Jul 19 - SPEAKING TO GOD - Numbers 7:89

When Moses went

into the tent of meeting

to speak with the Lord,

he would hear the voice

speaking to him

from above the mercy seat 

that was on the ark

of the covenant from

between the two cherubim

Numbers 7:89

 

God gave Moses a specific place to meet with him.

 

It was in the Tabernacle. It was within a specific section of the tent of meeting, the holy of holies. It was at a specific place within that holy of holies. God would come down upon his earthly through – the mercy seat between the two cherubim on top of the ark of covenant. And from there, God would speak to Moses.

 

Now, if we read this wrong, we’ll say something like, “That was a special exception in the history of the world, and since Indiana Jones hasn’t found a lost ark of the covenant for me; then I should never really expect to hear God’s voice.”

 

First, yes, it was special exception in this history of the world. No one talked to God exactly like Moses did.

 

Nevertheless, the Bible isn’t a book of special exceptions. The Bible is a book about the heart and intentions of God. God wants to communicate with his people. (Our sin keeps getting in the way of that. It stops up our ears. It tiptoes us step-by-step away from his presence. Nevertheless, deep communication is God’s heart and intention.) So, yes … God wants to communicate with his people, and more specifically, he wants to communicate with you!  

 

And so my question is: Where’s that place for you where God comes to sit with you … and more importantly (because we’re the problem in this), where is the place where you go daily to sit with him?

 

I remember the story of one of history’s famous reformers (it might have been the Wesley brothers) whose mother could only find one place in her house filled with like twenty kids to have a quiet place with God. She’d sit in the middle of the house and pull her apron over her head (and dare any of her kids to interrupt her time with God). Without God’s blessing, help, and peace (see yesterday’s devotion), she wasn’t much fun to be around (and the kids soon learned: Give mom the blessing of time with God!).

 

I doubt you have twenty kids. And I’ll bet your home is bigger than an 18^th century cottage. You could find a space. (Scripture even suggests going into your closet.) But make that your regular mercy seat.

 

I watch my wife do this. (It’s her back porch with her coffee in her hand, her Bible in her lap, and her dogs at her feet.) And it’s beautiful.

 

My spot is far less beautiful. (But it works for me.) It’s at a computer keyboard. I’m a doer not a sitter, I’m a servant not a contemplative. I’d rather write devotions (for you, letting you listen in), than just sit and … wait. And yet it works for me (… not perfectly – because I’m a sinner. But …)

 

I heard meditation defined recently as “thinking intentionally in the presence of God.” That’s what writing is for me. I take God’s word. I turn it in my head and in my heart. I hear God’s speak. And then I meditate – What does it mean in a modern American context? How can we apply that to life? And it shapes me. Day after day it aligns me closer and closer to God’s purposes.

 

My guess is that you’re imperfect too. Yet the point is this: Where is your mercy seat? Where do you go intentionally, day after day, to meet God?

 

In Christ’s Love,

a guy who is currently

thinking intentionally

in the presence of God