Face to Face

God loves to grow his people up to be friends with Him.  Moses is a fun read.  Moses is a man I can relate with. He grabs after things prematurely and then when God speaks super clear to Him, he argues and presents a better plan for his life then the one God has for him.  Moses was in Egypt for 40 years.  He was in the wilderness in Midian for 40 years.  He goes back to Egypt when he is 80.  The part of the story right now that I am meditating on is the scene at the burning bush.  Moses is scared and hides his face.  He is reluctant to obey.  He doubts.  He is faithless.  This part of the story is easy for us to miss because we know the ending so well.  We know what God turns Moses into.  But right now I am interested and intrigued by who Moses was and I am encouraged to see God's faithfulness change him.  It gives me hope.  It allows me to walk where I am right now, knowing that God wants me to be His friend.  Moses got to meet with God.  He got to talk with God.  But back at the burning bush he was hiding his face.  Moses will later hide his face but he will do so to hide the brightness of God's glory from those around him who cannot handle it.  He is now able to sit and talk with God.  And this story is what God wants for us.  He wants us to commune with him and talk with Him in this way.  This is one of the most amazing things about our walk with God.  Moses' journey is prophetic.  It is his journey and at the same time it is the story of Israel.  God will be their God.  They will be his people.  After the burning bush, Moses heads to Egypt.  The angle of the Lord comes to disrupt this journey.  God requires blood for sin; the wages of sin are death.  Moses tries to skip this step.  The problem is, to skip it is to place yourself at war with God.  To make peace with God we must have our sins atoned for.  Moses does not obey the law of the Lord.  He does not do what the Lord required.  So God sends his angel to sacrafice, to make atonement.  Moses knows that his sons should be circumcised.  He does not obey this law.  He does not seperate himself.  God will separate.  Zipporah swoops in and saves the day.  She does a little circumcision surgery on the spot and saves her family from the wrath of God. Remember that the whole point of the plagues is to show Gods wonders not only to Pharoah but to the Israelites   God says again and again, that the plagues are to show the division between the hebrews and the Egyptians.  God wants Pharoah to let his people go so that they can go and worship Him.  But God requires blood.  Blood of circumcion.  Blood of the lambs on the door post.  Blood at the alter.  They are to go and make sacrafices to the Lord.  They are to be a holy people, a people cleaned and separated by the blood of the Lamb.  This was an abomination to the Egyptians and was subject to being stoned to death.  The Hebrews could not worship the Lord in the land they where in.  They needed to leave Egypt and her ways and go to their God and worship Him on His holy mountain.   I think that this story is just plain overwhelming.  There is so much meat here.  So many types, so many shadows of Christ.  Moses and Christ have very similar stories.  Moses is such a clear picture of Christ.  It has been so fun to meditate on this story.  The kids are loving it.  When we have a minute, I tell them this story, trying to get it right so that I can better etch in my mind.

My own story is being told.  I do not know the end.  I mean, I know the end in one sense.  But I do not know how God is going to get me there.  It is easy for me to look at the right now and be consumed by it.  Jason is recovering very slowly. He only gets out of bed to use the bathroom.  My body is aching, tingling, and not allowing me to sleep for more then 2 hours at a time.  When I say I ache, it is not a dull pain.  I have been to the allergist, the nuerologist, the internal medicine doctor and I am on my way to an MRI, Sleep Center and rhemetologist.  One of the things about my story that is very clear is that God is using my health to sanctify me.  Being sick takes your money, your time, your sleep, your comfort.  It is a constant reminder to me that I am in a battle.  I have the spirtit of the living Lord inside a dying body. I am wiped out.  I ended today with a dizzy spell that had me thankful I was sitting on the floor.  I put the kids to bed, turned off the light and told them the story of Moses with (at times) slurred speech at points.  They did not notice that my story telling skills where a bit off.  I tried to get through the story as quick as I could.   I am beat.  Back upstairs I trod.  Jason is restless.  I give him hydrochodone and log it in my medicine log I have for him.  And my brain spins as my body hurts.  I do think that looking forward to rest as a motivation for me.  Sleep for God's beloved is something I have known little of.  But Abraham is the father of nations and he believed God even as he steadied his hand to sacrifice his only son.  He believed.  Faith is believing.  I will find rest.  I do have rest.

  It has been my biggest prayer of late to ask God to get Himself deep into my heart.  I want to the think of Him more then anything else.  I learn so much from this story.  I see God's faithfulness to a stiff necked people.  I see the Israelite s leave their home of bondage with gold in their hands and God going before them, leading them to a holy land, a land they will be free to worship God on.  Egypt was not just slavery of body, it was slavery of soul as well.  They are free in so many ways when they leave.  They walk through cleansing water on their way and we see a journey from a slaves to holy priests.  God wants them to commune with him.  This is what priests do.  They talk with God.  God wants His people close to Him.  He wants them following closely.  It is the same for us.  We are to walk with God in accord with His word.  We are to stay close and follow hard after Him.  We are to eat His food and be cleansed by water.  We are to be priests and talk with God.  We are to be separate.  We are different because of who we worship.  Moses is a story for us.  He is an example.  We see him go from belligerent to friend.  We see him change from coward to savior.  We learn that we are on a journey and it is a journey that ends in rest.  It is an adventure and we are to stay close to our God for the whole ride.  God changes us.  Being close to Him is what separates us from the world.  We want to shine as Moses shined.  Moses when to the bush to see why it was not consumed.  We see Moses ending the same: meeting with God but not consumed by him.  We get to be the same way because of the blood of the Lamb that was slain for us.  May we find ourselves encouraged by this story.  Moses messed up.  But God was faithful.....this is what makes us different.  God.