Make a Place to Meet with God: One-Minute Inspiration for Intimacy with God, Day 1

Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the “tent of meeting.” — Exodus 33:7a

Moses might be the greatest example from the Old Testament on how to have a deep intimacy with God. When you get a chance, read Exodus 33 and 34 to see what you speaks to your heart the most. As we begin a series from these chapters, we find that Moses had a practice of building a special place to meet with God that he called the “tent of meeting”. Every time the Israelites picked up camp and moved, he packed up the tent, carried it with him, and set it back up when they arrived at their new location.

Moses pitched the tent outside the camp, some distance away. Why did he choose to do that? It would have been much more convenient to pitch it near where he lived, but as we see from the life of Jesus a few thousand years later, if you really want to hear from God, you have to find a place that is away from the activity, commotion, and noise of other people and get to a place that it’s just you and God. Jesus was always going off late at night or early in the morning before sunrise — up mountains or into the wilderness.

That, I believe, is why Moses pitched the tent outside the camp. Too many distractions inside the camp. And maybe Moses needed a tent because he didn’t want to be watched while he was talking with God. Perhaps it made him too self-conscious. He simply wanted to meet with God, and the only way that was going to happen was to put that tent outside the camp some distance away.

What do you need to meet with God? Perhaps you already have a place where you are not distracted and have an open connection with God. But perhaps not. If not, what can you do to create a better atmosphere? I have a chair that I got just for me to sit in when I want to meet with God, located in my basement away from a lot of the activity around my home. Perhaps, like Jesus, you have to get out in nature, away from people and other distractions. Maybe these ideas are impractical and you find that if you plug in some earbuds and put on worship music, the rest of the world fades away so that you can turn your heart toward God.

Whatever setting is required, I challenge you to do like Moses did, and create that setting, so that the channels of communication get opened between you and God and you are able to sense and hear what he has to say to you.

My Word for 2022: Freshness

Have you ever heard of people getting a single word at the beginning of the year that is meant to be partly a guide and partly a prophesy? I didn’t begin the year intending to use this method, but I felt an internal prompting a few days ago, so decided to ask God if he had a word for me this year. And as God often does, he downloaded what might be thought of as a packet: an impression with a bundle of feelings and thoughts associated with it. Once the packet arrives, I have to do internal work to unpack it, so I can make sense of it, put words to it, and for that matter, so I can share it with others.

After processing it, I decided the best word to describe what God was saying to me for 2022 is “freshness”. I’m pretty sure that’s not very catchy, but after trying many, many other possibilities, that’s what seemed to resonate best.

One of the reasons for sharing my word is that others might also identify with the word and benefit from what I have understood so far — and, to the extent that it is prophetic for me, it might also be prophetic for others and for maybe even the Church. It also helps me share with others who I am as a person and what the Lord might be doing with me over the next year.

I first thought the word was “breakthrough”. And there is a real sense of breakthrough that is part of what God is saying, but breakthrough as a term speaks to me of gaining insight or having an obstacle to overcome, and that didn’t feel like it fit perfectly. My vision of “freshness” is like the arrival of Spring. Or like the sun rising and shining brightly after days of overcast and storm. It is like the warmth after a long, cold winter. It is even an aroma of freshness after a stifling staleness. Freshness. That’s what is coming.

I asked the Lord for a verse to go with this word. I got Isaiah 60:1, which in the NIV says, “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.” At a very deep level, this is in harmony with what I received from the Lord. The freshness comes by an act of God. “Your light has come… The glory of the Lord rises upon you.” To that extent, it is not something I have to do, it is something I wait expectantly for. But I am not without a part to play, because I am called to respond to this freshness of the Lord: I have to arise and shine.

My gut impression is that when the freshness arrives, it will feel very difficult not to arise and shine. The freshness is invigorating. It is something that brings great joy. It will make me want to shout and to share it with everyone.

Other words that I considered — which means they are close synonyms — include renaissance, renewal, revival, sparkle, vigor, glow, refreshing, shining, bloom, Spring.

In the end, freshness is the best fit, and I can’t wait!

Return to Your First Love

The glorified Jesus sent word to the church in Ephesus: “I have this against you, that you have left your first love” (Revelations 2:4, NASB). And I wonder whether Jesus is saying the same thing to us today? Have we who follow Jesus lost our passion and devotion to him?

While I could try to build a case proving the Church in general has, that is not my goal. My goal is to help each of us recognize whether we as individuals have a problem, and if so, find ways to change, so that we might return to our First Love, Jesus.

