May I never lose the wonder
Oh the wonder of Your mercies
May I sing Your hallelujahs
Hallelujah, amen
I love the way Francis speaks, and he is very powerful with his words and body language; but I want to be nitpicky for a second and note that he just pointed out the powerpoints were messed up a little during worship. I don't like that he said that, because I've been there, trying to put words on a screen, trying to make worship as flawless as possible.. And I've messed up, and its AWFUL. If it was bad in my youth group, imagine 13,000 people. I just imagine that him saying that would have hurt the tech people.. They do the best they can, and we shouldn't point out their mistakes but rather acknowledge how talented they are and how blessed we are that we can experience the environment they've been able to create for us to worship in.
Anyway.
Francis is praying for our prayer life.
Does it still blow me away that I get to come into the presence of God and talk to Him? Directly to Him. Picture that. When I pray I get to go straight into His court and talk to the King of all the universe and talk about my troubles and struggles and praises and everything, and He cares. That's incredible.
Exodus 19:9
"Behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you..."
Also in this passage God was going to meet with the people, but there was a boundary around the mountain. If anybody crosses the boundary, they are to be put to death by stoning. Don't even touch the person. Does that seem extreme? Yes, but it's because of our thinking. It's because we think meeting with God is something that's ordinary. That's common. But the people are FREAKING OUT about this. God is coming to TALK TO THEM. Man is going to meet with God, you don't just do that- we can't even look at Him. We are nothing compared to Him.
Verse 16
There were thunders and lightnings on the mountain, and everyone in the camp trembled. They stood at the foot of the mountain. The mountain trembled. The sound of the trumpet grew louder. MOSES spoke, and God answered Him in thunder.
^something so intense has become ordinary, or even burdensome. How can we say we might not have time to go up the mountain? Oh we're busy.. It's finals week... How can we NOT want to fit Him into our life?? Something as amazing as this?
"Seems like the people in your country would rather meet Moses and take a selfie with him, than walk up the mountain.. Don't they know they can walk up the mountain and be in the presence of God? Why would they pass that up?"
Whoa. When did that tent get on stage? What? I missed that.
Exodus 33
Moses would go and speak with God in the tent of meeting and the people would WATCH him.
There used to be something that would prevent us from entering the Holy of Holies... But the veil was torn. We can now enter in.
He just gave a brief run through of his testimony and the ways that he has run to God both in times of hurt and times of blessing. He's got a cool story.
1 Peter 4:7
The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober minded, for the sake of your prayers.
The one thing you want to have together when JESUS Christ returns is your prayer life. Sometimes we think of it as a means to an end (I.e. I will pray so I can have/get/do this) but, no. It's so we can have a relationship with our God. Why do we have such an inability to focus deeply in prayer? We've lost so much of our concentration because we're used to switching from one thing to another. I wonder if we could all focus deeply on God for longer than 2 seconds until we need to post a picture of our Bible on Instagram. I should hope we fight against the many distractions we have.
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