PRESENCE

PRESENCE Jan. 19^th, 2014

I am in a very RAW place this early Monday Morning.  This church chorus from over a decade ago, possibly even longer, came to me during the night as one word has continued to roll around in my heart over this long, emotional weekend: PRESENCE.  If you remember this song, sing it with me in spirit today…

“Surely the PRESENCE of the Lord is in this place

I can feel His might power and His Grace

I can see the touch of angels wings I see glory on each face

Surely the PRESENCE of the Lord is in this place”

 

We all have experienced those “dry desert experiences.”  You know those moments frozen in time, when you take one small step forward and it feels like someone has pushed you 5 steps backwards and knocked you off your feet.  Laying flat on your back, breathless you reach out for someone to rescue you from this place, and with most of the air from the fall being knocked out of you, you can barely gasp, “Is anybody out there?  Anyone? Help?”

I often go to the book of Exodus, when I am personally experiencing an emotional desert.  I could read these ancient pages forever and always gleam a new insight.  This weekend, I saw PRESENCEover and over as I read.  Moses life stories of valley’s and desert’s and mountaintop’s weave themselves in such a similar way to each of us. This is where I was drawn in DEEP this weekend.  Moses had already received the 10 commandments, inscribed by the very finger of God….and around chapter 31 and 32 when he is returning to the people that God had CHOSEN, and gifted and poured into blessing after blessing…gold and silver and abundance, God’s provisions day and night had been with His CHOSEN….and then this moment of utter defiance… they took EVERY single blessing from GOD and turned it all into another GOD, a Golden Calf.  Chapter 32.  Then in Chapter 33, I shiver at this statement…”The Lord said to Moses, Tell the Israelites, ‘You are a stiff –necked people.  If I were to go with you even for a moment, I might destroy you!!!!” Exodus 33:5  Their creator, the God of the Universe, the one they have worshipped and saw miracles falling from Heaven in the form of food, HIS PRESENCE had been lifted from them at this moment in time.  I can’t even imagine the anger, frustration, knocked off your feet and punched in the gut feeling deep within Moses.  He had just been with the Lord on the mountaintop, and now this.  In his desert place, he cries out in verse 13, “If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. “  and verse 14 “The LORD replied, “My PRESENCE will go with you and I will give you rest.” And in verses 15 and 16 it is all sewn together at this moment..”Moses said to him “If your PRESENCE does not go with us, do not send us from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us?  What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?’

It is in these verses I weep, not a slow falling tear, a gut wrenching, gasping for air sobering mess of a weeping fit….Because in relating these verses to my seasons over the years, I recognize over how often I have sinfully tried to step out in “MY PRESENCE”, “MY POWER”, “MY WILL” and in so doing, I just fall further backwards into a big fat MESS, without the PRESENCE of God being minute by minute the intention of my heart, the voice on my lips of His name, the song in my spirit.  Without His PRESENCE in my life, what distinguishes me from any other people? 

So my WORD today from the WORD to begin this work week and chew on is PRESENCE. Is God’s PRESENCE with me today?  Or have I allowed my circumstances to keep me on my back in the dirt?  Have I spent so much time in the PRESENCE of the Lord that HE is seen on my face, NOT ME, but HIM?  I will close with this… “When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the LORD.” Exodus 34:29

Go out into this NEW week, IN HIS PRESENCE!

HUGS.  SMJ