Just As I Am 2

Just As I Am 2

4/25/17

A couple of years ago God shared with us a message about the words to a song that has been a foundation in my life.  But now God comes to us again with an extension of those words and a direct meaning to his calling for us to repent and to return to His Way.  This is a straight forward message and one that God wants us to take to heart and to listen, for our ways that we have chosen have followed a certain path and it is this path that He wants to be changed.  God loves us and wishes not for us to be in a wilderness either spiritually or physically but right at the moment that is exactly where we are located.  Let’s change our path and our hearts so that we may not spend “40 years” wandering in circles waiting for our Promised Land.

A while ago, I took some time to look back at some of the messages that God has shared with us in the writings that He has given me.  I went all the way back to the beginning of my writings and a common theme soon jumped out at me, it was obvious that for the majority of my life I refused to write or to develop this skill.  Almost every aspect of my words and sentence structure were utterly confusing, at best choppy and most of the sentences were so grossly fragmented that their meaning was difficult to comprehend.  Even today, I am not considered to be a professional writer by any means but I can tell a difference in my writings today from that time ago almost six years now.  I cannot contribute this growth to anything or to anyone besides God and it is this truth that God wants us to understand about our belief that it is ok that we stay in the same place after we turn our hearts to Him and how wrong that belief is to our eternal existence.

The words that I stared at on my remembrance tour were jumping off the page and screaming to me to be fixed, so I resigned myself to begin a project that would take some time but what I believed to be necessary in order to make things look better for those who might migrate back to that writing time.  As I have stated from time to time I did not like to write when I was younger and when I look at those first articles of mine I can easily see that the statement I just made was 100% accurate.  When my eyes saw my efforts back then, I quickly began to rewrite one of my first messages to reflect a manner to which I believed would be fitting for my current writing style.  It was then that god asked me “what are you doing?”  My response was great, a human and selfish one and it was out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying.

“I am making your messages better” was my statement and as soon as I finished those words God spoke and said to me that those were His words and that they served as an example of how growth in Him works.  I felt like I had been cut down to an inch high for it was then that God showed me that what He wanted me to write about was how His restoration process worked and that I was not the same person, in writing and in life that I was when I first obeyed what He wanted me to do.  His words revealed to me that the world shall drive you down to a point of destruction and then hang you there until you give up and succumb to its grip. But God works in a manner in which a process of restoration begins but in order for us to receive it we must understand that it is a growth process and not one that occurs and is completed overnight.  And it is this process that we need to understand about the world, God’s processes and our restoration in His manner.  It also describes just how God works in this process and once again the children of Israel provide us with an excellent example of this glorious process, both of how God operates and how we sometimes miss out on what He is doing in our lives as well.  Oh, and those words that I tried to fix were left just as they were written and they now serve as a foundation for my growth in God and what He is doing in my life today.

Back in 2015, God shared with us about a wonderful song that many churches sing at certain times of the service when God is calling people to return to Him.  While this song is a great hymn that all should hide within their heart it serves as the foundation for our lives and not stabilize our hearts in a specific staying spot, thus restating that God accepts us as we are but does not expect us to remain in that condition of worldly existence.  It is this point that many people who attend church these days live under – staying in that same spot – and honestly, believe that they are safe from the world and are doing what is expected of them from God.  It is this personal deception that is eternally dangerous and needs to be eradicated completely from our hearts and beliefs.

We must never forget that it is our enemy who designed deception and it is through this act that he is defined as the father of lies.  A good description of deception is one that glorifies you instead of God, in other words, anything that lifts our standards of life and lowers God’s is deception.  The Bible gives us a perfect example of this process and it is one that has been taught about many times over the centuries and it deals with the children of Israel and their time in the wilderness.  Through this example we will learn that while God does accept us as in our ugliness when we come to Him but we will also learn that He cannot allow us to remain in this condition and that He offers cleaning on every level so that we may seek His eternal life spotless and blameless before Him, totally separated from the world.

There are many aspects to the story of the departure of the children of Israel from Egypt.  Their arrival into Egypt was a glorious relief but after a long time in that country, their presence became a concern from the ruling leaders and one that needed to be kept under control for fear of a takeover.  Slavery and pure human trafficking soon appear and the existence of Israel now is being threatened from their own living quarters.  How could a life of luxury and sustenance be turned into a personal knowledge of absolute slavery in a matter of a few centuries?  But if we take a closer look at what took place during that time frame it becomes clear exactly how that option occurs because we are living this exact setting today and just as the children of Israel we do not recognize it one bit.

