This is the year of seeing through fixed and focused frames. The Lord illustrated to me the problem many of us have not adequately seeing how God is diagnosing our issues but instead hiding behind our abilities to almost plaster over long standing issues in simply replacing one broken thing with a seemingly viable replacement.
The illustration came from me continually buying or using myriads of glasses that had been bought for me, rather than going to check which lens and prescription I actually needed. It was my immediate need that preceded the patience required to inquire and investigate for the best. This was my mode and it became my normal!
In spiritual terms we’ve stopped going to the Author Himself to fully understand the changes within us and around us. There’s a great need to go to Him to get our eyes tested so there’s clarity, for short and long vision. As the Lord started to unfold this to me I asked for a scripture to accompany and He duly have me Exodus 20:20.
“And Moses said to the people, “Do not fear; for God has come to test you, and that His fear may be before you, so that you may not sin.” So the people stood afar off, but Moses drew near the thick darkness where God was” (Exodus 20:20-21).
This was captured after Moses had come down with the two tablet stones of God’s holy commandments. The Lord was given in essence the prescription to see, in the form of the commandments. To get clarity of the prescription, the people went to Moses to vicariously seek understanding on their behalf, as He would approach the presence. It shouldn’t be the case.
The prescription was in actual fact an invitation for depth in communion. The prescription was there to ensure that each would ‘work out their salvation with fear and trembling’ by pursuing the presence which is love that is built on vulnerability before the Lord.
Moses was a friend of God so would always seek and pursue, but God wanted to be Friend and Lover to all so they could also see and inherit, but they settled for the normal and what is known, what is easy and what doesn’t cost.
True love and relationship will cost something. What it is will always be revealed in the pursuit. What we must do is remove any and every type and kind of ‘middle men’ which invariably would ensure what we hear and see is filtered not the original. Too many hands touching what we see will invariably compromise how we see.
Moses was a man also after God’s own heart and always would go beyond the prescription to the Healer Himself. This was always the intention of God’s heart for the children of God in Moses’ time, throughout history and it certainly is for us in 2020. The conjunction in ‘but’ being written before Moses choosing to seek presence highlights the fact that it was a choice for the people not to seek for themselves but Moses did.
Again in the previous chapter in verse 17, “Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain.” They were brought near and given access for communion with the Creator of heaven and earth yet they chose for distance, so they could maybe hide, conceal and vicarious worship through Moses.
This cannot be our disposition this year! We need to break the broken and compensatory frames and glasses and go for a thorough precisional eye test, that is intimacy that is evidenced by brokenness. The need for this year and decade for this eye test is an acute one.
It shall heal and ensure we don’t make immature mistakes with misalignment, mistakes with presumptions, mistakes with our speech and actions. We can’t afford for this in this period. The rubber has indeed hit the road as our many man made prescriptions haven’t worked.
Apostle Peter’s exhortation found in his second epistle is apt for this year as he says, ‘For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins’ (1:9). Shortsightedness and blindness are byproduct of barrenness and unfruitfulness our our knowledge of God and His ways in our day! We cannot afford for these to haunt and control our narrative in 2020!
This is the year of the roaring lion! Those that know their God will do exploits! It’ll only happen and be sustained from PRESENCE! The ability to navigate the difficulties, distractions and challenge to get to PRESENCE, is what will be an integral ingredient in ensuring PRESENCE always works for you this year as we get the keys and clarity to inherit and occupy until He comes in every sphere the ekklesia needs to be as a cooperate body and as individuals. Another byproduct of this is us knowing instinctively what to pray for and seeing answers littered all around us.
