This
morning I was blessed with a couple of lessons that came in a certain order. They
immediately connected with things that were in my heart, things requiring the
help and ministry of my heavenly Father. Both these lessons ministered to me in
such ways that I hope they will minister to you as well.
Lesson One: The supremacy of lessons ordered
by God in the midst of events ordered by God
Today’s
first lesson was of the “after this I saw”
variety.[1]
There is an order to the way we experience lessons that gives glory to the
grace and wisdom of God in showing us things the way we need to learn them. Scripture
differentiates between references to things “that
are to take place after this,”[2]
and things that are seen in an “after
this I saw” order of revelations.
When
Daniel wrote about “what would be after
this,”[3]he
spoke about something that would take place in the future, after whatever was
taking place at the time. When he wrote, “After
this I looked, and behold,”[4]he
was indicating the order in which he saw something revealed to him,
irrespective of the order that it would take place.
When
John was told at the beginning of his encounter with Jesus Christ on the Island
of Patmos, “Write therefore the things
that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this,”[5] we
can expect to read about things that fit into the past, present, and future
according to the “times or seasons that
the Father has fixed by his own authority”.[6]
However,
when John identified, “After this I
looked, and behold,”[7] he
was only referring to the order in which he saw one revelation in relation to
another. In fact, after the one reference to the order in which things take
place, all the other references to “after
this” speak of the order in which John received his revelations,
irrespective of the order in which they would unfold throughout history.
The
point for me is that it is more important to see the order in which God shows
us things than it is to know the order in which they take place. It is significant
why we have experiences of something in a Scripture coming to our attention on
a certain day when we had read that same Scripture many other times in our lives
without noticing that word or phrase. It is time to see it, even if it doesn’t
tell us one little thing about the timing of prophetic events.
Lesson Two: The Supremacy of faith in the
midst of failure
Today’s
second lesson was that God’s grace covers over[8] so
much sin in our lives that God speaks of us as what we are through faith, not
what we are through failure. We see this clearly in the life of men like Moses.
I had begun my morning wondering what God would have done with Moses at forty
years of age if Moses hadn’t killed the Egyptian slaver-driver and then gone
into hiding. I face many disappointments in life where I wonder whether I am
simply going through discipline because of some point along the way where I
chose something sarky instead of something the Spirit was doing.
However,
when I see the way God speaks of Moses after he killed the Egyptian, or David
after his sin with Bathsheba, or Peter after denying Jesus three times, or Paul
after approving of Stephen’s martyrdom, I am comforted that God’s grace abounds
in the moment.[9]
Instead of fishing for forgiven sins, I must join God’s immediate work by
faith, without getting bogged down by the regrets of the past.[10] Here
is the way God gives us his perspective of Moses’ life:
By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's
daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to
enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered
the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was
looking to the reward.[11]
God did not reject Moses at
forty years old because he killed the Egyptian slave-driver, but spoke to him
at eighty years old because it was time for Moses to stand up to the Pharaoh of
Egypt and his whole army of soldiers.[12] Moses
was not chosen because he had strengths that no one else had, but because it
was God doing the choosing. Moses most certainly did not desire the assignment,
but it was not dependent on Moses. It was the “I AM” who called Moses who would accomplish what he was called to
do.[13]
There
is some divine reason that I saw things in this order today, and I saw today’s
things today instead of yesterday. There is something going on in the world
today that is so in line with the times and seasons the Father has set by his
own authority that I cannot possibly fathom. It requires me to have in mind
that life from my child-perspective is about the order in which God teaches me
things, not the order in which things take place around me. This, of course, requires
me to have the freedom to live by faith rather than by failure.
Realizing
that God will speak to us in a certain order so that we are ready for things he
is doing in a certain order enables us to be ready for people who come into our
lives, and people who go away. There was a season for Moses to rest in the back
eddies of the Nile River, in a basket sealed with pitch, in order to be saved
by the daughter of the Pharaoh who had ordered that all male Jewish babies be
killed.[14]
There was a season for Moses to grow up in the Pharaoh’s household, cared for
and protected by the riches of the King who had called for his infant
execution.
There
was a season when Moses realized that it was better to associate with the
people of God in suffering, than with the leaders of Egypt in the pleasures of
sin. There was a time for Moses to shepherd flocks and herds in the wilderness
as God prepared him to shepherd a nation of sheep and goats out of their
Egyptian slavery.
And
then there was a time for God to speak in a burning bush. There was a time when
God spoke in the next way, and it connected Moses to the next thing God was
doing. There was a time when the next thing God said was the next thing he did.
However, joining the next work of God came by hearing the voice of God the next
time it came. Hearing the “and then God
said,” came before the “and then God
did”.
Long
ago I was captivated by this little revelation from the prophet Amos, “For
the Lord God does nothing without
revealing his secret to his servants the prophets.”[15] What I have learned since then is that
there is an order in which God reveals his secrets, and there is an order in
which God does the things he revealed. There are many times when the order of
the revelations do not match the order of the events. It is only important that
we keep in step with the Spirit. He will make sure we are in step with the
circumstances of God.
I
have often experienced God take me through the “after this I saw” kind of time in his word in the morning only to
see something unfold during the day, or the week, that I was ready to face, or
join, simply because of where God had led me into the mind of Christ. This
morning’s time in the word has me looking to see the next thing God is doing
around me. There is a childlike wonder looking out from the depths of my soul,
curious as to what God has in mind.
Because
God wants me clearly thinking of who I am by faith rather than who I am by failure,
I find myself focused on things I could do through faith, not things I would
fail to do because I see myself as a failure. While my words may fail to
express how this feels, it is a huge thing for me to see what a morning’s time
with God has done to change my perspective so that even my failures to be or
act by faith in the past do not need to sabotage my willingness to live by
faith today.
© 2014 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~
in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright ©
2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)
[1] Revelation 7:1
[2] Revelation 1:19
[3] Daniel 2:29
[4] Daniel 7:6
[5] Revelation 1:19
[6] Acts 1:7
[7] Revelation 4:1
[8] Psalm 32:1 (while
David rejoiced at the way God covers sin with forgiveness, Psalm 32:5 makes
clear that he did not rely on himself to cover up his sin)
[9] Romans 5:20-21
[10] There are times when
it is God’s immediate work to deal with things from the past, but this was not
his focus for me today.
[11] Hebrews 11:24-26
[12] Beginning in Exodus 3
[13] Exodus 3:14
[14] Exodus 2:1-10
[15] Amos 3:7
No comments:
Post a Comment