Below is an edited version of an editorial I wrote in my church’s bulletin, Feb. 20, 2005. Perhaps it will say something to you who will take a minute or two to read it.
If God were to come down before us in smoking, flaming fashion as He did to the Israelites of old, we would be terror-stricken. Never mind that we are constantly asking to see more of God’s glory, we can’t take all that fire and smoke in a concentrated manner. This doesn’t mean that we are sinful, only that we are yet imperfect humans made of perishable clay.
It reminds me of a young lady many years ago who asked God to show her His glory. She said later that as she was praying shortly after making her request, in a dream (or a vision – who knows?), a brilliant white light shone down from the heavens above her and she was so terrified that temporarily she lost her communion with God. The light instantly vanished into the night. It seems that she was not quite ready for that much of God’s visible glory. God knew it and He showed her in a most forceful way.
But I will not be frightened that easily. Okay, let’s tell it like it is: a vision like that might frighten me, but not so much that I will desist in my clamor for more of God’s awesome presence. I still want to see more of the glory of God. I want others to see it in my life. I want to see it in the closer walk I am incessantly striving for. And when God shows me His glory and lets me feel it pushing out against the hindering fleshly restraint, then I expect that the same glory that I see and feel at that time will be etched on the retina of my mind’s eye when God has temporarily withdrawn the glory from my sight and feeling. If you think that can’t happen, then you haven’t had much experience with God.
Nothing we get from God comes at no cost to us. In the secular realm or the spiritual, we have to fight for the ground we gain; we have to flood heaven with our prayers and constantly fall prostrate before the throne of God with our petitions. The widow did not get her pleas for justice answered until she had wearied the unjust judge. He answered her because she wearied him with her importunate cries. If the unjust judge would show ‘mercy’ for the wrong reason, will not a loving God give us what we ask of Him – simply because we were determined and He loves us? He will answer without fail if we keep coming to Him with our petitions for more of His glory and a closer walk with Him. But we must press our claim and not slacken in our push upward and onward.
This life is definitely not a “heaven to go to heaven in.” Just as we have our mountaintop experiences, we will inevitably walk in the gloom of the valley. But if we have just once been on the top of the mountain, God can cause us to long remember the wonderful experience and go in the memory of it through “the valley and the shadow of death” itself. Furthermore, time and experience will teach us that the glory will come again if we just remain faithful to the God of all glory.
Good stuff as per usual, thanks. I do hope this kind of thing gets more exposure.
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