A Moment of Clarity, Befuddled Into the Ether
“We may go through meeting after meeting, and all of it is reassuringly familiar, but we do not come out saying, in effect, 'Surely, we have met with the living God!'"
That is authentic worship. That is what is sought in real worship, to meet with God as Moses in the tent. This is an experience so intense that it changes our appearance, like the glow that women can sense of other women who have just conceived. So authenticity is a means, but it is not an end. The end is two-fold: to meet with God, and to put his glory on display in our lives.
So I want to be authentic, because the alternative is that I have not encountered God, I have not let him in. So I am faking it in order to fit in, or in order that I may work myself into an encounter rather than to simply surrender to his Spirit.
This is where I fail, in time with God. Moses spent time with God. Let us not immediately go to the spiritual metaphor or typology that these events may infer. Let us remember that Moses was a real sin-soaked man, and that the presence of God in the tent of meeting was very real, and that he experienced it tangibly.
Today, there is no tent, no temple, except the one we each walk around in and which our souls carry with us. And that pillar of cloud has diffused throughout the whole earth, so that God’s presence is in all places at all times. And so time can be spent with God anywhere, under any circumstances, mundane or critical. Through prayer and meditation on the message of God’s mercy through Christ, we may surrender ourselves to his will at all times.
Last Sunday, we found that in the first book of John, he writes that we can know and be sure that God hears us right now, and that we can ask God for anything in line with his will. Bob reminded us that before we ask for anything, we must ask God what his will is. I fail in doing this, preferring to work out my own solutions. Rather than the consultation of an invisible being, I prefer to work with what is concrete. And then I wonder why confusion ensues rather than trust. Because I haven’t met with the living God!
I know that he is continually at work in and around me, working all things together for my good, because I love him and have been called according to his purpose (not my own). But I insist on trying my own purposes out as being his will. I have failed to surrender to God in meeting with him, and thus being transformed by his mere presence.
Isaiah, in the sixth chapter of his prophecy, writes of his encounter with the living God. This vision is overwhelming as an image in my mind. Isaiah said, “Woe to me, for I am undone! I am a man of unclean lips!” In the presence of God, all Isaiah could say was, “I’m coming apart! My mouth is filthy!” Before God, Isaiah was seen through like a million particles of crystal clear glass. God knew him perfectly, and Isaiah felt the eyes of God upon him.
Moses went into the tent of meeting and came out with a glow so bright that the Jews had to put a veil over his face to even look in his direction. Paul was tossed off his high horse by the revelation of Jesus as Lord, and it radically, extremely shifted the course of his whole life and thought. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3 and 4 that by beholding the beauty of God in the face of Jesus, we are transformed into the very image we behold. The longer we behold it, the more we are transformed.
The image of Jesus, the true Logos of God, is his message, the Bible, which is given life and made clear by the presence of the Spirit. Behold it.
The presence of God in surrendering prayer and meditation is like living with a friend, where an exchange of words and intentions has its transformative effect. The longer I spend with my wife, the more I become like her. The more time she spends with me, the more she becomes like me. Truly we become one new being, as over time together, we exchange parts of ourselves in the creation of a whole being. This is how we should live with Christ and desire to be so close to him, that without necessarily realizing it, through mundane things, in critical moments, we are transformed from one degree of glory to another until we are like him. And, as the writer of 1 John says, we don’t know what Jesus will be like when he comes again, but we know that we will be like him, because we are his children transformed into his image!
That is authentic worship. That is what is sought in real worship, to meet with God as Moses in the tent. This is an experience so intense that it changes our appearance, like the glow that women can sense of other women who have just conceived. So authenticity is a means, but it is not an end. The end is two-fold: to meet with God, and to put his glory on display in our lives.
So I want to be authentic, because the alternative is that I have not encountered God, I have not let him in. So I am faking it in order to fit in, or in order that I may work myself into an encounter rather than to simply surrender to his Spirit.
This is where I fail, in time with God. Moses spent time with God. Let us not immediately go to the spiritual metaphor or typology that these events may infer. Let us remember that Moses was a real sin-soaked man, and that the presence of God in the tent of meeting was very real, and that he experienced it tangibly.
Today, there is no tent, no temple, except the one we each walk around in and which our souls carry with us. And that pillar of cloud has diffused throughout the whole earth, so that God’s presence is in all places at all times. And so time can be spent with God anywhere, under any circumstances, mundane or critical. Through prayer and meditation on the message of God’s mercy through Christ, we may surrender ourselves to his will at all times.
Last Sunday, we found that in the first book of John, he writes that we can know and be sure that God hears us right now, and that we can ask God for anything in line with his will. Bob reminded us that before we ask for anything, we must ask God what his will is. I fail in doing this, preferring to work out my own solutions. Rather than the consultation of an invisible being, I prefer to work with what is concrete. And then I wonder why confusion ensues rather than trust. Because I haven’t met with the living God!
I know that he is continually at work in and around me, working all things together for my good, because I love him and have been called according to his purpose (not my own). But I insist on trying my own purposes out as being his will. I have failed to surrender to God in meeting with him, and thus being transformed by his mere presence.
Isaiah, in the sixth chapter of his prophecy, writes of his encounter with the living God. This vision is overwhelming as an image in my mind. Isaiah said, “Woe to me, for I am undone! I am a man of unclean lips!” In the presence of God, all Isaiah could say was, “I’m coming apart! My mouth is filthy!” Before God, Isaiah was seen through like a million particles of crystal clear glass. God knew him perfectly, and Isaiah felt the eyes of God upon him.
Moses went into the tent of meeting and came out with a glow so bright that the Jews had to put a veil over his face to even look in his direction. Paul was tossed off his high horse by the revelation of Jesus as Lord, and it radically, extremely shifted the course of his whole life and thought. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3 and 4 that by beholding the beauty of God in the face of Jesus, we are transformed into the very image we behold. The longer we behold it, the more we are transformed.
The image of Jesus, the true Logos of God, is his message, the Bible, which is given life and made clear by the presence of the Spirit. Behold it.
The presence of God in surrendering prayer and meditation is like living with a friend, where an exchange of words and intentions has its transformative effect. The longer I spend with my wife, the more I become like her. The more time she spends with me, the more she becomes like me. Truly we become one new being, as over time together, we exchange parts of ourselves in the creation of a whole being. This is how we should live with Christ and desire to be so close to him, that without necessarily realizing it, through mundane things, in critical moments, we are transformed from one degree of glory to another until we are like him. And, as the writer of 1 John says, we don’t know what Jesus will be like when he comes again, but we know that we will be like him, because we are his children transformed into his image!
posted by chris at 9:16 AM
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