Have you seen those old Looney Tunes cartoons where someone, probably Bugs Bunny, says in a panicked and breathless voice: “Is there a doctor in the house? Is there a doctor in the house?” (My favorite joke is when a fake person in the theater stands up and replies “I’m a doctor” to which Bugs casually asks “Eh, what’s up, Doc?”)

The thing I’ve been wondering, and maybe we should be alarmed if we’re not wondering this all the time, is this: “Is there God in the house?” I know from personal experience that it’s just so-o-o easy to go through the motions of being a Christian, doing church, fellowshiping with other believers, reading the Bible, praying, etc., and never really get down to brass tacks and start crying out to the Lord to be with Him, like David did in Psalm 51:10-12:

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
   and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence,
   and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
   and uphold me with a willing spirit.

Last night (Wednesday), I was at Grace’s youth group meeting, and we were doing our usual wild, crazy, extravagant, and totally over-the-top worship (in case you don’t know, I’m being good-naturedly tongue-in-cheek here). It was awesome. Then the music died down, we started to enter into a time of group prayer and soaking, and it didn’t take long for me to realize I was pegged at empty. I had no prophetic insight, no vision, no sense of my spirit soaring to the heavens, nothing, zero, zip. Sure, I felt happy and peaceful and knew the Lord was ministering to people there, but my mind was a blank.

I therefore had three choices: decide God wasn’t interested in revealing anything to me, decide I wasn’t interested in God revealing anything to me, or just cry out from the depths of my heart to press in deeper and not give up until I was filled to overflowing. Thankfully, I choice the third option, and my testimony to you today is that God was faithful to my cry.

The Western Church, by and large, has fallen prey to the trap of putting up appearances, doing the “right stuff”, and obliviously missing the fact that the Father’s House is empty. We worship music, we worship programs, we worship cool logos and nifty TV shows, we even worship the Bible instead of worshiping the One who spoke the words in the Bible. God never meant us to be stuck in the written page, he meant us to be stuck in His Glory. The Bible reveals to us the nature, the works, and the heart of God. But only God, via the Holy Spirit, can reveal Himself.

I truly have no interest in pretending to be a Christian any longer. If God is no longer in the House, I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to find out why. I’m not satisfied with anything less. Are you?