We are a mediated society. There’s hardly a direct path to anything. There are always hoops to jump through, forms to fill out, strings that are attached. We can’t even directly approach the person we want to do business with. A few examples…

When you buy a car, you don’t get to haggle with the manager. You have to go through the salesman, who constantly runs back and forth until a mutually agreed upon price is reached.

When you call pretty much anyone in corporate America, you don’t get to talk directly to him or her. You get voicemail, or an operator or an assistant who has been trained and coached to not let anyone through.

If you find yourself in any sort of legal dispute, attorneys will be doing all the talking for you.

If you hole up inside a bank with hostages, you don’t get to talk directly to the people who can give you what you want. Instead, you end up with some guy who specializes in negotiation tactics.

You can’t even talk directly to the banker on that torturous game show Deal or No Deal. Howie has to broker the conversation.

Meanwhile, the Internet has created a collective consciousness where you don’t really need to have direct experiences with anyone or anything. You can simply Google it and add it to your vicarious knowledge bank.

With all of this connecting and facilitating going on, it can be easy to forget that approaching our God is no longer an activity that requires mediation. That hasn’t always been true, as the Lord states in Ezekiel 22:30.

So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one. Therefore I have poured out My indignation on them with the fire of My wrath; and I have recompensed their deeds on their own heads.  

Before Jesus, connecting with God required mediation of some sort. It required sacrifices and offerings. It required someone standing in the gap between God and man. Jesus obviously came to be the constant connector so that we no longer would have to worry about the gap between ourselves and God. He erased the space between us.

And today, we are unencumbered to approach God. Yet, we get tangled. We create the illusion that we need assistance to approach God or that there are physical obstacles or expansive spaces between us and God. But really and truly, there is no mediator, go-between, intermediary, translator, negotiator, gate-keeper, facilitator, agent, bookie, broker or manager required for us to reach God. There’s no great wall or lake or river or moat or enormous valley or vast transom in our way. There’s nothing and no one that is a bridge that must be crossed in order to connect to our God.

Spiritual leaders can edify and fortify us, help us see more clearly and feel more deeply. But even the saints among us are not required for true, personal intimacy between a man and his God.

For the longest time, I was waiting for someone or something to negotiate on my behalf. To play matchmaker and set me up with God for a lunch where we can get to know each other. Someone to serve as a messenger to hear my grievances and report back on what God has to say about them. I didn’t fully appreciate the gap had been filled by my faith in Jesus. And that God was standing right in front of me. Patiently waiting to speak with me. Directly.

It’s been such a liberating experience going directly to God. With no one and nothing between what He wants to share with me. I don’t always fully get the message. And maybe a mediator could help me better understand what He’s saying and thus help me make fewer mistakes. But I prefer to embrace the uncertainty and confusion I sometimes feel, the great mysteries my mind can’t wrap itself around. Because there’s nothing quite like spending time directly with God.