Knowing God

“Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words.’

Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky.

But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank.

When Moses went up the mountain, the cloud covered it. The glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days.

On the seventh day he called to Moses from the cloud. The appearance of the Lord's glory to the Israelites was like a consuming fire on the mountaintop.”
[from Exodus 24]

A friend drew my attention to the cutting of the Mosaic Covenant, when God and the people of Israel formally entered into the covenant that the people had proposed [Deuteronomy 5:27].

I’ve always paid more attention to the proposal [Exodus 19 & 20] than the marriage [Exodus 24]. A few things speak to me here.

And it occurs to me that an excellent way to get to know someone better, is to sit down to a meal with them. I observe that both the Old Covenant [Exodus 24] and the New Covenant [Luke 22] were established with meals, and that he still invites himself in for meals with his people [Revelation 3:20].

In the Old Covenant, this was the first time they’d ever eaten with God, I think. In the New Covenant, it might have been the three thousandth time they’d eaten together (three meals a day for three years).

A little bit later, Moses gets up and heads further up the mountain into God’s presence, but it takes a full week for God to speak with him.

I reflect that the reality is that sometimes when I’m talking with God, it really does take a few days to connect well with him. But I also reflect that this is more a characteristic of Old Covenant thinking than of the New [Luke 11:13, John 10:27].

But while Mo and God were talking, it looked like a “consuming fire.” Sometimes when we meet with God, other folks can see the change in us. And sometimes the change does not comfort them, if they don’t know him like we know him.

Responding to Testimony

I had been listening to some pretty awesome testimonies of God's goodness recently. One day, I was driving across town, reflecting on the testimonies, admiring how good God really is.

“You know, Son, If you keep welcoming the testimonies, you might be in danger of seeing those things show up in your own life.” I could hear the smile in his voice.

I thought for a while about what he was saying: receiving the testimony empowers the testimony in my own life. Yeah, that's Biblical.

Then the other end of the scale crossed my mind.

“I wonder if that means that if I were to reject the testimony, that I would stop that work of God in my life, I would actually be working against God's move in my life?”

I felt Father sadly nodding agreement. There was a tear.

I pondered some more.

I could hear someone's argument in my mind: “Does that mean that I need to believe every unverifiable, every unbelievable fairy tale that anybody dreams up?”

He was silent.

I thought about that for a while.

After several miles, I realized that this isn't a binary situation. This isn't “Either I fully believe the testimony & receive it, or else I completely and utterly reject it.” There are times, no doubt, for each of those extremes, but there are other options, other choices, where I believe a portion of the testimony and respond to other parts skeptically.

I thought some more.

It came back to my attention that Father has been reminding me of my own testimony recently: how he's taught me how I don't actually need to form an opinion all the time. He reminded me of how much freedom that has brought me in recent years, to occasionally say, “I don’t know.” “I don’t have an opinion on that one.”

And that’s the answer in this situation. Or at least an answer.

If I don't have the faith (or the will) to believe the testimony before us, have another option, other than closing off the grace of God in my life in that area: I’m not actually required to form an opinion, a judgment, of every single thing that we hear.

It's easy enough to let unbelief disguise itself as the wisdom of not forming an opinion, but we’re mature enough to avoid that, aren’t we?

Use discernment. Duh. That’s why he gave us that gift; use the gift, then trust the gift that God has given. Engage your trust, or don’t, as you choose.

But if it's a good testimony, believe it, engage your faith with it, and look for the grace of that testimony to manifest in your life.

But maybe if it isn’t a testimony you find you can engage your faith with, I don’t need to utterly reject and shut down that move of God in my life.

Is All Worship Equally Precious to God?

Is all worship equally precious to God?

That question challenges me quite a lot. They stretch me. And I think I see a trap in it.

It seems to me that worship from a broken place might be more precious, as it costs us more.

It’s pretty easy, when God has just healed your daughter from cancer, to respond in worship toward the God who just restored the love of your life to you. In fact, sometimes it’s hard for believers to not worship God in those circumstances.

And that worship is precious to God.