I am writing to you as one who is a sojourner on the way, not one who has arrived. I have lost much of the passion I once had for Jesus. I can think back to earlier times when my focus was on him. I would spend lots of time just talking and listening to him, and I would pour out my heart in worship whenever I could. I am growing again in these areas. It is almost like I am starting over in faith. How about you? Can you think back to times when your passion for Jesus was much more than it is now? Would you say that your passion for Jesus surpasses all other passions?

While he was on the earth, Jesus taught us a couple things With the production of too much More Info cialis without prescription of anything can make you obese and kill your sex drive badly. In viagra order shop some cases, the pregnant women have healthy condition in the first place, as action might always equal intense pleasure. There exists a viagra brand number of onshore and international wind farms in the united kingdom with some of those are: Colon cancer Constipation Acidity The right defecation posture, for which the human body is designed, is only squatting. However, those with both physical cheap levitra and mental health. that can help us renew our passion now. First, he said to us, “’Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’” (Matthew 6:21, NASB). And he went on to be more specific: “’No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other’” (Matthew 6:24, NASB). He gave the example of not being able to serve both God and money. But the other master besides God could be anything, and with our society becoming more combative in the past decade or two, it seems to me that many of us express a lot more passion about politics than we do toward Jesus. Whatever our problem area is, if we can identify things that we are more passionate about than Jesus, we can ask ourselves whether we are serving a master other than Jesus. And if we find that we are, then we can change.

In the Parable of the Sower (really, a parable of soils), Jesus explains that some people are like the seed sown “’among the thorns; these are the ones who have heard the word, but the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things enter and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful’” (Mark 4:18-19, NASB). That is, distraction from other things can cause us to lose focus on him as our First Love. Many of us have too much going on in our lives. And while some of those things are essential, many of them are not, though we act as though they were. Carving out margin is key to restoring our First Love.

Jesus tells us that if we would simply come to him and learn to walk with him, he will provide rest from the frenetic pace of life (Matthew 11:28-30). Returning to our First Love requires creating time to fan that love into flame by giving our hearts to him anew and receiving a fresh revelation of how much he loves us. My prayer for us is found in the words of singer Keith Green in his song “Oh, Lord You’re Beautiful”, in the final verse which begins, “Oh Lord, please light the fire, that once burned bright and clear”.

A Call for a Return to an Ethic of Sexual Purity in the Church

Summary: God cares a great deal about sexual purity, but in the last decade or two, the standards for sexual purity have eroded in the American church. This post reviews what the Bible says on the topic, then urges people to change. The call goes out to those who love God and are in sexually impure relationships and to those who are leaders and influencers in the church and who have been tacitly approving of those practices by not lovingly teaching and mentoring in this area.

I want to begin by simply letting the Word of God speak to us about sexual purity. At the end, I will add some thoughts.

“The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality… and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:19-21, NIV).

“Sexual immorality… must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints… For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure… has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not become partners with them” (Ephesians 5:3,5-7, ESV).

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Holiness is Devotion to God

Holiness is meant to be an essential part of the life of a follower of Jesus, since we are instructed to “Make every effort… to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14, NIV). Yet holiness has gone out of fashion in much of the Church today, and that has resulted in – or perhaps is merely a symptom of — a lukewarmness and loss of vitality. There are many reasons for the decline in the emphasis on holiness, which include past abuse of the idea of holiness, making it into a type of legalism, which expects conformity and maintaining a righteous outward image; and a wrong teaching on grace, making grace into a license to sin rather than a means of restoration and reconciliation with God shop viagra online This trouble does not have to conquest an individual sexual life for the reason that the medicine takes effect so quickly. Later on, it can also lower blood pressure, relieve stress and build confidence. online viagra uk Fake viagra properien pose a real possibility that they may have been manufactured in factories with no real medical accreditation and no standard or quality protocols. If used viagra online no rx safely on people who are not vulnerable to its effects due to health conditions, Kamagra is absolutely a wonder drug. as we grow in faith.

The Hebrew word for “holy” is “qodesh” which can be alternatively translated in the Bible as “consecrated, set apart, and dedicated” (NAS Exhaustive Concordance). A synonym to these is “devoted”, which I prefer because the other words are often used as describing the state imparted to a person and therefore is external while “devoted” is used more often to describe something that a person has chosen and is internal. Jesus made fun of the external holiness of religious leaders, calling them “whitewashed tombs” (Matthew 23:27) and he extended what the law taught on murder and adultery to internal attitudes that could eventually produce the prohibited behaviors – anger and lust (Matthew 5:21-30).

Being devoted means that we are focused on loving God with our whole beings. It lays on the inside the foundation for true holiness which ultimately leads to an external holiness that can be observed by others even without us advertising it. It is not a difficult way of life, but it is different than many are taught. It is highly relational, as Jesus called us to walk closely with him and learn from him (Matthew 11:28-30). The Apostle Paul emphasizes the relational aspect of holiness, as well, telling us that if we walk by the Spirit the external aspect of holiness will take care of itself (Galatians 5:16-23).

