Your Presence, Oh God!

3/30/1988

“Moses said to the LORD, ‘You have been telling me, “Lead these people,” but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, “I know you by name and you have found favor with me.” If I have found favor in your eyes, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.’

“The LORD replied, ‘My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.’

“Then Moses said to him, ‘If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?’” (Exodus 33:12-16).

He said, “God, don’t send us anywhere, don’t ask me to do anything unless Your presence is going to go with us. If people can’t distinguish the things I’m saying and doing from all the other jargon and philosophy in the world, then don’t even send me. Strike me dead right here. I don’t want to go anywhere unless Your presence goes with me.”

“If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. What else will distinguish me and Your people from all the other people on the face of the earth? Remember this nation is Your people.”

Give God no rest until He makes Jerusalem the praise of the earth. Make His people, the Israel of God, the Church, as Paul called it, the praise of the earth.

Father, the tremendous quantity of words, even those that have gone out in the last little while are a grievance to You if we are settling for those things merely as words. The planting is nothing and the watering is nothing. Only You and the increase You give means anything in the eternal realm. Apart from You we can do absolutely nothing. Our God, we plead with You that our efforts and existence here won’t be explained simply by the natural, the predictable, or the statistical. Our God, we need Your presence to go before us and to go behind us as a rear guard. Please don’t send us anywhere, to do anything, unless You go with us, always to the very end of the age.

The “great commission” is a joke, our “churches” are a joke and our existence here is a sad, sad tale unless Your will, Your purposes, Your presence, and Your glory go before us. We ask that You would put Your words in our mouths and confirm Your words by Your life, Your presence, and Your power that follows.

We’re sick and tired and in fear and trembling like our brother Paul was, lest our words be eloquent and filled with knowledge and stinking scholarship and yet have no Spirit and no Power. Our God, we pray that You would help us to see these things and be bond slaves to Your Word and to this Truth that was spoken of. I pray that You would expose in every heart, every mind, every imagination, every hand, every eye, every ear, every lip, every place where our feet go, that You would expose all of those things that are just for us. Expose Esau’s bowl of chili, or our rock that we are tempted to strike, our ambitions, our idols, our golden calves. Our God, give us a clear vision of that golden calf in our lives that we are worshipping and calling on to let us out of Egypt. Free us from the bondage and please ruin us for anything except Your complete and full will.

God, we want to be a part of a people that the gates of hell do not prevail against any longer after 2000 years of a prevailing kingdom of darkness. We want to be a part of a people through which are shown the manifold wisdom and Glory that You have, to the principalities and powers and to the people of this world.

We want to be a part of that and ask that You would expose in our lives anything that separates us from that. We don’t want to have the Kingdom ripped away from us and given to another people that will bear its fruit and don’t just talk about it and sing about it. Our God, help us in these things and lift us up. We pray to You with everything within ourselves, even at the risk of our own lives. We pray that You would wake us up and shake out the cobwebs and break the hypnotic trance that we’re in and the religious rituals. Break us free from all those things and lead us in the path of everlasting into Your ways. We pray in the Name of Your Son Jesus, the Mighty, the Powerful, and Glorious Name. The Name at which every knee will bow.

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