But worship doesn’t come as naturally, as easily, when you’ve missed your rent payment again, when your family rejects you, when your favorite grandmother just died. Scripture talks about “a sacrifice of praise” [Hebrews 13:15]. One reason that Job is among my heroes is because when he got the news about the death of his children and the theft of his fortune, “he fell to the ground in worship” [Job 1:20].

Worship in these circumstances is more costly to us.

I find that worship in those circumstances is more precious in me as well, from two perspectives.

First, in times of disappointment and failure, my soul is more vulnerable, more pliable, more raw. When I come before God in worship in those times, I am more effectively conformed to his image, and I receive more of his comfort and provision (though I may not recognize that until later).

Second, when I observe you worshipping passionately in the midst of your trials, that ignites something in me in response. Sometimes it’s igniting worship in me, sometimes gratitude or joy.

Watching someone worshipping in the midst of blessing and gratitude is cool too. But when you are worshipping God purposefully in those times, your worship has a more powerful effect on me, and therefore is more precious to me.

Is it more precious to God? That’s a tough one. Since Scripture doesn’t seem to answer that question, I figure I maybe shouldn’t answer for him where he’s chosen not to answer.
However, a good number of people believe that yes, God does appreciate worship more when it comes out of difficult trials.

Now here’s where the trap comes.

If I believe that my worship is more meaningful to God when it comes from trials, then I might be tempted to go looking for trials in order to “level up” the value of their worship before God. And there are all kinds of problems with that.

○ I’ve known people who believed this, and tried to walk it out. Their lives were messed up. They intentionally chose physically demanding jobs, they wouldn’t let anyone help them so as to not “lose their reward.” They had no joy, no friends, and no fruit in their lives. These were miserable people.

○ In some religious movements, this has been elevated to a virtue, an art form. Self-flagellation – whether literal or metaphorical – is always popular. And it’s the metaphorical kind that’s the worst trouble. We all know people who regularly say sad and evil things about themselves (“I deserve this” for example). Many of them will defend these beliefs at some level.

○ The worst of it may be the worship of Molech, which we see in the Old Testament, and which continues even today. One of the more detestable things that evil people in the Old Testament did was to sacrifice their children [1Kings 3:27, Ezekiel 20:31].

I was reflecting on this the other day: Why would these people kill their kids? How could they be so deceived as to think that this was a good thing?

I could feel Father’s sadness as I brought the questions up. He pointed out that these people are badly deceived: it’s not really God that they’re worshipping, though they may or may not know it. But they believe that in sacrificing that which is most precious to them – bone of their bone – that they will be more pleasing to God or gods, or that they will gain more power.

In reality, those child sacrifices are acts of worship to demons, inspired by demons, and used by demons to control the people. That’s not all that hard to see from our viewpoint as twenty-first century Christians. We can see it where they could not.

And then it dawned on me: it is, all of it, in greater or lesser measure, and whether we intend it to be or not, it is all worship at a false altar. (I can’t bring myself to say, “It’s all worship of demons, in one measure or another,” even though that’s what I think I mean: that’s just too harsh.)

Let me say it more delicately, and I’m going to cut to the chase, here: any time we hold up our sacrifice, our works, as making us more pleasing to God, we’ve missed the heart of Jesus. In that moment that we believe (whether with words or not) that “I deserve this,” or that “My sacrifice will make me more pleasing to God,” we have taken our eyes off of Jesus, and put them on a false god of one sort or another.

Summary: Worshipping God in the midst of trials and loss is a beautiful thing. It’s good for you, it inspires people around you, it draws you closer to God and to his provision for you.

It is possible, whether blatantly (as with Molech) or subtly (with our attitudes) to carry that “beautiful thing” to a very ugly extreme and to rob it of all its beauty.

At the same time, it is also possible to be overly aware of the dangers of the ugly extreme, and shy away from worshipping God in difficulty or uncertainty, out of fear of making that mistake.

Reacting out of fear is never a healthy thing, is it? And taking things to extremes is so often such a mistake, isn’t it?

I’m reminded again of the wisdom of “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”