29 1 / 2011
A Righteous Stubbornness
And he [Moses] said to him [God], “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.
Exodus 33:15
Is there anything worth doing without the presence of God there? How often and how desperately do we pray for the presence of God? Do we even care?
Moses did. God tells Moses that He will provide an angel to lead them [the Israelites] into the promised land, but Moses was not satisfied. An angel was simply not good enough. Moses wanted the very presence of God to accompany them and he would not settle for anything less. As I read this part, I actually had to read it couple times before I finally grasped what was going on. My conclusion. MOSES WAS INSANE! Sure, Moses had an unique relationship to God, but still, how could he, in the right mind, give God an ultimatum? How could he ask the God who created the entire universe what to do and what not to do? The answer to that is simply that Moses had a righteous stubbornness in him. Moses wanted the fullness of God and nothing less. As Christians, is that what we desire? Do we have an “all-in” mentality towards Jesus Christ? Or are we too easily pleased? Just like C.S. Lewis, I’m convinced that we are too easily pleased. Like Moses, let us cultivate a righteous stubbornness in our hearts for the things of God! I’m not proposing that we all give God our own ultimatums, but what I am saying is that we need to continuously hunger and thirst for MORE of God. Don’t settle, but pray with expectancy and with humility. God will listen. Before I end this post, I wanted to quote C.S. Lewis in his book The Weight of Glory.
Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
