Saturday, August 30, 2014

Seeing God

Monday, September 1, 2014
God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God.  Matthew 5:8 (NLT)
Many years before Jesus preached His famous Sermon on the Mount, Moses had led the children of Israel to the foot of the mountain of God.  They waited while Moses hiked up that hill to receive the law of God (the Ten Commandments). 
All alone, Moses communed with God; but he couldn't see God!  He plead; Let me see you, God.  But the Lord said, No; no human can look upon the face of God and live.  You couldn't take it, Moses.  But stand over there in the cleft of that rock; I'll pass by while you cover your eyes.  When I've passed you'll catch a glimpse of my glory.
What Moses wanted we all want; we express it differently.  We say we want to know the secrets of life or we want to know our destiny.  Scientists work to uncover the mystery of our beginnings.  It all comes down to the inner desire of human beings to see God; we want to know our Creator.  We want to know what He is like; we want to know what makes us part of Him. 
There is something inside all of us that needs assurance that all is well between the God who made us, and our own souls.  Man has always sought this, and nothing but a genuine encounter with God will satisfy this need.  That’s why Moses went to the burning bush.  This is why the account of Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration endures to this day.  The praise of man, perfect health and wealth, or any power in the universe will not take the place of really knowing God.
Many hundreds of years after Moses, Jesus and His disciples gathered on the mountain.  He pointed the way to this encounter with God. 
BUT!  
There was something offered that day for which nobody bargained; when Jesus said, see God, His word meant much more than just a casual sighting.  Jesus said, optomai, which means to gaze, wide-eyed, intensely, comprehending.  Jesus told the disciples on that mountain that they would see and understand and become friends with God. 
Our Lord promised seeing God this way and He revealed the way.  He said seeing, or knowing God follows cleansing of the heart.  In Greek “heart” is kardia; in Latin cor, meaning center.   Jesus taught that a totally cleansed center of a person's being was the way to an encounter with God.
J.B. Phillips translates this beatitude:  Happy are the utterly sincere, for they will see God.  The Greeks used this word to describe wine that had been filtered to remove impurities; unadulterated. 
Have you ever felt that clean?  
The apostle John was at the Mount of Transfiguration that day.  Later, after the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Jesus – after decades of reflection and walking with Christ in success and failure, weakness and strength, John wrote down the key to it all when it comes to seeing God. 
But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.  1 John 1:9 (NLT)
This isn’t just how to feel clean; this is what makes you every bit clean before God.  To open your life to God, open your “heart” and all that you are at the center of everything that makes you who you are, is to make the life of God open to your heart.  And that’s what your heart has been longing-for. 
For You, Today…
Have you seen God lately?
That mountain isn’t far away.  In fact it’s anywhere you are, when, in your heart you take up the kneeling position towards God. 
His cleansing isn’t far away, or at the end of some great quest; it is as near as your heart and lips.
The next step isn’t a step at all…just kneel before Him; offer Him your heart. 

Give Him you!

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