At The Feet of God

Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself. But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank. (Exodus 24:9-11)

Here are 3 sentences of scripture that jump right off the page. The elders of Israel saw God?!  The second sentence really gives validity to the first: Under his feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire... What a picture! These elders had their faces to the pavement. These men saw the God of Israel but because of their low position the most they can really describe was what was under his feet. I wonder how long they were on their faces before they "ate and drank." My guess would be at least a few hours. Perhaps, every now and then, they would slightly open their eyes to gaze on the sapphire pavement as clear as the sky and marvel at being at the feet of the God of Israel.

I like to pause and think about this. What would it be like to be laying on that sapphire pavement, knowing that above you sat the Creator God of the Universe?

Not that it even comes close, but this verse reminds me of a time I had my face in the ground for a while. I was in a room with a few hundred people and there was a man speaking about the glory of God. The presence of God fell thick in the room, the man stopped speaking, and there was silence, and then there was weeping. About 45 minutes later I opened my eyes and the first thing I noticed was.....well, the carpet. Before getting up off the ground I spent a few minutes just staring at the carpet. I think it is because I remember that carpet so vividly that I find it fascinating that these men could see God and yet the only description they give is about the ground, what was under His feet. What a glorious experience this must have been for them. A life changer.

Sadly, 8 chapters later, these elders with their mountain top experience are unable to resist the mob of Israel, and Aaron leads the way in creating the golden calf idol that the people make sacrifices to and worship. Less than 40 days after being at the feet of the God of Israel.

Does this make your stomach sick, like it does mine?

In chapter 32 it says that they became a laughingstock to their enemies.

And so began the confusing reputation Israel would have among the nations and the reputation the church would inherit a few thousand years later. People that fear God, lay at His feet, witness His wonders and glory... and then fall miserably into some sort of sin. And an unbelieving world looks on in disbelief.

It is truly confusing that this sort of thing happened, does happen, and will continue to happen. Why is it that people who 'walk with God' are still so susceptible to failure? Even the ones with great ministries and great anointing don't seem to be immune.

The unbelieving world looks at the church in all our glorious weakness, immaturity and hypocrisy and they want nothing to do with us, but it isn't about us. It has never been about us. Sadly, many look at the church and make their judgements about God based on our actions or failures (and our failure to act), rather than look at God who is the judge of us all.

This verse says it well:

"It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations, the LORD your God will drive them out before you, to accomplish what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people. Remember this and never forget how you provoked the LORD your God to anger in the desert." Deut. 9:5-7

A similar verse could be written about me. If God accomplishes anything through my life it has nothing to do with my righteousness or integrity and everything to do with Him accomplishing what He has promised to accomplish through Christ and the church.


Our salvation is not based on our righteousness or integrity it is the grace of God.

It has always been about God. His righteousness, faithfulness, glory and goodness. The good news is that He continues to be God despite our weaknesses and failures. When we fall; He remains. When we sin or miss the mark; His faithfulness and righteousness remain. We suffer loss, but He is proved right.

The beauty of the Old Testament is that God continues, unrelenting, to accomplish what he began. For a few thousand years from one generation to the next he fulfills His promise to the Israelites and brings about the Christ. And the beauty of the gospel is that a loving God purposed a salvation to mankind that did not depend on man's righteousness, integrity or strength, but rather it completely rests on the grace of God given to us in the death and life of Jesus.  Now in the Church Age he has continued to accomplish His purpose for the gospel in every nation despite our obvious shortcomings and failures as weak and broken people.

In the end, God alone will be able to take credit for all that He accomplished through His people. There will be no glory ascribed to any of us- that's for sure.

Eventually we will all be gathered together with our faces on that sapphire pavement filled with fear and awe.  As we can barely lift our eyes to get a glimpse of the feet of God, we will all be wondering how the God of the Universe, in all His holiness and splendor, wrote us into such a story. We will finally truly know that it really was always, only, ever, about Him.

Believing God When You Have Other Options

Last month I read the book Is That Really You, God? by Loren Cunningham, the founder of Youth With A Mission. (YWAM).

Other books like this one have become my favorite books to read and reread: Pullinger's Chasing the Dragon, Brother Yun's The Heavenly Man, McClung's Living on the Devil's Doorstep, & Baker's Always Enough to name a few. I love these books because they are the stories of men and women of today that dare to believe God....even when all reason was stacked against them.

When I read the accounts of the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph I walk away with the same encouragement. It is good to believe God even when it is the most unreasonable thing to do.

God makes a promise to Abraham when he is 75 years old, and Abraham believes. God promises to make Abraham into a great nation through which all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Years later he speaks again, "I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth."

11 years go by and Abraham does not even have one son. In Sarai's impatience and desperation, Ishmael is born to Hagar as another option. But the promise isn't for Ishmael.

13 years latter God renews the promise. The promise of a son.

It is so hard to believe that God would choose to make a man into a great nation and wait so long to begin.

Finally at the age of 100 Abraham and Sarah have Isaac. Abraham could have had 20 sons by now ensuring the family line but instead God gives only one to whom the promise belongs. (That seems a bit unreasonable to me).

After Sarah's death Abraham has a second wife Keturah and they have 6 sons....none of these would become heir to the promise. His son Ishmael had 12 sons....none of these grandsons would become heir to the promise. Abraham had other sons of concubines (Gen 25:6) ....none of these became heir to the promise.

For 100 years Abraham believed God's promise- that he would become a great nation, that God would establish him in the land and that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through him. He believed God when God told him that He would do this through Isaac. And in the end Abraham sends away (to the east) at least  31 sons and grandsons. And "Abraham left everything he owned to Isaac (Gen 25:5)".  At the time of Abraham's death Isaac only has two 15 year old sons. It takes a lot of faith in God to do what Abraham did. 

