It's the place of favor that catapults us into revelations of the realm of God, and who He is. In simple words, it is because He wants us to discover Him, that's why He lets us discover Him.
It happened to Moses in this way. In his first encounter with God, the mystery of God was experienced by Moses. Moses said, "who should I say sent me?" and God said, "I am who I am". For many many years I thought this was amazing, and it really is, where God declared that what man say about Him is not important. It doesn't define Him. He is who He is.
But there is always progression in relationship, and this wasn't the end for Moses. When Moses went up to the mountain in Exodus 33 to discuss with God what to do with the people God is pissed with. And Moses says this amazing thing, "if I have indeed found favor with you, then show me your ways so the I can continue to find favor with you." He said, "you said, I have found favor with you." Wow and God changes His mind about abandoning the Israelites
Then Moses says "show me your glory." And God said, "I will let all my goodness pass by you and I will proclaim My Name before you."
And then when God passes by, He declares "THE LORD, THE LORD, COMPASSIONATE AND GRACIOUS GOD, SLOW TO ANGER, ABOUNDING IN LOVE AND FAITHFULNESS, MAINTAINING LOVE TO THOUSANDS, AND FORGIVING WICKEDNESS, REBELLIOUS AND SIN."
WOW! That is God, that is what He declares about Himself. This is who He is.
We must hunger to get to the place where He reveals Himself. Every revelation of God is initiated by favor. It was like this with Daniel, when the angel of the Lord, Gabriel, came to Daniel and said, "you who are highly esteemed by God", and revealed to Him the revelation of the end times.
It is also the same with Jesus, the perfect image of the invisible God, the revelation of God in the flesh. Do we have favor? Do we all have favor? But we do know the desire of God to reveal Himself to us. That in itself is enough favor. Which is why the angels proclaimed to the shepherds, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace to men on whom His favor rests."
Favor with God is the invitation to know Him more, to know Him truely and magnificiently. We must respond in the time of favor, to experience His goodness and everlasting love. We must hunger, thirst, obssess and be desperate to know him FULLY. For this is the very desire of God, and our very inheritance, which is Christ.
Isaiah 61:2, Jesus proclaimed it when He came onto the earth. He proclaimed "the year of the Lord's favor." We are living in the season of His favor. Time is short, and revelation is accelerated, and we must take of this season of His favor.
Jeremiah says it this way in chapter 29, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future." Oh how much favor He has placed on us, that He desires for us to prosper. He determines that we prosper. And then He says "then you will seek me with all your heart, and YOU WILL FIND ME."
He favors us SO MUCH. Even angels wonder why. For God so love the world, He sent His Son down to die for us. It's not God who said that. It was the Son, Jesus. He is saying, "you have no idea how much my father loves you." And He spends so much time on earth teaching about the kind of place we have with God, that we are more important than many sparrows. That He knows us intimately, even our hairs are numbered.
That's why David said in Psalm 139, "How precious are your thoughts about me, O Lord! They cannot be numbered! They outnumber the grains of sand!"
Job 33:26 "He prays to God and finds favor with Him, he SEES GOD'S FACE, and shouts for joy!"
We must capture the opportunity made available in this season. To take the posture of humility, like Moses, and say "God show us your ways."
Suppose there was a man who lived in a kingdom, and for a long time, he was comfortable in this kingdom. But poverty began to grow in this kingdom, and worrying for the safety of his family, he took his family and fled the kingdom. After many days of travelling, he eventually reached another kingdom, where there was abundance of food he had not seen for a good portion of his life. Upon entering he was stopped by the guards at the gate and the guards brought him to see the king. Seeing the man and how impoverished his family looked, the king took pity on him, and asked the man, "what business do u have here?" The man looked at the king and then at his family. He could tell by the number of guards and the vastness of his kingdom that this king was a powerful king. In this place, there was hope for his family. What would he say to the king in order that he may stay? Will he say to the king, look I need to you to give me a good portion of your food, and a place to stay, and clothes to wear? Will he demand not to pay taxes, and demand the king to arrange things so that he can have his old lifestyle and live it comfortably? No. Instead, he will fall with his face to the ground, ask for mercy, and offer himself to the king. He will offer to submit himself to the system of this new kingdom so that he may have life.
