2019 has been a special year for me so far. My heart is filled and truly overflowing with the stunning goodness of our faithful Savior. It has been a wrestling year too. I have wrestled in prayer with the Lord. It’s been 7 years in this intimate communion with Him. This is my first month in my 27th year here on earth. My prayer time with the Lord this year has been so, so good and no words can capture how grateful I truly am. I have literally been at a loss for words.
We grow into who we were always meant to be by communing with the Lord.
There is a story God has written for you before the beginning of time. And there is a story you desire for yourself. We can’t have the story God has written for us and our desired story at the same time. One has to go, which one will it be?
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” Revelation 3:20
“Prayer is not a way in which we order things; it is a way in which we become ordered. The primary action in prayer comes from God, and more often than not he does not act in ways we can duplicate or even recognize at the time. Whether we like it or not or expect it or not, we enter a mystery when we pray. Most of us never quite get used to this. Do we ever get used to mysteries? We want to know how it works so we can do it too, so we are able to take charge of things (or others) ourselves. God knows that if we knew what he knows, we would quickly depersonalize what we know into information or figure out a shortcut that bypassed intimacy.” As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Eugene Peterson
Friendship with the Lord
To be honest, I wish I knew what God knows. I am impatient and curious, worst combination, I know. But the question is, if I knew what God knows, would that make me more trusting of Him? The story of the Israelites on the Mount Sinai give a resounding answer, NO.
Impatience will turn your heart to idols if left unchecked.
“Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Exodus 32:1
Keep that verse in mind and let’s go to 9 chapters before Exodus chapter 32, where God tells the Israelites His purpose and His heart for them.
“Behold, I send an angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. Beware of Him and obey His voice; do not provoke Him, for He will not pardon your transgressions; for My name is in Him. But if you indeed obey His voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.” Exodus 23:20-22
Didn’t the Israelites know God’s plans for them as shown in the above two verses?
Friendship with the Lord requires patience.
“I waited patiently for the Lord,
And He inclined to me,
And heard my cry.
He also brought me up out of a horrible pit,
Out of the miry clay,
And set my feet upon a rock,
And established my steps.
He has put a new song in my mouth—
Praise to our God;
Many will see it and fear,
And will trust in the Lord.
Blessed is that man who makes the Lord his trust,
And does not respect the proud, nor such as turn
Aside to lies.
Many, O Lord my God, are Your wonderful works
Which You have done;
And Your thoughts toward us
Cannot be recounted to You in order;
If I would declare and speak of them,
They are more than can be numbered.” Psalm 40:1-5
My heart knows it well, for truly, truly, truly, You have put a new song in my mouth. Praise be forever to You Lord.
Friendship with the Lord requires patience. Don’t all friendships require patience in order to mature and grow deeper into intimacy anyways?
Going back to the story of the Israelites on the Mount Sinai, the Lord had made known to them His promises (Exodus 23: 20-32) and the Israelites had gladly accepted God’s covenant (Exodus 24). Could you please read the whole chapter of Exodus 24 slowly right now? Wonder and awe will fill you, I promise you.
I am highlighting below some verses from Exodus chapter 24, but please don’t skip reading this chapter first?
“And all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.” And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel… Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.”
Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel. There was under His feet as it were a pavement of sapphire of stone, like the very heaven of clearness. And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank.
The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to Me on the mountain and wait there, that I may give you tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.” So Moses rose with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God. And he said to the elders, “wait here for us until we return to you. And behold, Aaron and Hur are with you. Whoever has a dispute, let him go to them.” Exodus 24:3-4, 7, 9-14
Impatience distorts reality.
Remember the words of the Israelites before choosing their own god in Exodus chapter 32? “Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”
Impatience will always stir you to act when God has clearly said to wait for Him.
The Israelites were simply impatient and didn’t want to wait on God, but they distorted reality by claiming that they didn’t know “what has become of Moses”. The Lord had told Moses to, “Come up to Me on the mountain and wait there, that I may give you tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.” (Exodus 24:12) and Moses turned and told the elders to “wait here” (Exodus 24:14).
Will you wait for the Lord as He simultaneously grows His friendship with you?
Faith is patience lived out for there is always a gap between God’s promises and the fruition of those promises.
Cambridge’s dictionary defines patience as follows: the ability to accept delay, suffering, or annoyance without complaining or becoming angry.
Will you accept the delay, suffering, or annoyance in your life without complaining or becoming angry? For God truly orders your steps and not only that, He also delights in your way (Psalm 37:23). Unbelievable, right? Lord God, thank You for being so, so good to us. Through every season of our lives, Father God, you are good and may our hearts forever rejoice in that!
From the garden of Eden, we have chosen to distort God’s reality for us. The lure of the enemy is always the same, “Did God really say…” (Genesis 3:1)? Since the fall, our eyes have been “opened” (Genesis 3:7) and we have become people who were never meant to be “afraid, naked, and hiding from the Lord” (Genesis 3:10).
Walking with God is this unbecoming what you were never meant to be. Walking with God is the re-learning of our native tongue of communion and fellowship with God.
The fall introduced us to distrust, our distrust in the goodness of God.
Unbecoming
“God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their reappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.” Acts 17:24-31
The God you have put your faith in is faithful. I know, you know that mentally, but would you please let that truth permeate in your heart?
Your unbecoming is making you like Christ. You are becoming a fragrant of Christ (2 Corinthians 2:15).
Just like the unfolding of a new born baby in a mother’s womb, the broken pieces of your life are turning into glory. And this unbecoming? This fading away of the former? It is giving way to more of Him. What wouldn’t we let go for that?
Lord? Just to know You and be loved is enough.