There is no question that the children of Israel were living a nightmare before their tenure in Egypt was concluded.  The cries that God heard on a continual basis were justified and in a matter of God’s timing would the situation be corrected, in His way, not man’s way.  The pharaoh hit it on the head when he said that if they did not do something quickly the number of Israelites would outnumber the Egyptians and would be able to challenge the Pharaoh for the throne.  This also explains that pharaoh had no concept of who God was and how He would deal with the situation for God sees all and tries His best to avert any true violence at first.  This was displayed through the meetings between Moses and Pharaoh, the battles of spiritual control, the plagues on Egypt, and eventually the agreement to free the children of Israel.  While this process of freedom was a learning lesson for Pharaoh it should have been one as well for the Israelites, but over the next 40 years, we see that they did not learn too much from that process and it cost them valuable time away from the Promised Land.

True and complete excitement must have been in the Israelite camp when they heard the words to pack up themselves and to get ready to leave, for their freedom was now a reality.  I have never been in complete captivity before and I certainly have not been a prisoner of war or been deemed as a slave or the status that it brings but I do know that the issues that I bring into my life subject me to that type of living and through these settings I have learned that they only bring hurt, pain, and agony which I do not need.  The leaving process was not an overnight thing, for Israel had acquired many things during their time in Egypt and it was this aspect of their lives that God had to work on and to get rid of, all unknowingly to the children of Israel.  But they should have known that God was going to clean them as they left that land and I can imagine that this cleanliness process, they thought, was going to be completed as soon as their feet walked out of the country.  But in truth, their leaving the country was the first step in a process of God’s cleaning process and the key to understanding restoration and the process that it had on their (and has on our) lives.

Exodus Chapter 12 gives us the order for the Israelites to be expelled from Egypt, the preparation for their departure and the process of them leaving the land.  In verse 37 of this chapter, it states that the Israelites leave the city of Rameses and go to Succoth, and this verse also gives us an idea of about how many able men left that day when it says that the Israelites included about 600,00 men walked that day.  This is a bunch of folks, folks, a true testament to their growth while they were in Egypt and if looked on through physical eyes a reason to believe that their numbers could grow enough to overthrow a ruling party.  It was also felt that through these numbers that god could use their strength against any opposition to their leaving one which proved feeble when the time came to encounter this opposition in the desert.  Remember the stories of D-Day 1944, when it was the job of the Allies to storm the beaches at Normandy?  It was the job of the Germans to throw them back into the sea, thus declaring the return of captivity of France and mainland Europe to Germany, the same concept of the battle for freedom warfare and slavery is given here on a modern day example.

For every human, it is easy to believe that once you are out of a situation that your problems are solved and over simply because of the relief one feels after they have left the scene.  But it is exactly the time where those who leave are in the gravest danger for we all know that while one party has left and felt better the other party involved is not and seeks out the other side and to find out exactly what they are doing and where they are at specifically.  This type of freedom feels liberating to one while betrayal to the other, a setting that many of our current relationships undergo and more specifically one that our eternal enemy finds insulting, for it means that his kingdom has lost and has been pushed backward and the potential for God’s Kingdom to advance just greatly increased.  So, it is the job of the enemy to ensure that this newly found freedom does not last and that an immediate return to slavery occurs.

The truth that God had work to complete was not hidden from the children of Israel, even from day one when they feet actually left Egyptian soil, for we must remember that when God acts He is a complete God on all sides of the issues and must work accordingly.  But for some reason as soon as their feet left the confines of slavery they forgot that through their own possessions and belongings they were still holding on to Egypt.  It was this part of Egypt that God still had to rid them from and one that was much harder to accept from Israel than the excitement of physically leaving the captivity of Egypt.  We can relate to this setting by knowing that after centuries of captivity and being controlled as slaves, God chose to accept His children just as they were.  God understood and recognized that their status of royalty had been taken away from them and that they were not considered anything more than slave laborers with growing numbers, but even in this type of lifestyle God worked His love into their existence and brought them out of their slavery according to their sincere cries to Him.

Now, marching a million or more people around in a desert or wilderness is quite a task and one that should not be scoffed by anyone either.  And when one studies the landscape of the deserts and wildernesses that the Israelites wandered in for such a long time, one has to contemplate as to why this amount of time was taken for that entire area is not that large, treacherous yes, but not that large especially if one considers the amount of time involved here.  It is this point of being “just as I am’ that God wants us to understand that He wishes for us to drop and to begin to allow Him to infiltrate our hearts and to grow within them.  For if we do not allow this process of His to grow inside, completely inside we will find out real soon that our wilderness walk will take a lot longer than we had at first expected.

