God Wants to Be Known

Bible Reading

• Exodus 27-28
• Psalm 19
• Mark 9

Prayer / Devotional

What kind of picture do you have of God?  Do you see Him more as a force, or an impersonal being, a spirit that lives in heaven?  Or do you see Him more like a person who you can sit down and have coffee with?  I sometimes struggle with seeing God more as a spiritual being, that is beyond really knowing. My brother and I talked about that this week.  Unfortunately Michael doesn’t view God as someone he can really connect with.  But, that is not true.  God is personal and He wants to be known.  At Jesus death God tore the curtain in the temple showing that the door is wide open for us to enter His presence and commune with Him.    

Psalm 19:1-2 He said that the all of creation is there to proclaim His glory.  God is displaying His glory and His craftsmanship (Ps 19:1) through creation day after day, and night after night, so that you can be known! (Ps 19:2) 

When God gave the law, although He did strike fear into His people by shaking the mountain and sending thunder and lightning (Exodus 20:18), we read in Exodus 27:9 that the 70 elders of Israel ate and drank in God’s presence.  God sat with them, they enjoyed His presence, and were not destroyed!  God reminds us that He longed to dwell with us.  That is why He had Israel build the tabernacle and the Mercy Seat (Ex 28:2)!  God promised that it would be there, on the Mercy Seat, between the Cherub, that His presence would be, and that He would meet with His people and talk to them from there. (Ex 28:22) 

Then in the New Testament, on the mount of transfiguration, God revealed Himself once again.  God spoke.  His voice was heard from the cloud (Mark 9:7). He reminded the disciples, that while they saw something amazing (Moses and Elijah standing in front of them), that’s not what was important.  What was important was the presence of Jesus.  Then He commanded them to listen to Jesus!

Heavenly Father, today you have given us the very life of Jesus living within us (Col 1:15-20; Col 3:3-4).  These pictures throughout scripture remind us that you are real.  That you are personal, and that you desire for us to know you!  You have given us the very power that raised Jesus from the dead (Eph 3:20).  Eph 3:17-20 also reminds us that He wants to use that power to help us comprehend the love of God that “surpasses knowledge.”  That may seem impossible, but God is able to do exceedingly beyond what we can ask or even imagine.  

I pray for my children today that they will cry out to you as Paul did, “I want to know you! (Phil 3:10)  That everything else in their life today would be considered worthless compared to the pursuit and desire to know you more. (Phil 3:8)  As they seek to know you today, I pray it will lead them to pray as David did in Psalm 19:13 “Cleanse me from these hidden faults. Keep your servant from deliberate sins! Don’t let them control me.”  I pray that you will give them a hatred of sin like Jesus described in Mark 9:42-49 “If your hand, foot, eye, causes you to sin cut it off, gouge it out.  It is better to enter the Kingdom of God lame than to have them and be thrown into hell.”

May they desire to experience the power that raised you from the dead! I pray that they will see their suffering as a privilege because it is sharing together in your suffering which lead to death to self and resurrection with Jesus to new life, His life living through them.  Father, increase their faith today. (Mark 9:23, 29)

As I was finishing, the words of Only a Holy God by City on a Hill were coming to mind.  Here’s the 3rd verse and the chorus.

Who else could rescue me from my failing?

Who else would offer His only Son?

Who else invites me to call Him Father?

Only a Holy God

Only my Holy God

Come and behold Him

The One and the Only

Cry out, sing holy

Forever a Holy God

Come and worship the Holy God