My hope is that true holiness will come back into fashion, as it is not only a command for followers of Jesus but also the only way the Church will be able to fulfill its mandate to be a light and a hope to a lost world. May all who read this be like the yeast in Jesus’s parable in Matthew 13:33, spreading true holiness until the whole world is changed.

Single-hearted devotion, the devil’s worst nightmare

by Pastor Tim Thomas

“I’m afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s clever lies, your thoughts may be corrupted and you may lose your single-hearted devotion and pure love for Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:3 TPT).

In context, the Apostle Paul is writing to the Corinthians about how false teaching was corrupting the truth that they learned from him. However, in making that point, he tosses out two ideas to support his point that are like hidden treasure for us right now.

First, we learn that a life of faith is meant to exhibit “single-hearted devotion and pure love for Christ”. Paul considers that to be the standard for a life of faith. Single-hearted means your heart is focused on one thing, and in this case, that “thing” is Jesus. More precisely, he is saying that we are to live in such a way that our every thought, word, and deed is to spring from a deep, pure, and passionate love for Christ. It is a high standard, and yet a standard worthy of one who has shown such an incredible love for each of us.

Can we not spur one another on to live by such a standard? Imagine how revived the Church would be if it were filled with folks that had a laser-like focus on pouring out their love for Christ in every place and in every moment! Such devotion could change not only the atmosphere in the place one lives, it could change the whole world!

The second treasure Paul reveals to us is that the devil aims to use his clever lies to infect our minds and cause us to lose our single-hearted devotion to Christ. If the devil is going to focus his energy on corrupting our minds so that we cannot focus on continuously pouring out love for Christ, think how important it must be for us to do exactly that. The devil is afraid of what would happen if we succeed!
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How to Look Like Jesus without Growing a Beard (2 Corinthians 3:18)

by Pastor Tim Thomas

We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. –2 Corinthians 3:18 (NASB)

I don’t know about you, but I want people to look at me and see Jesus. I want them to see me and recognize the very presence of God, not because of who I am, but because of how I’ve been changed by God. This verse has the key to being transformed, and the way to be transformed is very different than most of us have been taught.

This chapter in Second Corinthians began talking about the glory that shone from Moses’s face and how with a better covenant we believers now have a greater glory than Moses had. And in this verse, it seems that the idea is picked up once again, this time suggesting that the way that glory is increased – and the way that we are transformed into the image of Christ – is through beholding the glory of the Lord.

Beholding means to gaze upon something or someone, and this passage talks about gazing upon the glory of the Lord. Recall that when Moses reflected the glory of the Lord, his face glowed. If glory was revealed from Moses’s face, it seems reasonable to think that the glory is revealed from the Lord’s face. This verse seems to be the New Testament version of Psalms 27:8, where we are invited here not just to seek God’s face but to gaze upon God’s face.
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This verse seems to say that if we follow a strategy of regularly spending time in God’s presence, gazing upon his face, people will be able to see Christ in us as we are transformed by his glory. The passage talks about the transformation being from glory to glory, which implies a progressive transformation as we pursue his face. That is, the effect is cumulative, and the more times we behold Him, the more we are transformed.

Should we take this idea of gazing upon the face of God literally or metaphorically? I think most people take it metaphorically, but that might have a lot to do with the fact that not many people know how to engage their spiritual senses to interact with God. You “hear” God speak to you in your spirit. You can also “see” God in your spirit. We believers have the Holy Spirit within us, so he can help us develop these abilities. I find it easier to hear in the Spirit than to see in the Spirit, but as I thought about it recently, some of the most significant events in my life came about because I could see in the Spirit as well. If you are open to it, you can experiment with this. Ask God to help you!

P.S. Mark and Patti Virkler write about learning to see spiritually in their book “Dialog with God” if you are interested in learning about this in more detail.

This was first posted on the sister website, devotedheart.org.

Get in the Dance (Ephesians 3:19)

by Pastor Tim Thomas

May you… know [practically, through personal experience] the love of Christ which far surpasses [mere] knowledge [without experience], that you may be filled up… to all the fullness of God [so that you may have the richest experience of God’s presence in your lives, completely filled and flooded with God Himself]. — Ephesians 3:19 (AMPL)

This is my favorite verse in the Bible. The verse implies that if you get a deeper revelation of how incredibly in love with you that God is, it will open up the door for you to be totally transformed by God. That revelation of love will open up the door for you to have such an awareness of God’s presence with you, and that presence will spill over to touch the lives of others.

