In Exodus 33, we see that Moses is in his transition. He is facing the biggest crisis he had ever faced as a minister, an apostle—-someone with an assignment. All of us, in any assignment will face crisis.
In reference to Hebrews 4:16:
Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
The throne of grace was set up so that we could all obtain mercy and find grace in time of need. Need, in this scripture, means opportunity. In the Hebrew language, the idea of crisis and opportunity is the same word. In God’s kingdom, when we enter into a crisis, is for God an opportunity. By grace, we will re-see our crisis as a new door of opportunity to receive the new grace for the season we have entered.
It is obvious when an old season is passing and a new one is upon us. We are in a new season. The grace has to be acquired or received in order to do the stuff in the new season. We can’t pour new wine in a new wineskin. You can’t put a new thought in an old mindset. Our mind needs to be released again to think new. Our whole being has to let go and let God.
We may perceive a new assignment and yet not have acquired the means to do the assignment. The sound will enlarge and we will become aware. It is a season. It may take years for the means to be given; which is the grace that God would give in order to do the work.
Grace is God’s ability to do what He asks us to do. It is His influence on our hearts to become what God wants us to become. Grace is the means by which God, through Jesus, gives us what He already did for us…salvation, healing, finances—-everything. It is unlimited.
You can be assured that a new experience with God will be required whenever we:
- Step into a new season, or
- We enter into a new assignment, or
- The assignment we have been in stops, or
- Our assignment has shut down or
- Comes into crisis
God will require a new experience with God, to get into the grace of God.
Our friend, Paul Cain, said, “Don’t seek an explanation, seek a new experience.” When our prayers have been filled with “Why”, it is time to meet “Jesus”. This is because Jesus will answer all the “whys” in our life. It will become, “Thus it was written, and thus it was necessary”. Everything will become part of the new that God will unfold, like the day that dawns and the morning star that rises.
Right now, there is a door open for each of us. As we advance in this sound of new grace individually, we will become aware of our gifts and callings that have been given to us in Christ Jesus, before the foundation of the world. These are our abilities in God, our services that we have been given. These are our uniqueness’ that we carry, that are vital in the expression of Jesus on the earth—-just through each of us. These will come alive and awakened. But, rather than trying to reawaken what is already there, that is eternal, I believe that God’s first step is to open a new mind, reconsider, think anew, and see anew. And there is no better to see, than Jesus. There is something yet much more to be discovered of Jesus than we know right now. Therefore, we aren’t talking about, that we have it all so let’s just do it better. We still know very little. All we want to do is “see” because if we see—then we will become. This is the joy of the New Testament.
MOSES
In Exodus 33, we see that Moses is in a crisis. Forty some days before, he entered into an encounter of heaven. He had seen the pattern of the tabernacle built. The heavenly tabernacle of the wilderness was not drawn up first in a prayer meeting on a mountain top. It was from a pattern of the heavenly tabernacle that is present in heaven today.
God said to Moses that He wanted Moses to do it exactly in the pattern that God had shown him. At the very beginning of a supernatural 40 day encounter with Moses, God said, “I want you to build this tabernacle because I want to dwell among My people.” This is the intent of all worship, all prayer, and all ministry. It is to give God access to humanity. When God touches humanity, He’s happy. He is happy to touch us in our most religious of our practices. He is not intimidated in the darkest places in the earth. He just needs faith, a yielded body, a people who begins to trust, believe and live in what Jesus did.
Prayer is the way in which any of us move from where we are to where He is. To come out of where we have been in, to what He is doing now. Moses was a prayer champion.
Moses was on a mountain. He has the pattern of the tabernacle. For forty days, he doesn’t eat or drink. He is sustained supernatural. He doesn’t get hungry. He is just in glory, beholding the movings of God. He sees how worship is conducted. He sees the Holy of Holies. He sees the Holy place and the outer tabernacle. He sees the furnishings and the priestly robes. He sees the anointing oil and is told how to collect it. He has the entire pattern because God wants to dwell with the people of Israel.
