Moses in Exodus 33 cries out to God: “If your presence doesn’t go with us, do not bring us up fro here.” He recognized that if God did not move in his midst, he and the entire people that he was leading was as good as dead.
I have that recognition this morning in my life.
Life sucks when God is not moving in my life. It sucks because the entire premise of being a Christian is that we are wholly dependent on the reality that there is a God who dwells in our midst. And if, in the evidence of my life, his presence is not made clear, then an outsider has the right to say that Christianity is a crock, a self-help philosophy for the weak.
But God is not advertised as such in his Word!
He is God who is portrayed as awesome and near at the same time. All the praises that the Psalms sing of him are true. All the deeds recorded of him in the Pentateuch are trustworthy. All the miracles displayed by him in Acts are unvarnished. He is, as recorded in our scriptures, a God who is great and near to those who call upon him.
And if that activity is absent from my life, then I do not know my God. For his activity is my breath; his life is my life; his movement is my sustenance, and without Him I am nothing, yet with Him I am everything. For to live is Christ and to die is gain.
And if what Paul said is true, then the absence of the move of God in my life is like death.
God, come breathe and move in my life! Let those who know you praise you because of your hand through my life, and let those who don’t know you come be bewildered because your grace is on my life! Let the activity of the Holy Spirit increase and increase and overflow and overwhelm and govern my body, mind, and soul.
For if you don’t move in my life, I might as well be a dead man.