In the same way, how can we say to God, God look u have to do things a certain way for us. Or if God is God, He should fit into our box. Instead, will we not say, God show us your ways, how your kingdom works, so that we may live in it. In fact, God wants to show us so much more. He is our father, there is family background that he wants to tell us. Like adopted kids, we have much to learn about who our father is, and what our family is like, what His kingdom is like. In the Spirit realm, there are not only angels that He wants us to experience, but He wants to show us all He has made.
John 16, Jesus tells His disciples, "Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about my Father. In that day you will ask in my name. No I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. No, the Father Himself loves you because you have loved me, and have believed that I came from God." Jesus said the time He tells us plainly about the Father is when we start to ask in His name. Are we not asking in His name? Are we not approaching the Father's throne boldly already?
That means the time is now. Now is the time that Jesus is telling us plainly about our Father. There is revelation being poured out now that is beyond our understanding. We need that revelation. We need God to come and declare His character before us.
After God declared His nature to Moses, "his face was radiant." God's glory is going to invade us in a measure we haven't seen before!
Monday, September 28, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
This blows my mind.
"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things was created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him.
He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy.
For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross.
Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now He has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation - if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.
Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of His body, which is the church. I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness - the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints.
To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." Colossians 1:15-27
"For in Christ, the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is head over every power and authority." Colossians 2:9-10
He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy.
For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross.
Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now He has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation - if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.
Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of His body, which is the church. I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness - the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints.
To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." Colossians 1:15-27
"For in Christ, the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is head over every power and authority." Colossians 2:9-10
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
12 years of education..
.. and I can't believe I said mouses instead of mice. I was probably right though, depending..
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Two more days till sleep in day.
Waking up is so much easier now that the guilt of being late is less. Now though every morning I have to make the choice between taking the train for an hour fifteen or getting my dad to fetch me. Well, that's what happens when my dad is always loitering around the house in the morning. Good for him though. I miss those days where I didn't have to worry about getting up.
I feel kind of sad transferring every email from my stanford account to my gmail account. It's like a closing an already closed chapter in my life again. Stanford webmail has been a constant companion in my studies at stanford. It really opened my eyes to how much spam mail an email account could take. now I have over 9000 unread mails, of which I keep only 3 out of every 50. Something to do inbetween the lull times at work indeed.
That's not all a sad matter. With me getting gmail, I am now officially technosavvy. Probably the next level in my growth would be to dissect my mouse (my computer mouse). It's really interesting to me that with the advent of the wireless mouse, one day u might really accidentally grab a real mouse thinking it's a computer mouse. *squeaky*
I pray Lord, that my mom would buy me wassants today.
Speaking of mouses, I remember once when I was 11 or 12, I was doing a writing project that was due the next day, and I had a mouse that was slightly slow to respond. I got so frustrated I threw the mouse on the floor, and it was destroyed like it would have been if u had shot it with a pellet gun. maybe. just then my parents came back and said, "why did u do that? now you can't finish your project." they were right. why did I do that? I don't know, except wisdom taught me in that one day the value of self control.
And of self control, I am now skipping breakfast to be able to eat lunch.
I feel kind of sad transferring every email from my stanford account to my gmail account. It's like a closing an already closed chapter in my life again. Stanford webmail has been a constant companion in my studies at stanford. It really opened my eyes to how much spam mail an email account could take. now I have over 9000 unread mails, of which I keep only 3 out of every 50. Something to do inbetween the lull times at work indeed.
That's not all a sad matter. With me getting gmail, I am now officially technosavvy. Probably the next level in my growth would be to dissect my mouse (my computer mouse). It's really interesting to me that with the advent of the wireless mouse, one day u might really accidentally grab a real mouse thinking it's a computer mouse. *squeaky*
I pray Lord, that my mom would buy me wassants today.
Speaking of mouses, I remember once when I was 11 or 12, I was doing a writing project that was due the next day, and I had a mouse that was slightly slow to respond. I got so frustrated I threw the mouse on the floor, and it was destroyed like it would have been if u had shot it with a pellet gun. maybe. just then my parents came back and said, "why did u do that? now you can't finish your project." they were right. why did I do that? I don't know, except wisdom taught me in that one day the value of self control.
And of self control, I am now skipping breakfast to be able to eat lunch.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Yo Sich!
My Spoof of Sicheng Su: Top one thought about Singapore on my first ten days here.
Warning: funny.
1. FOOD!
Warning: funny.
1. FOOD!
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