Good Morning.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Depart and go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your descendants I will give it.’ And I will send My Angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanite … Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; for I will not go up in your midst, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.” (Exodus 33:1-3)
Not every day is a Mount Sinai experience. By that I mean that we don’t spend most of our time witnessing a dramatic display of God’s glory. It’s not every day that we get to hear the audible voice of God booming from the midst of a thick dark cloud. No, most of our days are spent doing the mundane things one has to do — just living life and trying to make ends meet albeit with the promise of blessing and peace if we remain faithful. Still, we eventually have to move away from “Sinai” and make our way toward the objective — the Promised Land.
Seeing that so much of life is the journey, I’m thankful for those times when He interrupts the routine to let me know He’s still there. Whether it is with some demonstration of His hand in my life or a just a word of encouragement through someone else, it’s comforting to know that He’s still there. I would hate to think that His Presence was no longer with me — that would be too much to bear. That is what the children of Israel faced — making the journey without God in the midst of them because they were too resistant to His sovereignty.
Let this serve as a lesson to us that we should never take His Presence for granted. Messiah has promised us that He will never forsake Him but it also stands to reason that we should never forsake Him as well. We should never think that we can just live any way we want and still have Him dwelling in our lives. To the contrary, His holiness and our stubbornness is not a good combination — it can lead to great destruction.
So then, to ensure that His Presence is always with us requires that we submit to His authority and live holy lives. Moreover, we should want to do this because we love and honor Him. It really is quite simple: He wants us to love Him just as He loves us. When we express our devotion to Him with sincerity, nothing can separate us from Him. And so as our journey continues, whatever we may face, let us lives that say, “Please go with us. We can’t do it without You.”
Blessings and Shalom,
Bill
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