How Bad Do You Want It?

There are a lot of places in life spiritually we buy ourself, and we wonder why God is nowhere to be found. Dr. Tony Evans says the difference has to do with our desire. God will only give you as much of God that you really want. He wants to know that you want to know Him. This is The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of the Urban Alternative. Today, Dr. Evans explains why our relationship with God is exactly as deep as we want it to be, and what we can do if we'd like to see a change.

Let's join him. If you've ever been involved in sports, or if you follow it, you will know that a regular question is asked when a sports team is ready to go into competition or a player is ready to compete against the odds. And the question is, how bad do you want it? How bad do you want it? It's a question about desire. Do you really want it bad enough?

Is this just a casual thing? Are you simply fulfilling a role of responsibility or duty? Or do you really want this thing?

But that question is not limited to athletic competitions when a coach is trying to point his team to the next great victory. It can be asked of an employer to an employee related to their job. Do you really want to work here? How bad do you want it? It can be asked of a relationship. Do you really want to be married? How bad do you want it?

Because we all know you can say you want something, but not that bad. Come see, come sigh, maybe so, maybe not. If it happens, okay.

If it doesn't, I'll make it. You can be cavalier and not really want it. Our series is knowing God. Our question is how bad do you want it? Because when we talk about knowing God, we're talking about knowing Him experientially and not merely informationally. We're not asking how much do you know about God?

So the question on the floor today is how bad do you want it? And Moses wanted it real bad. So he comes to the Lord and he makes three requests of God, three things he wanted from God. Verse 13, now I pray you, if I have found favor in your sight, let me know your ways that I may know you. He says in verse 15, if your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here.

If you're not there, I'm not going. He says in verse 18, I pray you, show me your glory. The request of a hungry man.

Job says, I heard about you with the hearing of the ear. I went to church, but having come through these trials I've just come through, I have now seen you with my own eyes. Your trouble, whatever your trouble is, may simply be God trying to create some hunger. Moses said, I want to know you. I want to know you.

I am hungry and hungry people adjust to where the food is located. I pray you. So it's a prayer. He says, I pray you in verse 13, let me know your ways that I may know you.

That's instructive. Moses says to know you is to know your ways. That is, here it is, here it is, to be in sync with where you are going. He says in verse 15, if your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here. If you're not going, I'm not going.

He only wanted to be where God was. I want to know you are with us. Now, the first request is I want to be with you. I want to know your ways.

Where are you headed? And many of the issues that we face is because we don't want to know his way. We want him to bless our way. But here he says, first, I want to be with you. But second, I want you to be with me. I want your presence. What does that mean?

That means we are not to be satisfied with a program. We want his presence. We're not to be satisfied simply with public approval, where the crowd is applauding and Jesus is staying seated. We want him to be with us. We want him to be, we want his presence. We're after his presence.

We come together to worship. But if God doesn't show up, if the Holy Spirit doesn't decide to come to church today, so to speak, then it doesn't matter how good the choir sings, how great the sermon is, and how finely tuned the program is, it'll just be wasted space because I need you there. I'm going to be with you. In fact, I'm so committed to being with you that I'm not going if I don't know you with me. So one of the questions you have to ask is, am I with him? And then is he with me? And then if you discover he's not with me, I'm not going. We have people in our lives, if you're not going, I'm not going.

Okay? I ain't going there by myself. There are a lot of places in life spiritually, we're by ourself. And we wonder why God is nowhere to be found. Because we decided to go and leave him home. We decided to hang out without God.

He says, I'm not going if you're not going. I want you to be there beside me because this journey is too difficult. And I hope you've discovered that this life is too tough. This journey is rough. It is rough. It's rough on all kinds of categories. Life isn't simple anymore. It's rough. And he says, this terrain, this place going through this wilderness, going into this new land is rough. And are you not going? In other words, I would rather be in the desert with you than in the promised land by myself.

That's convicting. It's like saying, I'd rather be poor with you than rich without you. I'd rather live in an apartment with you than in a big house without you. I would rather drive an old car with you than a new car that you can't get in. In other words, I want this relationship so bad that I'll adjust. What God is saying today through Moses' passion, hunger, is that I want to go with you and I'm not going if you're not with me.

And I don't want cheap substitutes for knowing you. He makes a third request. Moses says, I pray you show me your glory.

Wow. Glory is the visible display of the attributes of God. It's when God makes Himself seeable, manifest aspects of His deity, of His character. And isn't that what we want?