On the last day, when he has the two tablets of stone with the Ten Commandments and he was about to go down, all of a sudden God changes His mind and said, “Forget it. The people have left me. They’ve already gone back to idol worship. They have erected a golden calf that they say is Me. That is not Me!” Moses came down to see it. He stopped and kept God from saying, “Let’s start over with you. Let’s just start everything up again and anew.”
Instead he came down. They destroy the golden calf. The people that were now yielded and had committed themselves to idol worship have been killed by the Levites. It is just a mess. But nothing is as bad as this statement that God says to Moses. Perhaps it was that very day or the next day. He said, “I’m going to send an angel and I’m going to bring you to the promise land. I will fulfill what I did promise Abraham, Isaac and Jacob but I will not go with you, lest I destroy you. You are a stiff-necked rebellious people. I can’t trust Myself.”
God is smart enough to know when He should remove Himself from a situation. This is a scary thought but it’s true. God is smart enough to know when He has to remove Himself from a situation because:
Light requires
- Obedience and observance, or
- It requires judgment and death.
So, when we as a people chose to go a different direction, God in His kindness withdrew, so that His company wouldn’t create their destruction.
Moses was saying, “You’re not leaving me with two and a half million Jews that I got out of Egypt only because you showed up. I’m certainly not getting them into a promised land without You.” It is just stuck. He is in an assignment. He completed one assignment; he has a bigger assignment and God’s not there. He then takes his little tent and he puts it outside of the camp because God said, “I’m not going to be with them.” Moses replies, “If You are not going to be there, I’m going to find out where I can meet You.”
Always know, that when something is going on in your life that you cannot find God in, you can find Him somewhere else. Don’t let your circumstances shut you down. Move out of the circumstance and find God in a new place inside of yourself, before Him in a new practice, in a new way—until you can reconcile yourself and God back into the circumstance.
Literally, for about 40 days, he would go out in the tent and sit there. The glory of God would come down on the tabernacle, the pillar or the cloud, depending if it was day or night, was there. And he was there talking face to face with God. As he conversed with God over that period of time, the prayer became clear. The prayer became what we read in Exodus:
12 Then Moses said to the Lord, “See, You say to me, ‘Bring up this people.’ But You have not let me know whom You will send with me. Yet You have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found grace in My sight.’ Exodus 33:12
As we read through this part of scripture, take note how many times the word grace is mentioned in reference to Moses’ acknowledging that he had found grace, but asking that he might find new grace or more grace. Obviously, he was seeking a grace that is now for the future.
What Moses was experiencing, on a daily encounter, would have been revival anywhere.
Do you understand? He was in an Azusa Revival…and yet it would not bring a nation into their promise.
Moses’ quandary was:
- “How do I get the grace to do the assignment?”
- It was NOT: “How do I get the grace to be with You?”
See, there is an intimacy of worship. There is a place of an identity in our worship that is unchangeable no matter where we go, what we do or what is our station of life—It is son-ship.
But then there is a service that we are given that changes all the time. We have to find the grace to do the service. We cannot attach our identity to the work because the work may kill us and it may not benefit us at all. We may be less at the end of the work. So, we can’t get our identity in our work. It has to be in our worship.
On the flipside…if we are going to go do a work, we have got to gain from God the means to do the work or we will resource self. If we resource self, self is all we are going to be able to produce. It will wear us
out and frustrate us; and it will wear everyone else out as well.
Moses was now in this place of having a really wonderful prayer that was formulated, I believe, over a period days. He said, “I know that You say, and I know it’s true, that I have found grace in Your sight, and that You know me by name. So now that I have found grace in Your sight and You know me by name, show me now Your way.”
Moses is looking to the future, what is the way for now. We are here, we got here, how do we get there? His prayer opens a conversation.
Because of John 14, we know that JESUS is the way, the truth and the life. So for us, we would pray, “Show me Jesus”.
Moses then prays,
13 Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight. And consider that this nation is Your people.” Exodus 33:13
So, here, Moses is saying, “I don’t want to build from yesterday’s knowing You from yesterday’s grace. I want to know You now this way, so I can know You now and find grace in Your sight.
