This past weekend Tim and I took some
time to travel to the northern part of Indiana and enjoyed a fall festival at
an apple orchard. We meandered to Lake Michigan and ate our lunch
while listening to the crash of the waves on the shore. Being by the water is
always a good thing!
From there, we drove up to Grand Rapids
and stayed with some friends ~ and enjoyed delicious meals and conversations,
and also attended church with them. Their pastor is going through a series on
the life of Moses and this past Sunday the emphasis was on Moses’ prayer life. He
had some very interesting thoughts which led me to spend some time in Exodus 33
over the past few days.
God gave the job of leading His people
to Moses. That is a pretty big job – an impossible job when you read what all
happened as the Israelites wandered around in the desert! But Moses was smart
enough to ask God to continue to teach him and to find favor in his actions –
and if God’s presence wasn’t going to go with them, don’t send them!!
God promised His presence – because He
was pleased with Moses and knew him by name. (Reminds me of John 10 where Jesus
states He knows His own sheep by name… an interesting connection when you think
that Moses was a shepherd for a while…)
That must have been a huge reassurance
for Moses. I think I would have been breathing a lot easier at that point… maybe
even breaking out into song with something like: “How great is our God… sing
with me, how great is our God…”
That is when Moses did something
incredible – he asked to see God’s glory… His splendor! His confidence in God’s
presence gave him the boldness to ask for something no one had ever thought to
ask for before. God granted him his
request and told him how He would go about doing it.
But this is what stood out to me that I
never caught before: God told Moses “I will cause all my
goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim (call out) my
name, the Lord, in your presence…”
The
word LORD is Jehovah (YHWH) which is God’s name that states His position as
covenant maker and keeper. It is the very name He uses as an invitation to be
in a relationship with Him.
This
is so incredible!!! When Moses asked to see God’s glory – the bigness of Who He
is - God said yes and not only that, but “I’m going to tell you My name and
invite you into a relationship with Me.”
It is
pretty obvious when you read the life of Moses that he was already in a
relationship with God prior to this point. But my thought is this – Moses got
to see a glimpse of God’s glory and, at the invitation extended to him, entered
into a deeper relationship with God than he had ever had before. A relationship that carried him through all
the giving of the law, the desert wandering, consequences because of the sinfulness
of the Israelites, his own battles with self – right up to when he climbed the
mountain, died, and was buried by God.
Makes
me want to be bold, too, and
~ ask to see His glory
~ listen
to God call out His name in my ear
~
hear the invitation to a deeper relationship
~
respond to that invitation
~ walk with the assurance of His presence - which will produce a boldness to do whatever it is He asks me to do - which starts the process all over again... Pretty awesome!
