promising that this consistent practice will not change the world around them directly, but will so transform the lens through which they see it that everything will appear different.

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