God then responds,
14 And He said, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” Exodus 33:14
This is huge! This is why we stop the parade. No, we’re not going anywhere until we secure this. In this moment, Moses secured the most important article—which is God. God says, “Okay, I’m going with you.” Do we understand people of prayer? The people who have had encounters with God? Do we understand that we can be in heaven, being given the pattern for God dwelling among the people, and yet, at the end of the journey, because of other people’s behavior, God says, “That’s it. I’m not dwelling with anybody”?
The very reason He called you up He is no longer willing to do. And we have got to figure out how in the world we can reconcile reality with truth and truth with reality, and where God is!
We shouldn’t be in a hurry to fix your problems and solve the situation. Be intent on thinking that this is inside of God. This big huge mess, this chaos is inside of God and Holy Spirit is all over it—but I don’t want to fix it by controlling it. I want God to come and release new light. We say, “Light, be!”
So when we are in chaos, it is a sign that we are about to enter into something brand new. The fear would be to say, “Let there be law.” Because law solves the problem quickly and concisely instead of “Let there be light.”
Light is scary because light is not controllable on our part. It is expansive. It is Jesus Christ. It is God. And once this starts to be released, it is after a season of Holy Spirit massage and surrendering. He has been moving all this chaos into perfect place, so when God says, “Let there be light,” order comes. It is not law, nor control. It’s not making other people do what they don’t want to do and telling them they have to do it in order to be accepted. It just obliterates that!
In our knowledge, we know in John’s epistle, that light is love. So, all of a sudden, an essence of love begins to permeate our life. Love chooses the cross and not control. It just releases Jesus in a dimension that we didn’t understand, neither could we have implemented.
Moses is in this moment. He then says, “If Your presence won’t go with us then lead us from here.”
We must take time when we pray to reiterate back to God what we hear Him promising us. We must value it as most important. We can’t presume that the first time we hear something we can go do it. We just don’t get that kind of permission with God. First we value it, worship, yield and give place. According to scripture, from Isaiah 6, throughout the gospels, the first thing is that we will see it, hear, understand and we will turn. We will have an experience with Jesus. Then we can bring it to others.
This however has not been my life. I have a prophetic gift, so what I see, I do. I see it then I do it. That’s stupid Christianity. Trust me, because we don’t have the authority. We don’t have the training, the yielding, the understanding, the love identity worked in. So we see, then we do.
We are a servant trying to accomplish so that we will be accepted. It is just chaos. Instead of God brooding over chaos, we are creating chaos. I have done this repeatedly. Moses repeatedly did it as well.
It is one of those moments when he is thinking, “Whoa, we’re in a big problem here. I have an assignment I can’t complete.”
He says, “Ok, My presence will go with you because I have known you and you have found grace in My sight.” And he says, “Well if Your presence doesn’t go with us, no one will know that we as a nation have found grace in Your sight. We’re distinct because of Your presence.” And God says, “Ok. I will do this.” And he says, “Well then, one more thing…show me Your glory.” And God says, “Ok, I’ll show you My glory. I will cause My goodness to pass before you and I’ll proclaim My name as I walk by. But I’ll hide you in the cleft of the rock. I’ll place My hand over your face so you do not see My face because you can’t see My face and live.”
And Moses had been seeing His face every day. So it’s another aspect of the face of God. It is the same Hebrew word. God was going to really be all of Him in this passage. He was not ready to behold Him in that magnitude.
We too, believe that we are not ready to hold God in the fullness of His glory? Right? I used to say, “I just can’t wait to see God!”
John the Beloved on the isle of Patmos, one of the closest associates Jesus ever had while He walked on the earth and after His ministry, when he saw Jesus in His glorified state, he fell like a dead man!
There is just so much of God that we can only handle it in increments. There are also times when we can never be satisfied with the amount of God we already know, because to do what we have to do, we need more God. Less us, more God.
God says, “Ok, I’m going to pass by.”
