So the first issue that God calls us to is intimacy. This is eternal life! Eternal life is not just some gift you get in a bag. Eternal life, He says, is about knowing. Knowing is the word 'to be intimate'. It's an intimate connection. The word can be used tp describe two people in sexual intimacy, in marriage. It is an intimate union. That's where life comes from. It comes from the joining, not from just: I said a prayer one day. See, we're on a journey to deepening intimacy with God. Whatever you think you know of God, there is much, much, much more. Paul said: I count everything done that for the excellency of knowing Him.
Hello... I thought he already knew Him? No, no, no. He's saying that there's so much to know of God - we must make it our life pursuit to be intimate with Him. Prayer firstly is about intimacy, coming near to God. Of course, if you've got blocks and barriers in your heart, these will be blocks and barriers to intimacy; blocks and barriers to knowing God; blocks and barriers to representing Him as a son. So Number 1 is intimacy, and God is seeking intimacy. John 4:24 - "the Father seeks those who will worship" - that means 'to kiss towards' or be intimate with Him, from their spirit, without hiding anything. The words 'spirit and truth' - truth means without concealing or hiding anything. In other words, God wants us to become vulnerable.
Adam experienced intimacy in the Garden; he was intimate. The presence of God means the face of God - he had face-to-face connection. When we fall on the inside, then we remove ourself from connection. Have a think what Adam did... First of all, he covered himself, meaning he was trying to cope with the shame that he had. Secondly, he got busy doing, he got into the trees. People get very busy, because they've got a lot of brokenness and undealt-with stuff - and they fill it up with church things, and every other kind of thing, instead of actually coming into the face of God, and facing Him, and coming near to Him. Then the third thing that he did, which is a horrendous thing, is: instead of loving his wife, he blamed her! When people are afraid, they then tend to react, and blame, and accuse, and distance themselves from other people. So we see all of those things. Jesus came to restore and heal all of those, and bring us back into intimacy again.
#2) We're called also to represent the Father. So a son, one of his primary roles, apart from relationship; which Jesus said, in things like this: I do nothing, except what I see the Father doing. I haven't come to do My own will. I've come to do the will of My Father. In other words, He was driven by the Father's agenda, because He represented Him. If you hire a lawyer, you expect the lawyer to represent you; not just say: well, wait a minute, I've got a plan of my own. No, you're paying him to represent you, so you don't want him to bring his own plan. You want to bring the plan that benefits you. So we're to be a representative, an accurate representative.
Here's a question to ask: do I represent what God is like, as a Father, to the people that I work with? How well do I represent His Fatherhood? God is love; therefore am I patient and kind? Does the fruit of love, and no agenda, come out of my life when I work with people? Or is my life built like the world - transactional; I leverage people to get what I want, it's always with an agenda? Of all the things I've seen break the hearts of people in churches, it's leaders with agendas, that actually use them to get something, and then drop them the moment they can't get that. It is horrendous, because it misrepresents the Father. That's the only thing that got Jesus angry in the New Testament - the misrepresentation of the Father. If that got Him angry, it should get us disturbed too - unless we don't have the same value system He has. We get angry about other things; we get angry about all the wrong things. He got angry about one thing, and that was that His Father was misrepresented; and the people that were God's family were abused, and taken advantage of. That's what got Jesus angry, in the two situations, where it referred he was very angry. Ooh, it's getting really quiet now - it's probably someone you know!