Hello little followers, thanks for coming.
As goes my tradition, I would like to write a little something that has been... not necessarily easy for me.
Exodus 24
12 The LORD said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and stay here, and I will give you the tablets of stone with the law and commandments I have written for their instruction.”
13 Then Moses set out with Joshua his aide, and Moses went up on the mountain of God. 14 He said to the elders, “Wait here for us until we come back to you. Aaron and Hur are with you, and anyone involved in a dispute can go to them.”
15 When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, 16 and the glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the LORD called to Moses from within the cloud. 17 To the Israelites the glory of the LORD looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain. 18 Then Moses entered the cloud as he went on up the mountain. And he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights.
In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis sets up a problem that I believe plagues not only the Church, but the world. A man who had been an artist sees what is essentially the outer rim of heaven. As an artist, his first instinct is to paint the amazing beauty he sees. In a long discussion, he is basically told, "You painted in the past so that you could express to the world the beauty that you saw that they didn't. You don't need to do that anymore." Unfortunately, the man had lost the initial beauty for the beauty of the reproduction.
How often do e want to come down off the mountain of the presence of God to tell others? It seems a pure enough goal, right? Tell everyone what the Lord has done!
The problem with this is that we often want to come out of the presence prematurely. We gain the smallest moment of the presence of God and want to leave. Why? It is difficult. It isn't easy to sit there and be patient. Moses was in the presence for 40 days... I can only imagine a 21st century human without technology and such, sitting on a mountain of His presence for 40 days, and 6 days before that as well!
But I digress. The point of my little soapbox is to encourage you: stay in the presence. Don't come out until God is done imparting. Otherwise, you will not have enough to over pour, enough to last you. What you communicate to others will only be a bit of the presence and the majority of your impatience and human excitement. Wait. Pause. Sit down, homie.
Before this passage, the Lord gave the 10 commandments, one of which was to have a day of rest every Sabbath. But not HUMAN rest, GOD'S REST... this is the part we so often ignore.
“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy."
Hebrews talks about the faith required to enter the rest and says, "for anyone who enters God's rest ALSO rests from his own work." It's about ENTERING into rest, not EXITING work. You can refrain from work without entering into the presence. The Israelites wanted to hear what God said, but didn't want to hear it directly from God. They wanted Moses to be a liaison. They didn't want to go onto the mountain of His Presence. What happened? So very quickly they made idols. Moses was chillaxin with GOD and they were fooling around with gold.
So make sure you aren't seeking God just so you can transcribe what He says. Don't merely want to be the image of God for selfish gain, but sit down in His presence. magnify HIM. Sacrifice your desired images, and let His overtake it all. Then the fullness of the Lord will come out and your gaze will still be locked on Him. Your reward won't be in a fake reproduction, but in Heaven.
