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Tuesday Devotionals: Exodus 33

Devotional

bibleExodus 33:7-11

7 Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the “tent of meeting.” Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp. 8 And whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood at the entrances to their tents, watching Moses until he entered the tent. 9 As Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance, while the Lord spoke with Moses. 10 Whenever the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tent, they all stood and worshiped, each at the entrance to their tent. 11 The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent.

Relationship with God is personal.  Of course experiencing the presence of God has always been, and will be, enhanced by the fellowship of corporate worship.  However, the power of God to change exists only in the one on one, face-to-face experience.  One cannot know and be moved by God if knowing and being moved by him requires the presence of other people.  Otherwise, the experience of God will be present in one moment and non-existent in another, completely defying the nature of Emmanuel, God with us to the very end of the age.  God is a God with the ability to bring people to their knees in awe-inspiring corporate worship, but his ultimate desire is to meet us as his beloved children.  A face-to-face conversation requires trust and intimacy, and this is how God chooses to speak to us.   The relationship with God is “ours” as Christians, but it is first and foremost “yours.”  God, the Father, spoke to Moses face-to-face, as a father speaks to a child. Jesus the Son spoke to his disciples as friends, inviting them to “come and see” him for themselves (John 1.39). He showed them who he really was, is, and will always be.  To know God is to know how He sees you, how He chooses to approach you.  His desire is to always be close.  His desire is to draw near.

Tuesday Devotional: Genesis 11

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Hey all! This is the first installment of the weekly devotionals here on the MWM blog. Every Tuesday, come back for another quick study in God’s Word. We will choose a short excerpt from one book of the Bible to study every week!

The weekly devotional is a brief meditation on a passage of Scripture. We won’t be examining or heavily analyzing every aspect of the passage, but we will extract the essential Truth present throughout the text. What can we learn about ourselves? What can we learn about the character and nature of God? Be blessed as you read!

Genesis 11:1-9 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. 3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” 5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” 8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

We may view the temptations that frustrate our walk with God as external, but the reality of our struggle with sin in this world and the realization of the Gospel in our lives, is that our primary enemy is ourselves. We live in a world that is difficult to understand.  We live a life that is difficult to understand. After praying for and receiving things that we do not totally understand, we find we are incapable of possessing those things without hurting ourselves and others.  We are encouraged from an early age to be the best, told that we are the most important people in our lives. Tragic consequences follow when we begin to believe it.  In an attempt to attain our life’s desires and “make a name for ourselves” we often destroy the truly good things in our lives. One of the main reasons many do not find God or feel his presence is that in the deepest recesses of the human heart, God is unwelcome and unwanted. The moment we accept that the power and perspective of God will forever overpower and supersede our own is the moment we will finally find him.  Until then? We exist as our own gods. We mustn’t be surprised when we find ourselves confused by or unable to understand the world we live in and how we are to live in it.