That we want God to show up? Show me. I want to be able to see it. I don't want to just hear everybody else talking about it.

Show me. One of the great scourges of our day, and it is a scourge, is pornography. That's a scourge of our day, an addictive scourge. It's addictive because particularly for men, it is the most natural addiction, because it's not an addiction outside of yourself. See, virtually all the other addictions are outside of yourself that you bring into yourself, not pornography. Pornography is an addiction born within, because it is in the makeup of our DNA to be sexually oriented. That is part of the human creation. But what pornography does is it takes what is legitimate and turns it into something that is not legitimate. The problem is it's born from within. So you can take away cigarettes, you can hide alcohol, but you can't hide desire.

It's built in. And so of course the enemy takes what God has legitimately created and creates something illegitimate off of it. And so pornography is a scourge of our day. And at the heart of pornography is this. I seek to piggyback on the intimacy of others. In pornography, you seek to piggyback. You seek to get your thrill by somebody else's thrill.

You want to get your experience. And so when a person becomes addicted to pornography, they can't get enough. It's the computer controls it all.

The flicks control it all. And I want more, and I want more, and I want more, and I want more, because I want the feeling, the experience of somebody else's intimacy. Far too many of us are spiritual pornographers. We can't get our own intimacy straight, so we piggyback on the intimacy of others. See, because fundamentally, to depend on pornography really reveals a lack in you. Because if you really had it going on, like it ought to be going on, they would want to tune in to you, you would need to tune in to them. But to piggyback off of the intimacy of others, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, year after year, because of the lack within you.

And so what we often do is come to church to piggyback off of the intimacy of others, because our own experience with God is so lacking. But Moses wasn't going to accept that. Moses said, show me your glory. Make yourself visible to me in the coming together of your attributes. Don't hold back. And I've already seen a lot. He said, I haven't seen a bunch of stuff.

But I know that's just a down payment, because if you can do all that, I haven't seen anything yet. Show me your glory. Or as we say at McDonald's, supersize it. Make yourself big to me. I want to know your glory.

Show me your glory. It's the cry of a hungry man. When Dr. Evans returns in a moment, he'll share more insights to help us get to know God better.

Don't go away. The world chaos, God, peace, society full of hate, God, love, the future uncertain, God certain. In the best of Tony Evans 2020, Dr. Evans shares 20 messages on CD and digital downloads full of hope and life, something you won't find much of in the world right now. With your gift to help keep the urban alternative on the air, we'll send you this series to lift you up. Plus, Dr. Evans devotional book called for a purpose to help you embrace God's wonderful plan for your life. Learn more at tonyevans.org.

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I'll have all of that contact information for you once again after part two of today's message. Here's Tony. God has more value in Himself to be misused by His people. He thinks more of Himself than that. That's why He will not reveal Himself to people who really don't want to know Him. In other words, He's not into wasting His time. He's not trying to play hard to get. He's not trying to play hide and seek, but neither is He trying to waste His time.

He wants to know that you want to know Him. God will only give you as much of God that you really want. He's not going to waste God on you. He's not going to just let it overflow and go down the drain. God's response, verse 19, I myself will make all my goodness pass before you.

Whoa. I'm going to make all my goodness, my generosity, pass before you and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. God's name is His character, His reputation. I will be gracious to whom I am gracious, will show compassion on whom I will show compassion. But He said, you cannot see my face for no man can see me and live. I'm going to let all of me pass before you, but there's going to be one thing I can't let you in on, and that's my face.

That is the essence and core of my being. I can't let you see that because it would kill you to see it. It would be like being in a nuclear reactor.

The energy would overwhelm you and disintegrate you. So I'm not going to let you see my face. Then the Lord said, behold, there is a place by me, by me, close to me. And you shall stand there on the rock and it will come about while my glory is passing by. I'm going to pass by. Pass me not, O gentle savior.

I'm a pass by. I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take my hand away and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen. He said, show me, show me, show me your glory.

God says, I'll tell you what we're going to do, Moses. I'm going to put you on a rock here and all of me is going to pass by. So you will know what it feels like to have all of me come your way, but I'm not going to let you look on the all of me that comes your way.

I'm going to bring my glory. I'm going to bring the full manifestation of my being, but on what I let you see, I'm going to create a limitation for your welfare. This is what you and mine, because if I let you see the essence of my being, it'll kill you. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to cover you with my hand in the cleft of the rock and my glory is going to pass by, but I'm going to create a cloud cover so you're not disintegrating in the midst of this past.

