![]() Moses spent so much time with the Lord, face-to-face, that the skin on Moses’ face shone of the glory of God. Adrian Rogers says, “We cannot claim the promises of God without obeying the commandments of God.” Finally, there is a transformation. After observing what God has revealed, we must be sure to obey. If we are not sure who to pray for, we can trust God to lay it upon our hearts. Then may we give our intercession, and pray for others. After we humbly receive a word from God, we must respond with adoration: “So Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped” (Exodus 34:8). When we open the Bible, we must do so with an expectant heart and a pen and paper, ready to write down what the Lord reveals. There are times we need to get alone with God, away from the demands of others, in order to learn from Him. God instructed Moses to get away from the backslidden people he was leading in order to pay attention to what God was doing. We must embrace isolation: “And no man shall come up with you, and let no man be seen throughout all the mountain…” ( Exodus 34:3). We cannot casually, haphazardly seek the presence of God. In Exodus 33:15, Moses requests, “If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here.” Second, we should prepare our hearts. God promised Moses protection and provision, but because of the people’s sins, He would not go with them. First, there must be a determination to know God intimately. This passage reveals how to restore the glow, by practicing the presence of God. But many of us are not aware of the presence of God in our lives and lose our glow. I don’t know if the following is original with Dan Wetzel (former VP of Church Ministries at our National Office) but I had never heard it before.In Exodus 33, God shined His glory upon the prophet Moses’ face yet, Moses lost the glow over time.Īs Christians, we are temples of God the Lord lives and dwells in us. You will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring.” (NLT) So the obvious question becomes: “So what does the garden of your soul look like?” Currently my soul-garden is going through a rather dry time but I know the soil is moist and full of nourishing minerals and God will restore what has been damaged. Isaiah 58:11 speaks to our soul: “The LORD will guide you continually, giving you water when you are dry and restoring your strength. I truly desire to walk in the power of God’s Presence – to do otherwise is exhausting (not to mention fruitless). He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join Him in the work He does, the good work He has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”Ī friend of mine made this comment: “Jesus ushered in the reality of God’s deep concern and compassion of how we’re doing on the inside and how we need to stop practicing the presence of self.” Ouch! I don’t know about you but my SELF loves attention and loves to go around bragging – if not out loud then on the inside of my heart. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. All we do is trust Him enough to let Him do it. ![]() Saving is all His idea, and all His work. ![]() I recently read Ephesians 2:7-10 in The Message: “Now God has us where He wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. But how freeing it is to view this in the positive: “Wow! Awesome – I have God’s Spirit in me!” I want to embrace the truth that the Holy Spirit living in me provides the necessary strength to do the good works He has prepared before time for me to do. I think I often evaluate this truth in a negative light by perceiving it to mean: don’t do this and don’t do that or you better behave because God is ever-watching. “Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself…” 1 Corinthians 6:19 (NLT)
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