5 Now the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. 6 And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, Exodus 34:5-6
The sound of His voice! The voice of God, which is the whole idea of voice both in Hebrew and Greek is ‘to disclose.’ So, the goodness of God passing by Moses was in the sound of the voice, in the proclamation of the attributes of God, that Moses would very much need and require and understand about God. This whole expansion of You are merciful, gracious, longsuffering, abounding in goodness and truth…
7 keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.” Exodus 34:7
That used to be a paradox to me. How can we be forgiving the iniquity and sins and by no means clearing the guilty? As I meditated, waited and looked upon the Lord, years and years ago, God said, “Well, it is as simple as this: If you confess your sins, I am faithful and just to forgive you. My forgiveness has no limit. My ability to disengage iniquity, transgressions and sins is beyond imagination. But, if anyone insists upon choosing their iniquity, transgression and sin, then the effect of their choice will follow them and it will impact them.
It is like one of the beautiful scriptures in the bible that says, the way of the transgressor is hard. We can read this and think, “Wow, I don’t want to learn that one. Or we can insist on our own way, and transgress for a good season, and we come back one day and say, “You know what? This is really true because the hardship that my transgression created.” But at the same time when we meet Jesus on the end of it, we will say, “Thank God that He had a path for me to discover how impossible my choices were. And the only choice left for me again was Jesus. I am so grateful that He welcomed me, received me, loved me and forgave me. I know Him better now, through this path to discover Him.” It’s ALL good! Nothing in our life is wasted! No one is outside of the realm of that process of discovery. It’s all good.
But rather than getting pulled down …”Oh, I’ll never, I’ll never, I don’t know how…” Look for Jesus right where you are, right where you are, right in what you’re doing. He’s just a moment of discovery away. Once He comes, He comes right to where we are.
He doesn’t say, “What are you doing? Get out of here!” He says, “Here we are, let’s go. Let’s begin the journey. Let’s come alive.” Nothing is lost. All things work together for good for those who love God who are called according to His purpose. Either that’s true or it’s not. If it’s true, then everything is working together for good.
Tell me this… Riddle me this: When God begins to show Moses the tabernacle and its furnishings and the priestly ministry, and the intent and purpose, and this heavenly vision…did He know, or did He not know, that the entire nation would go into idolatry before Moses finished the vision? Of course He knew it!
Don’t you understand? The higher the vision is to recover from the gory of the sin. They are both in concert. Fear, insecurity, and the inability to trust and to wait on God will cause us to sin over and over again. And a vision that holds us high – lifts us higher – will cause us to return and return and return.
If there was no vision the people cast off their restraints. They say “Why wait, why try?” So God had to pull him high because the people were going to go way low.
So some of us have seen and heard and experienced magnitudes of God in the prayer closet only to be met with awfulness in the earth. Don’t look at your life and say, “What did I do wrong?” You probably did everything wrong. Who cares? Just get over yourself. You are not that important! You did everything wrong.
God needed to show you heaven, because heaven wants to invade the earth. And the earth doesn’t know how to welcome heaven. So somebody’s got to go before. Jesus went first. But He’s the firstborn now among many brethren.
And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped. And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight,
Moses, you are good, you are just really good. You know, God likes to be treated like He’s God and He has a choice in the matter. He likes to be deferred to and honored, recognized as a supreme being – He can do anything He wants. Even though He wants to save, He wants to be recognized that He has the right to save or not.
There’s something about honor and especially God which is the foundation of glory that opens the door of God’s heart and moves us into our future. So he says,
9 Then he said, “If now I have found grace in Your sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray, go among us, even though we are a stiff-necked people; Exodus 34:9a
Do you see that? God had already told him He was going with him. Do you understand this? Some of us have had a prayer formulating that we stopped praying before it was fully completed.
The prayer didn’t finish. He didn’t have the signing ceremony. We are still in the House of Representatives haggling over the funding. Do you understand? We have got to have the signing ceremony. When it is
settled. It’s forever there.
and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance.” Exodus 34:9b
This is so huge! This is a prayer that has not yet been prayed. It is a concept that hasn’t been fully introduced. It is now about to be embraced!
