Tag: transfiguration

I’ve been silently watching while God does this thing

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Quiet for me can become a habit that’s hard to break and lately  I’ve retreated into the semi-safety of silence.

And once I choose silence, I generally like to linger there for a while.

Maybe you’ve noticed or maybe it’s slipped by unrecognized.  I’ve posted less these past few weeks and shared old devotionals rather than penning new ones.

Instead of writing, I’ve been watching with a hushed anticipation of what God will do.

But here I am today sharing a little of the story and my voice feels rusty from disuse.

This is part of our family testimony, though, and truly God has indeed been at work, so it’s time to tell you what God has done!

Our family has squeezed into our tiny home for years, adding children (4!!!) without adding bedrooms or square footage.

We’ve talked often about moving, but the timing was never right for this reason or that reason.  Maybe we weren’t sure about a job issue or where we should move to.  So we waited.

But in January, the very day I put away the Christmas decorations, I started working on Project “Move Our Family.”

It’s been a process, that’s for sure!  We have purged and organized and moved boxes into storage.  We have painted walls neutral colors, taken down family photos, and replaced flooring and trim.  We have fixed and spruced up, cleaned and donated endless bags of “extras”  to the thrift store.

We felt God’s “go” and “go”we did.

Then, like the crazy people we sometimes are, we put our house on the market just before performance week in our latest community theater production, which is pretty much as busy as busy people can get.

And it sold.

That first day we put it on the market, there were torrential rains and three couples braved the mud and the downpour to come see our house.

I told my kids, “No one who sees our house in this horrid wet is going to want to buy it.”

I was wrong.

A few days later, we had a contract on our house and we had to find a new place  to live.

And we did, that very day, and we are excited about the blessing of this new home.

It’s been this huge, potentially overwhelming, certainly life-changing adventure that has rolled along in simplicity.  One need taken care of, and then another, and then another.

I can’t say exactly why I guarded this as some sacred secret, not daring to write it down just yet, but maybe it’s  because when God is on the move you just stand back and watch.  It’s not something you’re ready to talk about right away.

The prophet Habakkuk said it this way:

*The LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him” (Habakkuk 2:20)

The glory of God defies description.

I haven’t been writing maybe, but I’ve been cleaning the oven and scrubbing showers.  I’ve been packing boxes and wiping up every spot I can find on every surface in the house.

I feel a little like Peter may have felt in Luke 9 during the transfiguration when he saw the full glory of Christ:

Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, but when they became fully awake they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33 And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said  (Luke 9:32-33 ESV).

Peter had no clue what he was saying or doing.  It didn’t make perfect sense.  He was simply overcome and thrown into restless movement because he was stirred to respond somehow!

I have been overcome, as well, and it’s hard some days to sit still.

Here’s the truth, my friends, God’s calling isn’t always like this.

You hear Him say “Go” or “Come” and it’s the beginning of a battle.  The wait is long and wearying.  Obstacles loom.  Sometimes houses take forever to sell even when God is indeed in the moving.

Don’t give up if you know God is in this.

I’ve been there.  In this past year, every blessing has felt like promised land ground I had to fight my heart out to win.  There have been disappointments and there has been discouragement.

It’s been exhausting.

But there are also times when you take one tiny step of obedience and God takes care of every detail, every need, and you’re stunned into the silence of awe at God’s gracious care and mercy.

And the silence becomes a holy place where we rest in God’s goodness and marvel at who He is and what He has done.

 

In the Splash Zone

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They wanted to be splashed.

That’s what my daughters said as we walked into the pavilion with risers, some of them marked “Splash Zone” and others unmarked, indicating the safer, dryer seating area.

There’s something about childhood that makes you love getting wet, especially when it’s a dolphin splashing her tail that’s sending a wave your way.

Sadly, most of us grow up and out of this urge to get splashed.  We start to climb a little higher to avoid the “Splash Zone,” to play it safe and mature and under control.

My kids, however, crowded into the front rows of seats with all the other excited children and joined in shouting for the dolphin to splash “over here, get me, don’t forget me!”

I may not be eager to get soaked at a dolphin show, but there’s one place where I’m climbing all over folks to sit up front and center.

I’ve been arriving early and often, staunchly guarding my seat until the largest wave of them all rises high over the edges of the pool and splashes down all over me, soaking me through so deeply that you could wring out my soul into a puddle on the ground.

I want a front row seat to God’s glory.  I want to see it, drench in it, feel it, and I don’t want to miss a single drop of His Spirit pouring down.  No playing it safe, comfortable or in control.  If the seats where I’m sitting aren’t marked with warning signs for the Splash Zone, I need to move down closer.

Others have longed for the front row seating for God’s glory.  Like Moses, of course, meeting with God on that holy mountain and asking with so much boldness I can’t even believe he dared to say it: “Show me Your glory.”

Ezekiel saw it and painted unimaginable pictures, trying to cram the glory of God into the confines of words, so unfitting and restrictive.  It was like a rainbow, like bronze, shining bright like a blazing fire.

What was it?

“It turned out to be the Glory of God!  When I saw all this, I fell to my knees, my face to the ground” (Ezekiel 1:28 MSG).

That’s what the uninhibited presence of God does, knocks us straight to the ground.  We can’t postulate and question it, hesitating: “I think this is what God is saying,” or “I think God is in this.”

When you’re sitting in the front row, you can’t mistake His glory.

Rick Warren wrote:

“What is the glory of God?  It is who God is.  It is the essence of his nature, the weight of his importance, the radiance of his splendor, the demonstration of his power, and the atmosphere of his presence.  God’s glory is the expression of his goodness and all his other intrinsic, external qualities” (The Purpose Driven Life, p. 56)

The beloved disciple John’s testimony was that of an eyewitness to this, saying, “We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son” (John 1:14 MSG).

Trampling along after Jesus, James, Peter and John probably didn’t expect much on the day of the transfiguration. They’d taken that walk with Jesus many times.  And hadn’t they just totally messed up at the feeding of the 5000, underestimating Jesus’ ability to transform a meager lunch into a feast for thousands?

They certainly didn’t seem ready to glimpse heaven that day.  Yet, it was there on the Mount of Olives where they saw him no longer as God-man, but God and God alone in all of His divinity and light.

“They saw his glory,” and Peter, the master of understatement said, “Master, it is good for us to be here” (Luke 9:32, 33 NIV).

He’s right, you know.  It may be simple and straightforward, but it is good for us to be in the presence of God’s glory.

These close-knit trio of disciples had followed along after Jesus many times, climbing up the Mount of Olives to pray, taking time out of exhausting ministry to kneel in God’s presence.

But they didn’t see Christ transfigured every time.  That was a one-time event.

That means the Mount of Olives isn’t some magic formula for a God-sighting so much as a constant discipline of our faith.  It’s got to be a daily trek for us, a meeting place with God where we linger often and stubbornly climb even when things are difficult or dreary or we’ve failed.

In Streams in the Desert, L.B. Cowman wrote: “Every Christian should have his own Mount of Olives”

Because when God reveals His glory, we want to be there.  We won’t want to have missed out that day with excuses of busyness, fatigue, or shame.

I want a front row seat in the splash zone of His glory.  Don’t you?

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.