Then I'm going to remove my hand when my back is passing by. So he says, my glory is going to pass by the full essence of who I am, but I can't let you see it. You'll know it, but you can't see it. But just as I'm about to finish, I'm going to let you see the exhaust. You ever look up in the sky and see a plane go by, but you can't see the plane, but you know the plane that passed by because that line of exhaust is still left.

So there's no doubt that there was something there. You don't see the something, but you see what the something left behind, the exhaust from the plane. He says, I'm going to pass by in all my glory, but when the exhaust is left and you can't see me in my core essence, I'm going to let you see what I leave behind, my back.

I'm going to let you see what I leave behind. You want to know me? Moses, you really want to know me and you have found favor in my sight.

He says that a number of times. You found favor. Why did he find favor? Because I want to know your way. I want you to be with me.

This is my passion. I am hungry for you and I'm in hot pursuit after you. God says, okay, you'll see my exhaust. He passes by. The hand is removed. He sees God's back.

You say, so what? Moses picks up a pen and he writes, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep and God said, let there be light and there was light and God separated the firmament and he called the light day and he called the dark night and then God created all the animals and then God created man on the sixth day. He said, let us make man in our own image and Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. How did he know what happened back then when he wasn't born? He got to see God's exhaust. He got to see what was back there. He got to see God's back. He was able to look back and he said, oh, good Lord, all of this stuff, all this good Lord and God gives him all this backward revelation and manifestation because he got to see the back, the history of God. What did he get when he saw God? Insight that he didn't naturally have. He saw things that he could not have figured out.

What I have not seen, ere have not heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love him, but he has revealed them unto us. You want insight. You want to know what to do. You want to know what direction to take.

You want to know where to get to know him. One more thing as we close. God says to Moses, you can't see my face and live. You can see my face and die, but you can't see my face and live. Translation, only dead people see my face.

I'm trying to go somewhere here. I can't let you see my face because you're going to die. So you cannot see my face and live or you can die and see my face.

Maybe that's why Paul said, I die daily. I am crucified because he wanted to see something that went beyond the ordinary. Moses died. He didn't see God's face. He saw God's back.

That was a whole bunch, but he died. But in Matthew chapter 17, hundreds of years later, Jesus goes up to the Mount of Transfiguration. The heavens open up. A voice from heaven says, this is my beloved son and whom I'm well pleased. Peter, James, and John hit the ground because it said the light was too bright and it overwhelmed them. And in the middle of that moment, God said, dead Moses.

Come on. Dead Moses showed up at the Mount of Transfiguration and got to look on the glory that Peter, James, and John could not look at because they were still alive. Moses was dead. So God summoned Moses thousands of years later and said, you know what you couldn't do back there in Exodus 33 because you were still alive?

Hey, come on now. You died so you can handle this. Do you know that's why God's going to give you a new body? When you die and go to heaven, you get a brand new body because your body can't handle this. In the words of a great theologian, you can't touch this.

You can't touch this. God's going to give you a new body to handle what you getting ready to look at. In the meantime, his back is still available. The exhaust of his glory and even that is too much to handle. The question on the floor is not, do you want it?

Everybody will say yeah to that. The question on the floor is how bad do you want it? Dear Tony Evans, talking about ways we can stimulate our appetite for God. Now today's message, How Bad Do You Want It?, is available for you to request on CD or download.

In fact, the full-length version contains more material than we were able to present on the air. But you can also get this lesson as a part of our special year-end compilation, The Best of Tony Evans 2020. As I mentioned earlier, this giant collection is available for a limited time as our gift when you help support Tony's ministry with a generous year-end contribution. In addition to the 20 audio messages, if you contact us right away, we'll also include a copy of his powerful book, Called for a Purpose, containing devotions that can help you overcome feelings of anxiousness, aloneness, and uncertainty as you gain a better understanding of the calling God has just for you. Simply visit tonyevans.org today to get all the details and make the arrangements. Or call our resource center at 1-800-800-3222, where team members are ready to help you day and night. Again, that's 1-800-800-3222. You know, God loves to amaze His children. But next time, Dr. Evans says we may sometimes prevent that from happening by either expecting too little or knowing too much. Find out more when you join us again on Monday. The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by The Urban Alternative and is made possible by the generous contributions of listeners like you.