So often faith will ask us to send away all the other 'blessings' of God in order to lay hold of the one promise he has spoken to us. And so often when God says "give everything you own to this 'one' " It seems to be the most unreasonable thing to do.

In Loren's book he tells the story of his two very wealthy aunts that offer him a place in the family business. They try to persuade him to give up his ministry nonsense in exchange for extreme wealth and prosperity. But even extreme wealth and prosperity did not persuade him to neglect the promise and vision God had put in his heart. It wasn't an easy choice. It took faith.

And I don't think it was an easy choice for Abraham to look on Ishmael and his 12 sons and know they weren't chosen by God to inherit the promise.

And I don't think it was an easy choice for Abraham to look on the 6 sons born to him in his old age to Keturah and realize they weren't chosen by God to inherit the promise either.

It definitely makes me wonder if I am willing to "send away" or walk away from the things that may be good things, may even be blessings, but fall short of the promise God has for me. Have I allowed 31 other things to crowd out the One Thing God is asking me to give everything I have towards? Do I have the faith to believe God when doing so goes against all reason?

In the last chapter of my life will someone be able to write of me, "She gave everything she owned to Jesus...the heir of the Abrahamic covenant, through whom all the peoples on earth will be blessed... The Son of God....even when reasonable people tried to talk her out of it, AND she had other options." ???

Thought this was a fitting quote to end with (now that I get what he was saying):

Character is not formed, nor are rewards earned in the absence of options. -Bill Johnson

Adam named his wife WHAT?!!!!

The fall of man. What a story. The worst day ever in human history, and there have been some extremely bad days in human history. In chapter 3 of Genesis we have the famous story of the women being deceived by the serpent, eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and well you know the rest of the story.

Something very different stood out to me as I read this just the other day. Like many, I know the story very well, and have heard and read it for years, so I wasn't really expecting to see anything new here.

But there it was in verse 20: Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.

He named his wife what???? Eve. It means life-giver or living. Wow, really. It's as though Adam just missed what happened.

Let's back up.

This women just royally screwed up. She was deceived, she ate, they hid, God finds them, God curses the serpent, increases the pains in childbearing, and curses the ground. God is barely finished cursing the ground because of their disobedience, "...for dust you are and to dust you will return."

And then Adam names his wife Eve.

What a husband! What redemption!

He could have named her: Cursed, Mother of all the dying, Wicked Lady, The Disobedient One, Deceived, The One That Screwth Up Everthingth......but he names her LIFE GIVER! Mother of all the Living!

Can you picture this?

Women says, "Wow, did you hear what God just said?"

Adam: "yep"

Women: "I really screwed things up"

Adam: "yes, we did."

women: "You know He's going to kick us out of the Garden so we can't eat from the Tree of Life and live forever."

Adam: "yeah, that's what He said."

Women: "That means we are going to die."

Adam: pause thinking, "You know what, women? I am going to name you Mother of all the Living."

Women: "Why!? Don't you think Mother of all the dying would be more accurate."

Adam: "nope, no....Mother of all the Living, Eve."

Women: "But I just ruined everything. You heard Him. The ground is cursed, we're going to have pain and suffering, AND we have to leave the garden, AND we're going to die!"

Adam: "Women you will be known as Life Giver, you will not be know as the one that brought death. When ever people speak of this incident until the end of time you will be known as the Mother of all the Living. They won't even be able to speak about this mistake without acknowledging your identity as their Mother, as their life giver. I will make sure that your identity is forever one of LIFE and not death.
Women, you shall be named Eve!"

Eve: speechless, sobing, holding her dear husband that has just redeemed her, covered her biggest mistake and has insured that her identity and legacy will be one of life, purpose and hope.

What a beautiful story of redemption squeezed into the opening chapters of the most beautiful story of redemption ever.

Why blog thru the bible?

I have always been fascinated with the Bible. At a very young age I remember pulling out the old family Bible that my parents had. You know the kind you get as a wedding gift it's big and white and in the front there are all those pages to write down your family tree, marriage dates, baptisms, births and deaths. I couldn't read then but I would flip the pages to the middle where the colorful pictures on thick paper are and I would stare at those pictures and try and figure out to which story that belonged.

Sometime later my older sister got a book of the Psalms in big print. She was already reading, and I was jealous. She received her first Bible before me also, but I lucked out because hers was in the King James version and when I finally received my first Bible it was in the easier to read NIV.  It was under the tree Christmas of 1988, and I was 7 years old and I couldn't have been more thrilled! Reading it at that age was a challenge, but I sure did try hard.

One Sunday when I was 11 years old I was sitting in the church pew as I did most Sunday mornings and my pastor, Steve Troxel was preaching on how important the Bible is to our Christian walk. He even went as far as to say that we should make it a priority to read through the Bible at least once a year. I remember sitting there thinking, "Oh my, I have had my Bible for 4 years now and I have not read through it all the way even once...I'm way behind." So I made a commitment to read it cover to cover for the first time. It actually took me 18 months to read it. I finished it the night before I left on my first of many trips to Mexico with my youth group to build houses in the colonias outside Reynosa.

Since then I have read through the Bible many times (though not once a year), and have studied it in different ways and intensities at different times. It still remains the most fascinating of all books to me. It has really been one of the constants in my life. Even in times of doubting my faith it has continued to have that same tug on me as it did when I was 4 and 7 beckoning me to open it and flip through the pages.

So just recently I got the urge to begin again and when I came across something in the first chapters of Genesis that I had never really noticed before I got the idea to blog my way through this time. A sort of public extension of my personal journaling. Who knows, maybe others will join me on the journey and be encourage.