I sat down today to nut a few of these issues out with God.
Chorus from ‘Nothing Compares’, Third Day:
Nothing compares
to the greatness of knowing You, Lord
Nothing compares
to the greatness of knowing You, Lord
Nothing compares. Do you believe it? Do you really? Sometimes I look back at my life and have to shake my head in wonderment at the…. exposure I‘ve had to God and His miracle works. To see people getting out of wheelchairs as I watch, to have my own relatives manifest demonically in front of me… makes it very hard to deny the existence of a God. But… NOTHING compares to the greatness of knowing my God, of having Him do miracles in me. Nothing compares to His direct guidance or caring intervention. Yes, there’s more to it than just knowing there is a God. It’s about experiencing Him up close and personal.
From millions of miles away, the Sun is already too bright to be looked at directly. Imagine its 'presence' if it were to suddenly draw closer to us. Such is the magnitude of the power of God.
I was reflecting on this because of a testimony that Cait and Cass had to share about the exercising of their faith in God. But it wasn’t my central focus. In fact, I was praying about UNIDUS. Praying for some kind of explicit, personal revelation that would seal the deal, no questions asked (or at least no room for intelligent debate, as I so like to do). And then I stumbled upon Zechariah 3.
(v1 – 4)Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him. The LORD said to Satan, "The LORD rebuke you, Satan! The LORD, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?"
Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. The angel said to those who were standing before him, "Take off his filthy clothes." Then he said to Joshua, "See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put rich garments on you." (v6 - 7)The angel of the LORD gave this charge to Joshua: 7 "This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'If you will walk in my ways and keep my requirements, then you will govern my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you a place among these standing here.
At first I must admit that I thought this reading was rather erroneous and I flipped to another area, Hebrews 3:15:
As has just been said: "Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.”
Oops.
I re-read Zechariah a second time and it dawned upon me that these two verses actually addressed quite a few issues I’d been stuck in a perpetual stalemate against, namely the idea of repetitive sin and the notion of perfection in God versus perfection for God. When I read Hebrews, I felt God prompting me, saying (in essence) “I’m not interested in how generous you are. The reason you haven’t seen My full blessings is because I’ve shown you areas of your life that need fixing but you have resisted that. You cannot buy your way out of sin. And you can’t help UNIDUS if you are not availing yourself to me, because then you are doing it for selfish reasons. So get yourself right before I give you a target.”
Oowch.
Notwithstanding my desire to give despite being essentially unemployed, that was a very, very touchy revelation =|.
Zechariah 3:6-7 speaks of the charge given to Joshua, the high priest, the spiritual leader of the remnant Israelites who were rebuilding the Temple. Once again, gifts that I have been seeking or desiring progress upon, God answered by telling me that I first had to be obedient before I could begin to claim His blessings. I had to step out from the areas of repetitive sin He revealed to me and not continue to palm them off as unresolvable. And, just as He took the burning stick of Jeshua from the fire, absolved the priest’s sins and clothed him in new garments, so too would I require God’s strength more than ever to overcome these issues.
Lawlessness against God. That was God’s charge against a rebellious Israel. What to do? Well, it goes back several weeks to the Love/Fear sermon at Hope, or several years to the Love/Fear debate at OCF, but the issue rears its ugly head once again. Obviously I never integrated my findings, hahaha. It was beautifully expressed to me, once, in the following way (by I-can’t-remember-who):
“If we were to seek a remedy for our legalistic ways, we should pray for more love. But if we were to seek a remedy for our lawlessness, we should pray for more fear.”
Only when both love and fear operate in tandem can we begin to have unshakeable faith in our God. And only when we begin to understand Him more, do we have the opportunity to invite Him in and make Him personal to our lives.
Every day, every hour, every BREATH! I want my God to be personal to me.
In Faith, Hope and Love!
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