Come To Me: The Unexpected Invitation at the Heart of the Universe

By Anton Georges

This book is for weary people: weary of religion and weary of life. For scared people: scared of God and scared of the future. For lonely people: lonely in a crowded world because God seems absent. For confused people: for those for whom the message of Jesus has seemed to be a collection of dashed hopes and empty promises. This book is for my companions on the road who are all these things, yet still long for God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anton Georges
• Release date: Jan 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310499425

Book preview

Come to Me

The unexpected invitation at the heart of the universe

Anton Georges

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © Anton Georges 2013

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 0-9751511-0-X

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Scripture marked NRSV is taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Come to Me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light. Jesus of Nazareth (Matthew 11:28-30)

This book is for weary people: weary of religion and weary of life. For scared people: scared of God and scared of the future. For lonely people: lonely in a crowded world because God seems absent. For burdened people: those who are bowed down low with guilt and shame. For confused people: for those for whom the message of Jesus has seemed to be a collection of dashed hopes and empty promises, for people aching inside. This book is for my brothers and sisters in Christ who are all these things, yet still long for God.

Contents

Forward

Acknowledgements

How to use this book

Truth

Our desire for God

Who do you really think God is?

Jesus

Come to Me

What does God think of me?

Children of God

Jesus’ Bride

Forgiven forever

Pictures of grace

Feasting on God

Come with Me

What do we do now?

Come with Me

Walking with Jesus

Not earning, but loving

The wisdom of God’s works

Knowing God

Trusting God

Experiencing God’s faithfulness

Loving others

The supremacy of love

Our purpose

Leaning and longing

Forward

As I read this book by Anton Georges in Kazakhstan it touched my heart deeply.  This book brings us into the Forgiveness and Grace Jesus purchased for us on the cross.    As Anton uses his own life to show us how we can have a closer relationship with Jesus as friend, His bride and to have the love relationship with our Heavenly Father that He desires.

At the time I read this book I had it printed in Russian for our leaders and suggested it be used as a devotional, answering the questions throughout the book.

I guarantee you will find this book so helpful to come into a deeper relationship with Jesus.  I just read it again and was blessed!  So enjoy Come To Me.

Blessing and in His Love, 

Paula Shields

Author of Healing of the Soul

Acknowledgements

When God told me to write this book, He told me it would be birthed in pain. At the time I had no idea what He meant. God was true to His word, though the pain was not my own.

I want to thank those of you, especially my wife, who showed me what it means to seek God in the mess of life. Thanks for your questions and your hope. Thanks for teaching me so much about God.

Thanks to those people along the way who believed in this project and, I guess, in me and gave. Thanks in particular again to my wife for her companionship, encouragement and editing acrobatics and to my brother, who loves the Truth.

Finally thanks to God. I don’t really know what to say, God. You know me, you formed me and you have borne this book and made something for Yourself. Thank you for your gentleness and determination. Your patience and trust amaze me.

How to use this book

This book can be read individually or as a group. One of the things that I have tried to emphasise throughout the text is questions. When Jesus taught He asked a lot of questions. As people trying to figure out how to live with God on planet earth we also have a lot of questions. Questions are important. Without questions the answers make no sense.

What I have aimed to do is use the questions that many of us are asking as a catalyst for discussion. I have also added my own questions to get us thinking and applying the material that this book presents. I have placed the questions for reflection through the text at places where they naturally arise.

This structure of questions and discussion means the book proceeds somewhat like a conversation. My hope is that this conversation about life with God will extend beyond the book and into your community of believers. That’s why I would encourage you to get together with other people and read the book together. As you read, think, talk and pray, you will probably find you have more questions. That’s great. Use them as a catalyst to find the truth.

We are on a journey of discovery - a journey driven by questions and the hope of answers.

My prayer is that God would bless you immensely as you read. God is good and wonderfully kind. He is our King and our Guide. He will lead us into the truth and the freedom we long for.

Truth

If you hold to My teaching, you are really My disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

John 8:31b-32

Chapter 1

Our desire for God

Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labour on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. Isaiah 55:1-2

Hunger

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? Psalm 42:2

Inside each of us is a desire to know and be with God.

Maybe you would not express it that way. Maybe you would talk about a deep ache inside, about a weariness that you can never seem to shake, and your desire to really rest, to find peace. Maybe you would talk about a loneliness that never leaves regardless of how crowded the market, how full the apartment - and the longing for deep, real companionship. Perhaps you would talk about fear - feeling afraid of God and fearful about the future - and the yearning to feel peaceful and secure, protected and watched over.