While this passage doesn’t address how this will all come about, I would like to suggest how I think it works. Jesus once said that whoever is forgiven little loves little, but whoever is forgiven much loves much (Luke 7). I would like to suggest something similar from this passage: whoever is loved much loves much, and whoever is loved just a little, loves just a little. More truthfully, it is not simply a matter of how much one is loved, but how much one believes he is loved. We don’t have the capacity to love God greatly without first understanding how greatly God loves us. And we can’t respond deeply to God’s love if we only see it abstractly (i.e., God loving humanity, rather than God knowing me and loving me for who I am). But a revelation of God’s specific love for me – well that’s life changing!

With growing population of aging people and life becoming full of risks, demands of physiotherapy assistants and occupational check this link purchase levitra professionals are on a rise. discount for cialis It is the only condition to use this medication. There’s something for the kids too as incorporated in to the fortnight is the Gobbldeebook Children’s Festival. cialis online cheap The subsequent “bowstring” effect causes a pronounced bend in the penis (called corpora cavernosa) normally fill with blood during an erection, such a state is called Pseudo sclerosis of cavernous tissue which leads to viagra online australia the replacement of electrolytes, the glycogen used in extensive aerobic and anaerobic exercise and protein replacement, particularly where catabolism has occurred. A revelation of how much God loves me opens up the pathway for me to draw close to God – for me to come right into God’s very presence. And it is in God’s very presence that we are able to receive an ever-deepening revelation of how much we are loved. This is a positive feedback loop. In God’s presence, I get a revelation of how much He loves me, and once I have an increased level of understanding how much He loves me, I can draw closer to Him, because His love for me overcomes the obstacles that I previously face in drawing close.

Unfortunately, a positive feedback loop can lock us out unless something initiates the loop. That is why we pray for one another – and for ourselves – to get a revelation of God’s love. And why, ultimately, it is God Himself who must act to initiate this feedback loop. But it is up to us to respond to the revelation that God gives, and to keep the positive feedback loop going. It is like an eternal dance where God moves, and we follow.

Let’s get in the dance! Let’s ask God to give us a deeper revelation of his love for us, and let’s do our best to draw close to Him. Over time, we will become marinated in His Spirit, taking on His likeness as we continue in this path.

This was first posted on the sister website, devotedheart.org.

I Will Seek Your Face! (Psalms 27:8)

by Pastor Tim Thomas

You have said, “Seek my face.” My heart says to you, “Your face, Lord, do I seek.” — Psalms 27:8 (ESV)

Something leaps in me when I read how the heart responds! In this passage, the first thing we see is the Psalmist acknowledging that the idea of seeking God’s face originated not with us but with God. God extends the invitation to all, but who will hear the cry of His heart and respond? My observation has been that while many acknowledge God, few take time to wait for His presence and to listen to His voice.

Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “’Seek and keep on seeking and you will find’” (Matthew 7:7, AMPL), which echoes the word of the prophet Jeremiah to the Israelites, “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13, ESV). God wants to be found, and even guarantees our success, as long as we don’t give up.

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In Psalm 27, however, we see the reply of a willing soul, who responds from the depth of his or her being — from the heart. And from the heart arises the cry, “I am seeking, and will continue to seek until I find.” After such a pledge, the Psalmist struggles with some doubt, but eventually concludes that he will be successful, if he doesn’t give up: “I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” (Psalms 27:13-14, ESV).

Let us join with the Psalmist in his pursuit, not giving up until we have seen the face of God!

This was first posted on the sister website, devotedheart.org.

An Expression of Sin in Our Culture is to Judge Others

I read an op-ed this week by one of my favorite opinion writers, David Brooks of the New York Times. He was talking about how many people thought that becoming unmoored from religion would lead to a less judgmental society. Yet the opposite seems to be true — people are getting more concerned about morality rather than less — just that there is no longer a standard, agreed-upon code that the Judeo-Christian ethic once provided. And so the conflict level has risen as people seem to be debating from a multitude of standards, unable to find resolution since the standards differ.

David goes off in a direction with his article that I don’t want to focus on here, but his identification of the problem I thought was very insightful and spurred a thought or two of my own.

Why didn’t society settle out at a “you do you and I’ll do me” framework? I suppose that at some level of interaction, we did. But the problem is that this only can work in the personal sphere (if it can work at all), and even in that sphere seems to result in distant relationships because people relating on this basis have trouble doing anything together except when it is in each person’s self-interest. Fundamentally, intimacy is about doing things for the sake of the other person, out of love.

However, in the public and political sphere, to accomplish anything at all there has to be a way to make joint decisions since there are limited resources and since the biggest issues require some kind of agreement as to how we are going to do things.
Continue reading “An Expression of Sin in Our Culture is to Judge Others”

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