His Presence

His Presence

Standing between you and your enemy

Life is messy and life continues to be a great teacher. I was thinking about my last post and "the God who is NOT safe" and I stick by that and I find that this is a part of who the Holy God of the Bible is and not something I came up with out of my imagination. One of the messiest parts of life is in relationships. One of the truths of the Bible that not every Christian subscribes to unfortunately is that we do not war against flesh and blood (Ephesians 6). If we can look at our brother or sister in Christ and know this truth, no matter how difficult the circumstances, the person before me is not my enemy then there is a greater chance of working things out with that person. One of the greatest sins of Church of the 21st century is treating and believing that our brother or sister in Christ is the enemy. If the strive between us is too great for God then what kind of God are we serving.

Our earthly fathers are just that, earthly. Families have kids that just can't get along. But if we can see that our Almighty Father God is to be feared by the enemy, the common enemy of believers, namely Satan we will come to a place where reconciliation can happen. Satan is the one who wants us to be at each others throats and when we are able to come together, trembling in the Presence of our Father, He will give us eyes to see who the real enemy is and the peace that surpasses all human understanding will be ours in the Presence of a Fearsome God.

In First Peter it says that we are to humble ourselves under the Mighty Hand of God. We know that this "mighty" hand is also a "loving" hand. I don't know about you but when I am facing the enemy that first Peter talks about, the one who is looking to devour me, I want the Mighty Hand to be there to win the battle for me. Satan is no match for God because God is NOT safe. And saying that does not negate the fact that God is love, God is holy, God is just, God is merciful, God is all powerful and all knowing.

Do me a favor think of 3 people that you know really well, who you love deeply and they love you deeply? Are you not fascinated by who they are as a person? Are you still discovering things about them that you never knew? Are they just one dimensional? Most will answer: Yes, Yes and No. If we are imperfect people and we can say that about these dear ones then we who believe in this Perfect, Triune, Living God must say:

I am fascinated by this God who cares about the details of my life who is both the Lion of Judah and the Lamb of God!

And

If I lived to be 100 years old, I will still be discovering things about this Incredible God until I see Him face to face.

The God who Created the Universe, who held back the Red Sea, who sent His Own Son to die for Our sins, who Raised His Son from the Dead, who chose ordinary people to carry the Message of Our Great Salvation to the ends of the earth, whose Story is written from Genesis to Revelation in a book that has stood the test of time and has been preserved by His Divine Intervention and is one continuous Story woven throughout the lives of those who believe and those who don't, can not be measured.

This is the God who is our Refuge and in His Presence the enemy is anything but safe.

Dangerous

A Mighty God

^8"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts."

Isaiah 55; 8 & 9

"God is GOOD but He is NOT SAFE....He is trustworthy but He did ordain pain." Tullian Tchividjian preaching on Job

I wrote this quote on my Facebook status and my friend Brenda asked me to elaborate and it is right along some of the lines that I have been thinking about lately. Who God is: the character of God. There is a problem with the view of God is ALL Loving which quite often means ALL Loving and nothing else. How often do we define the Love of God by human standards? If something is distasteful, hard to understand, difficult to describe and just outright hard to swallow, then My God would not do that, say that, have the authors of the Bible write that or assign that to GOD. My God is Good all the time. This is a distortion that I believe has permeated the modern American Christian church and it has touched me as much as any other American Christian.

So the last 5 years, the LORD has drawn me, to take a closer at Him for all that He is including not being safe. I don't think it is a case of semantics, God may lead us through dangers and what some may say is not safe AND ALMIGHTY GOD is NOT Safe. I will do my best to stick to this one characteristic of GOD, The Lion of Judah.

In my comment to my status I quoted from C.S. Lewis' The Horse and His boy from the Chronicles of Narnia.

The character Aslan, the Lion (for those not familiar with the story) is the one speaking with the boy, Shasta toward the end of the book:

"I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the Horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you."

"Then it was you who wounded Aravis?"

"It was I"

"But what for?"

"Child," said the Voice, "I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own."

Aslan is the character who represents Christ throughout the Chronicles. He is also the only character that is in all 7 books. I do not believe this is a misrepresentation of the Triune God. The One whose character is written of from Genesis to Revelation. At this point, I am thinking that I could make this a series of posts.

Let us start with Genesis and see His character displayed. A global flood sent by Almighty God, only Noah and His family survive:

"The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. ⁶And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. ⁷So the LORD said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them." ⁸But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD." Genesis 6; 5-8

Abraham pleads with the LORD not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah

Abraham goes back and forth with the Lord in Genesis 18 and finally at the end of the discourse, the Lord says, "For the sake of the ten I will not destroy it." I suppose if you have read the Bible or even if you haven't, most people have heard references to Sodom and Gomorrah and know what happened:

^15"As morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, "Up! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city." ¹⁶But he lingered. So the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the LORD being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city. ¹⁷And as they brought them out, one said, "Escape for your life. Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley. Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away." ¹⁸And Lot said to them, "Oh, no, my lords. ¹⁹Behold, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life. But I cannot escape to the hills, lest the disaster overtake me and I die. ²⁰Behold, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Let me escape there—is it not a little one?—and my life will be saved!"²¹He said to him, "Behold, I grant you this favor also, that I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken. ²²Escape there quickly, for I can do nothing till you arrive there." Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.

²³The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. ²⁴Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the LORD out of heaven. ²⁵And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.²⁶But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt." Genesis 19; 15-26

I hate to quit writing now. (Still in Genesis) This Fearsome God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac! WHAT?! Nations are going to be blessed through the descendants of a burnt offering? Wood on the back of Isaac, the fire and a knife in the hands of Abraham and Isaac asks, "Where is the Lamb?" The question must have made Abraham's blood run cold, what would you say to the one who you were about slay? Would you be weak in the knees? Abraham trusted God enough to what? Raise Isaac from the dead? He trusted God so much he was able to say, "God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." Genesis 22; 8

So, I am in the Old Testament that is the beginning of the story of Our God who is the same yesterday, today and forever. Did God change at Matthew 1; 1? I don't think so. From Genesis 1 God says, Let Us make man in Our image. God, the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit were present throughout Old Testament and continuing in the New. He is Unchanging. This Fearsome, Just, Almighty, Righteous, Merciful and Loving God is to be feared, to be loved and to be honored. God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, three persons in One God is to be known for Who He is not who we want Him to be.

As is listed in my religious views on my Facebook Profile, "I see through a mirror dimly." It is my desire to get to know my Heavenly Father for who He is and this far into the journey, I think that I am just scratching the surface and I have a feeling that is how I will feel at the end of my journey here on earth. Lately, I am discovering more and more who God is and doing my best to keep my eyes and ears open. It is a humbling path because there have been times when I thought I knew who my God was and that was the problem, He was My God and not the One who had rescued me from sin and death. My prayer is that I remain teachable for the rest of my life and never to stop hungering and thirsting for the Living God.

Peace,

Catherine ie Caitriona