Maybe you would talk about shame – shame about who you are and how you look - and the deep need to be accepted wholly as you are, to be enjoyed and respected. Maybe you would talk about boredom and your desire to be fascinated, to be in awe. Maybe you would talk about your desire to be forgiven or to be healed of wounds that you know no one in all the world can fix. Maybe you would talk about your quiet desperation to find love - to be wholeheartedly, unconditionally cherished by one that you trust completely.

For some of us this pain and these desires are like whispers that we only occasionally hear if we stop and listen. For others they are a wall of a noise – weariness, shame and lovelessness are daily, constant companions.

Whether it is a whisper or a wall of noise - all of us have these desires for peace, for rest, for love. When these desires are unmet, it is inevitably painful. The pain might not be sharp, it might only be a dull ache, but it is present. The temptation to try to numb this pain is great and real.

As Christians, many of us have been taught that we should be content, we shouldn’t feel burdened, we should feel loved, we should be full of joy, we should be a new person. So what do we do if we don’t feel like that? As Christians, where do our feelings, our pain, our disappointment, and the longings of our hearts fit? It is easy to feel guilty even for admitting we have unmet needs. So what do we do? Should we just try to numb our needs? Should we mute our questions? Does God know about them? Does He care? Does He condemn our need and our brokenness?

God says that He is close to the broken-hearted (Psalm 34:18). God says that the poor in spirit, the meek, those that mourn, those that hunger and thirst for righteousness, are blessed (Matthew 5:3-6). Why? I believe it is because those desires, that great need, that brokenness, which I have sketched, are our desire for God expressed in the language of our hearts. The need comes out of the murk and wreckage of sin, yet the cry, in its brokenness, is ultimately a cry for God.

Reflection: Do you tell God about the deep longings of your heart? Take some time now to tell God about them. You may want to write these down.

Created to be satisfied by God

God created us. He made us in His image (Genesis 1:27). He created our bodies, minds, souls, and our emotions. King David wrote in Psalm 139:1-2, 13: O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; You are familiar with all my ways… For you created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb.

God made us to live with Him. We see this clearly in the book of Genesis where Adam and Eve are described as being with God in the Garden of Eden doing the work He had given them. Loving relationship with God is our chief purpose as human beings. After Adam and Eve’s original sin mankind’s relationship with God was broken, yet the need for God remained. The way we were designed remained even if it was distorted by sin. Even though people may not know that their chief purpose is to live with God, deep inside we all long for God. We were created to need God’s love, companionship and purpose. God has created us with eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11), with a longing to be eternally with Him. He has designed us in such a way that we will be endlessly dissatisfied until we return home to Him.

The pain, the longings, the needs that many of us face on a day-to-day basis, are a powerful witness to the fact that this is true. All our lives we have been trying to get our needs satisfied through varying means – the love of other people, devotion to family, loyalty to a cause, alcohol, pornography, success, astrology, money, food, philosophy, religions, demonic powers, pleasure and many more. I tried to satisfy my needs, to bury my shame, through a mixture of success, lust and trying to win the love of others. But as I discovered, and as you are probably well aware, none of these pursuits really satisfy our longings. All of them leave us empty because all of them are poor substitutes for the real thing – relationship with the living God.

Reflection: In the past, how have you tried to find love, peace and fulfillment? Has this changed since you became a believer? How?

Our deep desires and the eventual dissatisfaction with other things are actually gifts from God for, if acknowledged, they cause us to hunger and thirst for Him. Jesus declares, Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. (Luke 6:21) In God’s kingdom, if you know you are hungry, you are blessed. If you know you are poor in spirit, or if you know you are mourning, you are blessed, for you are ready to be satisfied by God. Our brokenness is an amazing confirmation in the midst of the noise of life that we were made for better things - that we were made for God.

The wonderful news is that the God of the universe, the God who made us to be with Him, to need Him, promises that as we seek Him in our pain and desperation we will be filled and satisfied by Him. God has not left us to struggle alone with our pain and need. He has come to us in Jesus and says, I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will never be thirsty (John 6:35). Jesus declares, Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks the door will be opened. (Matthew 7:7-8)

God’s call to us, His people, is to come to Him. He is calling us into deep loving relationship with Himself. He is calling us to Himself so that we would be completely satisfied by Him alone. He is wanting to pour Himself, His presence, into our lives and the depths of our hearts so that we will be filled to overflowing with the abundant life of God. Into our vast chasm of need, into our brokenness, our ache for love, our shame, our loneliness, our longing for peace and healing, God wants to pour Himself. God’s eternal purpose for us is that we would be satisfied only in Him, so that we would be able to join with all of God’s people singing joyfully to His glory, All my fountains are in You. (Psalm 87:7)

The problem however is that as Christians we are not taught to see our need and longing as God-given. Nor do we actually believe that God is the Good Giver, the Lover and Satisfier of our souls. Too often we believe that to admit need is to admit that we are not ‘good Christians’. Too often we think