For logic tells us, besides by special decree, how else did most of those who hear Him plainly get to arrive at that deeper privilege than by personally pursuing relationship with Him above all else?

     We live in a culture of instant everything. And when it comes to seeking God’s face on matters, the church is often no different. Instant feedback is frequently the prevailing and predominant expectation, even where patience is genuinely promoted as a primary virtue. Given the osmosis of "the now generation" into the church, this culture often persuades us to find answers through other channels, such as placing our burdens on the gifts and time of "men of God", when God as the ultimate example of real patience is silent on some things. Having myself wanted to ensure that everything I do is according to God's PERFECT will, let alone even His PERMISSIVE will, and wanting to know what that will is, INSTANTLY, rather than waiting on the wisdom and timing of our Father, I have traveled this unwittingly impatient road too. And in hindsight, besides the obvious immaturity of impatience, I am not entirely sure that this is God's first prize for man.

     "The gifts" and their "supernatural outworkings" are living demonstrations of an abundant grace of an extravagant Father through the Body. They operate to both (1) DEMONSTRATE love for our neighbour, and to (2) WOO those not yet in their own personal relationship with our Father into these living and sustaining waters. Ultimately, the function of the Body of Christ is to express astonishing love, by tirelessly serving the lost, and by nurturing each person into their own personal relationship with the Father. And not to REPLACE that relationship. There IS no substitute for personal oneness with the Father. And although God's gifts generously laid upon His kingdom sons and daughters are stupendous and miraculous in application, and albeit they showcase the marvel and might of the supernatural, there comes a milestone in the maturity journey of all His children when we each eventually realise that the greatest gift of all is a personal, first-hand relationship with God. Relationship supersedes any other supernatural gift and anointing. "First-hand relationship" comes first. Abiding in the manifest and intimate presence of the Father is the grand prize of this life and the life to come.

     Having arrived at this dawning myself, I have subsequently determined to seek His face first-hand on all things. I want that relationship more than any other thing. Accomplishing this insists upon our turning directly to the Father for everything, for every need, for every desire, for every petition, for every time. So that in our "knocking", and in our "seeking", and in our "asking" (Matthew 7:7), our Father will increasingly open His door, and His arms, and His ears, ever and ever wider unto those who so ask, and seek and knock. This means taking this approach even if it means coming unto Him with our own comparatively less developed sensitivity and anointing to hear Him than if we were to alternatively seek out a servant of God in the body who hears from Him plainly and effortlessly. For logic tells us, besides by special decree, how else did most of those who hear Him plainly get to arrive at that deeper privilege than by personally pursuing relationship with Him above all else?

     Such is the determination for a number of reasons. FIRSTLY, it is so that we never become to "depend on man" more than on God our Father. Which heavenly wisdom ultimately confirms as nothing other than idolatry. This approach ensures that we come to depend first and foremost on Him, as is appropriate and fitting for any parent child relationship. Learning to eat of the Tree of Life by turning to the Father of all creation, whose wisdom has no limit, strikes one as the wisest path to personally take. At the end of the day, no matter how many of us have tried in our various relationships, it is plain that man cannot save man. Man cannot wholly deliver us from brokenness or need or corruption. No matter how much we love our wife, or how much she loves her husband, she cannot save our soul, even if she determined wih all her heart to do precisely that. No matter how much we love the Body of Christ, or our pastor, they can't save us. They can only point us in love to who can. Ultimately, only God Himself can save us. Man cannot take the place of the Creator. And in the end, it is He alone who promises to save us - in all three dimensions that this astonishing accomplishment assumes: in spirit, soul and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

   SECONDLY, this does not mean that we shouldn't hearken unto the voice of our Father when it's directed one-to-one through the extended mouthpiece of His servants. If God wants to use a specific servant to speak directly to any of us, rather than speak directly to us Himself for any reason, God will do it. And if so, I will listen. I trust and believe enough in the absolute sovereignty of God to know that God controls all things, even to the point of telling a man or beast to speak to us, if that be His sovereign will. The Bible demonstrates God's discretion in this regard when He commands a donkey to speak to Balaam in Numbers 22:28.

     Besides, God already uses multitudes of His own to speak generally to all of us regularly on a one-to-many basis. So using one to speak to us specifically infrequently on a one-to-one manner is also His prerogative. Nothing can interfere with God's sovereign will being expressed or accomplished (Psalms 135:6; Isaiah 46:10). But that would mean that God takes the peremptory initiative Himself in choosing when to use a member of the body to directly encourage, uplift or exhort, rather than counselling us directly.

     At this stage of my own personal pilgrimage in renouncing everything that holds me independent from God, that I may walk and live in deeper and deeper relationship with my loving Father, my personal determination is to choose to seek our Father first, and turn to Him first, for the answers to all the challenges and opportunities that make up this first life. For there is no greater authority and power in all creation, nor greater kindness and understanding, nor more wonderful a love and relationship than that of the Lord Himself (Matthew 28:18).

     THIRDLY, one of our chief purposes is to glorify God. Turning to God for everything does exactly this. Thanking Him for everything deservedly glorifies our Father. If one of the greatest expressions of our love and gratitude is to glorify God, then this means we are to effectively imitate Christ Jesus in everything. Because Christ Jesus turned to the Father for everything in prayer and supplication Himself. He lived on earth only to express and accomplish the will of His and our Father. As imitators then of Christ, so too, are we to also turn to our Father in all things.

     Furthermore, Christ paid the ultimate price to tear the veil that, like Himself, we too may partake of the greatest privilege available to man, namely entering into right relationship with the Father of all heaven and earth. To turn anywhere else but to God after that offends the great sacrifice Jesus made for all our benefit in opening Christianity's right of personal relationship directly with Jehovah I AM.

     FOURTHLY, the Word is plain. It is God alone whom we can completely trust in without question (Psalm 62). We are to love others, always, but to trust in Him alone. And the platform for this is clear. He is not a man who should lie (Numbers 23:19). Neither is He a man who is flawed. Why limit the greatest relationship available to each one of us to a single gift of the Father when the same Father personally extends an invitation to each of us to have personal relationship directly with the Author of every gift? Why not place all our faith and hope and trust first-hand in the One who personally made each of us, who knows each one of us better than even ourselves, as opposed to living second-hand through a brother or sister's gift and relationship? Surely, like David before us, it is to our Father whom we should lift up our entire soul and ask Him to guide us in the way we should walk (Psalms 143:8)?

     And as such, for all these reasons, for every seasons and for all things, the milk and honey of personal relationship demands that I seek Him in the morning and the evening (Psalms 5:3; 55:17). The intimacy of personal relationship insists that it is to God alone that we should turn, with thanksgiving making our petitions known to Him (Philippians 4:6).

"Give heed to the voice of my cry,

My King and my God,

For to You I will pray."

- Psalms 5:2 -