This weekend's seminar was splendid, this time with God was absolutely splendid. God came to dwell with us. I confess to a constant sense of wonder each time God comes to worship and makes His presence felt. I'm not sure when I first understood that God is not and has never sought to be an absent deity, but one thing is certain: as soon as I understood this, the manifest presence of God became a true obsession and a constant search. From there, it became a daily life experience. Thus, God, far from being the distant, remote, and impassive deity that many imagine, is in reality very involved in the daily lives of His people.
Or rather, in the daily lives of those who ask Him and ardently desire it. Remember the story of Israel, who had just left Egypt and were in the desert. God's intention was to be close to them, to deal directly with them. Now, Exodus 20:19 shows us that when God tried to get closer, they had other ideas. They said they were terrified and found it too much for them, and decided to delegate their relationship with God to Moses. So they told him 'Listen Moses, you will speak with God, you will listen to God, then you will come back and tell us what He says, we do not want to listen to Him directly because our nerves might suffer,' in reality they said verbatim 'for fear that we will die.'
So Moses drew closer to God while others remained distant, and he had the privilege of knowing God better than any other human being of his time. He had the privilege of experiencing a relationship with God that no one else had. And this was because he said yes. While others were timid, he was insatiable; he continued to ask for more and more from God, to insist that God's presence be with him always; at one point, he even allowed himself to refuse to let God send him somewhere if He had no intention of accompanying him there. In short, he became addicted to God. And at the moment when the distant worshippers moved away from God and began to worship the golden calf, he stood firmly on God's side. God is still looking for people today who will say a firm and resounding yes.
The people who attend our meetings are happy because they are consumed by the presence of God, and I am happy that they are filled and blessed. But when they go home, God is there, and He says 'Look, I am here, let's continue this fellowship.' The question at that moment is what you are going to do. Are you going to respond to His invitation, take a step forward, come closer, like Moses, or take a step back and disconnect like Israel; because it is not the time, too much going on, it is not cool, it is too complicated, I can't pray as much, too busy, no time for fellowship; I know, I will arrive earlier at the church to bathe more in this sweet presence of the Lord. Or, I will certainly attend the next conference to replenish and be refreshed again. Yes, the pastor can come closer, we will worship from afar and receive the surplus of the glory that is on his life.
Now each new divine experience must cease to be the summit and become the threshold of your experience in God, and propel you to higher places in God. But this time it is not up to a Moses, but up to you yourself to say 'I love this experience in God, I am going to change my lifestyle, cease to be an absent worshipper of a God who is so present, and turn to God again so that this becomes not only my daily experience, but so that I become God's catalyst to propel others into this level of spiritual connection with God. For each time God touches you powerfully, He invites you to other heights, He invites you to be not only someone who enjoys this grace, but a vehicle to communicate it to others.
So every blessing from God is a call to be an agent of God to communicate the same blessing to others. It is a call to responsibility. So the extraordinary presence of God is meant to manifest itself regularly in the assembly of upright men (and women) as He finds willing vessels who live it day by day and communicate it to others. Do you want to be part of it?
Selah!
Yes, I want it, Lord, to be a vessel for you. The more the days pass, the more I realize that we are blessed to serve the Lord where he wants and how he wants.