Wednesday 23 Jul 2014

July 23: Exodus 33:18-23

Key Verse: Exodus 33:18
And he said, “Please, show me Your glory.”

Devotion:
When Moses had led the people of Israel out of Egypt and into the desert he was struggling a bit with following a God whom he could not see. Moses asked God straight “Please let me see you”… I wonder how many times God wants us to be able to see Him just so that we would no longer have any doubts; just one glimpse so that we would not have to question our beliefs. But that is not possible for us because we are sinners and unclean; we would not be able to survive just one glimpse of God who is perfectly Holy and clean!

And yet Christ came forward as a human so that we could see Him. Christ lowered Himself to human form so that we would be able to believe once and for all… yet so many people chose to not believe what they had seen because it would mean them having to give up their habits and follow Christ! There lies the problem we have as humans, we build up habits and certain ways of doing things and we do not want to let go of those ways. Habits are hard work to make but very very difficult to stop or break!

God knew we would have problems and He also knew that we would still have doubts if we saw the truth with our own eyes! We get to the stage where we see something and then we question it because we only get to see it once. Basically we are looking for ways in which others can show us the truth so that we don’t have to do any of the hard stuff like believing! Isn’t it so much easier to just follow what someone else has written down or said that we should do; that way we don’t have to think too hard!

But God wants each of us to think about our own ways, not the failings of others, but how we do things and why we do them. If we can come to terms with how we live and how we can move forward with Christ in our lives then we have come a long way to really trusting in God. We don’t have to have the physical proof. We don’t have to have it all written down as a script. Yes those things make it easier. But faith is not a simply journey. Faith is trusting wholly in our unseen God!

Points to Ponder:
Do you have to see something to believe it?

Do you really have to die before you believe?