God says….And He said, Behold, I make a covenant: You are My inheritance. That sounds good. I like that. Two and a half million stubborn, stiffnecked Jews for My inheritance? Love it! Seven billion stubborn, stiffnecked people, alright? Jews are not the only stubborn, stiffnecked people. Germans are stubborn and stiffnecked. You all are. Fear will build it in you.
God loves restoration! God loves redemption. If God was to come and buy a car, He would not go to the new car dealership. He wouldd go to a junkyard and find a relic and say, “I want THAT one.” And one says, “You don’t want that one, it’s rusted and the engine doesn’t work. The tires are missing, the windshield is taken out, You don’t want that one.” He says, “Yes, I want that one, it’s beautiful!.” “What? Come one, let’s get a shiny new car from the assembly line.” And He says, “No, that’s creation. This is redemption! Watch what I do when I finish working with this one I today purchase in entirety as Mine and I have no problem rebuilding the carburetor 1,000 times! That’s your Daddy! That’s the heart of God that’s running into the yielded vessel…the one who says, “Ok. You can have me.”
So when He comes God says…before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in al the earth, nor in any nation: and all the people among with thou art shall see the work of the Lord: for it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee.
That’s an encounter. That’s a completion encounter. And yet, He gives the tenor, the sound of the covenant in the next about 10 verses. Reiterates what He had said before in the first 40 days. And He spends
an entire 40 days to say it again. We can read this in a minute but it is another 40 days!
Oh beloved we just have to not be in a hurry to go do what God’s told us to do, until we have been fully done by what God said to us. And there he is…..40 days. God’s talking. The voice of God. The glory of God. The communion of God. The covenant of God. The increase of sound.
Moses is being changed. He’s being transformed. He doesn’t know it. I mean, he knows that he has gotten what he needs and he knows better what he’s going to do and as soon as he sits down, he starts immediately to raise an offering to build a tabernacle because he knows this is important. We are going to secure means of a community of people being together in the presence of God. But when he comes down, it says:
29 Now it was so, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai (and the two tablets of the Testimony were in Moses’ hand when he came down from the mountain), that Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone while he talked with Him. 30 So when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him. Exodus 34:29-30
Something was happening to Moses that Moses was unaware of. Let it be said to any of us that is struggling through anything in our lives, that if we will appear to God, we will be changed. We will be changed far beyond what we know is being done, until somebody else recognizes it.
So, what are we trying to prove? Who are we trying to get to? What are we trying to accomplish? Let God broadcast your change. Let Him transform you. Let your neighbor say, “What’s wrong with you?” Not give them a track and tell them what’s wrong with them.
Let the heavens begin to declare the glory of the Lord. Let the glory of the Lord begin to rest upon you because you’ve been in the glory.
PRAYER
Oh God, I am so hungry for that. I am so hungry for the glory of God. Father, Father, Father we are a people that have been given so much in Jesus and yet probably have so little to show for what You’ve given us. And yet, there’s much more Lord. Let Your glory be seen. Open our eyes Lord. Open our eyes. Show us Your glory for that which You’ve called us to do – the impossible assignments, the incredible messes we’re in – show us Your glory!
Beloved, let it be your prayer. It’s the very mess you’re in that He’s going to make magnificent for Himself. He delights in restoring. Oh, praise You Jesus!
Upcoming Events
Wednesday, January 14, 2014, 7pm: Champions Prayer Gathering – Gaining the strategy to receive grace for the new season we have entered into. I am asking all our Champion Prayer People to come, or join us online, to enter into agreement for this time of approaching the throne of grace.
Saturday, January 17, 2014, 6pm: Roots Gathering with John and Una Gere. The Gere’s live in Jerusalem and have been on the leadership team of Succat Hallel (the House of prayer in Jerusalem) since its beginning.
Sunday, January 18, 2014, 9am: John and Una Gere from Jerusalem will be sharing on the changing times in Israel and the church. These are dear friends who carry peace and prophetic insight in Israel and the nations.
Sunday, 10:20am: Nations Service – Join us as we pray for Nations to come into the Lordship and kingdom of King Jesus.
Sunday, 11am: I will be sharing “The Treasure Within” How we discover how it, how it is released, and how the grace for this new season will increase.
