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Dying To See His Glory
"O LORD! SHOW ME YOUR GLORY!" Have you prayed this before? I have! Ever since I went for my first silent retreat in 2000, I have been praying this. For sure, I have seen glimpses of His glory, enough to spur me on; but deep in my heart, I have always wanted more.
However, another question surfaced as I read and re-read Exod 33:12-23. How is it that God told Moses that he cannot see His face, but only His back? Then later on, we learn that Moses knew God face to face? So, was it the back, or the face? As I struggled with this, the Lord led me to Exod 33:20 when He told Moses, "You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live." My spirit quickened when I read it. Suddenly, the message became so clear to me that I wondered why it didn't hit me before!
The glory of God is all that God is. In other words, when we say "Show me Your glory", we are really saying "Show me all of You, God!" But God cannot show all of Himself to us all at once because we will die - there's just too much of Him for our finite frames and minds to take and to comprehend. Isaiah, Paul and John all saw the fullness of God's glory and all fell down as dead!
Put another way, we cannot hope to see God and all His glory if we are not prepared to die; not die for sins for Jesus has already done that for us, but die to self. And this is the problem for many of us. We want to see God, but we are not prepared to die. And yet, there is no way we can see God and live! In His presence and in His glory, all flesh will die. 1 Cor 1:29 reminds us that "no flesh should glory in His presence". So, we must be prepared to die, for our desires, our ambitions, our old nature, our securities, and our EVERYTHING to die.
In His mercy, God deals with us as He dealt with Moses. He hides us in the cleft of the rock and shows us His back. God says that He can show us His goodness, His mercy, His grace and His compassion. Bit by bit, He reveals, but He cannot show us everything at once because we cannot take it. Today, we are hidden in Christ the Rock, and day by day we are being shown a little more of God's glory, as we struggle to allow more of ourselves to die.
The more we see, the more we die! The more we die, the more we see His glory. The more we see His glory, the more we are changed to reveal the glory. The more we reveal the glory, the more we've become conformed to the Son! No wonder, after Moses made this tough request of the Lord, he came down with his face shining (Exod 34:29-35). Today, in and by the Spirit, we are also changed from glory to glory in the same way (2 Cor 3:18)! But we will die, and we must die. No wonder Paul said that he died daily (1 Cor 15:31), and in Gal 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me."
I believe that as Moses got a glimpse of God's glory, he wanted more. In that, Moses was prepared to die to see the face of the Lord and not just the back of God. So, he had to die that the glory of God will be fully revealed to him and then reflected upon his own face!
Today, we look at Jesus, for He is "the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person (Heb 1:3). And as the disciples beheld His glory, we are to behold His glory! Jesus told Philip, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father." What did Philip ask but the same question as I have been asking, albeit in a different form … "Show us the Father!" The Father is the Glory and the Glory is the Father, because the Glory is all that the Father is!
As I ask my Heavenly Father, "Show me Your glory," He asks me in return, "Are you prepared to die? My Son, Jesus, was; that the glory will be revealed in and through Him. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain (John 12:24). So, my child, are you prepared to die? If you are, get ready to see My glory!"
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