God cannot just perform one aspect of a process and then call it good, that is a human attribute and not one that God operates through.  God is a complete God and when He begins a process He first must remove His children from the setting in order for them to have a level playing field.  God understands that the things that we acquire from the world weigh heavy on our lives and if not loosened and let go will eventually bring us to our knees in such a destructive manner that we may never fully recover.  This is a glorious process and one that leaves us feeling free from the situation that we had been in but just as my short and choppy sentences at the beginning of my tenure writing I still needed to grow in stature and continue this growth process by depending on God to fill me with His presence.  This was now the point where the Israelites were in and while it felt good to leave the land of Egypt, their journey had just begun and was going to be difficult for quite some time ahead.

I can guarantee that God had no real intentions of keeping the children of Israel wandering in the desert for forty years.  But I can also guarantee you that if it takes forty years to get the world out of our lives God shall use that time or even longer in order for us to see what He wants from our lives.  It would be difficult to watch a loved one die in the wilderness especially when they left the land of their captivity they were in almost perfect health.  When any loved one, friend, or general acquaintance passes away we all spend a time of reflection in due part of our own mortality, but this point we should also try our best to figure out if we are in right standing with God too, for it could mean that our mourning process and our wilderness travels could be shortened.  In order for us to have this shortened period of travel, we must give up our self-standards and allow God to come into our lives and be the leader and ruler over us, thus taking another step in the restoration process.

We must understand that the wilderness portions of our lives are there for a reason and while this time period hurts it is god’s way of teaching us to depend on Him and not the things of the world.  In Numbers Chapter 20 we have the perfect setting of how humanity lives when they have not figured things out about God and who leads them.  Here we have the children of Israel camped out in a specific part of the wilderness called Kadesh.  It has been almost forty years since they have left Egypt and they are just now reaching the southern part of modern day Israel, far from their destination yet so close at the same time.  We read that Miriam has died and is now buried in the area, there is now land for planting of seeds or to grow the necessary plants for food, and more importantly, there is no water for the people of the livestock.  The situation is desperate and needs immediate attention.

In verse 3 we have the people arguing with Moses about their concerns and they are frustrated enough to even question their presence in this land and wondering why God would not allow them to die as their forefathers did instead out here in the wilderness.  In verse 4 we have the details of what exactly is in their hearts and the proof that even after forty years in the desert they still did not understand what God was doing in their lives, when they ask Moses as to why “he” had brought them out into the desert and live under these “evil” conditions?  For every person who has been associated with or has lived in or around a desert knows that this type of living is not easy and hard work must be continually achieved in order for survival.  Yet, as we read in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy we find that God has over and oversupplied each need that the children of Israel had while wandering these lands.  A true sign that they had nothing and that their dependence should come from God and not mankind, a process of restoration in God’s timing and manner that should have opened their eyes to the situation that they had come from and that they were presently in. 

Yet, even after forty years, it is obvious that this truth about why they were in the desert was still hidden from their eyes.  For as we read in verses 8-11 of this chapter even Moses does not heed the specific Word of God and disobeys His command concerning the rock and the need for water.  God still keeps His promises of survival to the people but through this lack of trusting in God and showing the children of Israel the true nature of God and His provisions, Moses and Aaron would be included in the ones who would not physically see the Promised Land.  We know through the stories in the book of Exodus that Moses understood about having faith in God and we also know that the people of God saw these acts of faith through the miracles that God performed over this amount of time, so why is it so difficult to surrender our entire being over to God and recognize His processes as necessities for our eternal survival?

The truth about the wilderness is that it is a place to allow us to learn that God wants every part of our lives at all times.  It is a great feeling to know that we are no longer subject to the world because we have chosen God to be in our lives, it is even a greater and unexplainable feeling of joy when we recognize this truth but God does not stop there because He must be a complete God for if He was not then Matthew 12:43-45 shall automatically take place and would nullify Jesus and everything that He was sent to do on the earth.  The wilderness is a time that we should recognize our emptiness and not return to the world but allow God to restore our lives according to His Divine policies.  It should be a time of constant reflection on God and how He supplies our needs according to His Word.  The toughness of the wilderness comes as we complete our time with God and not the world.  During this time there is a huge battle for your house, one that eternal implications and as long as you trust God and seek His wisdom and truth the world cannot infiltrate your being again.

This wilderness process can take one of two paths and each path has its own results.  The first path is one that the children of Israel walked and it took them forty years to complete.  They did not recognize what God was doing or wanting to do in their lives but saw it is as a punishment instead.  They elevated themselves by using their chosen status of being God’s children and used it as a defining matter as to question God about why He was allowing this to occur.  They failed to understand that God took them from a slavery lifestyle and once again was in the process of making them great again.  The ONLY way that God could have completed this process was to take them through a wilderness process and it was their choice to understand that process and the reason why or not.

The second path that can be taken in the wilderness is one of complete surrender to God and His ways.  In this choice of paths the stories of the wilderness will have different tones articulating from them for as we look at our past situations we can see where the world has its grip on our lives and as we scan forward we can see where God has taken the world out of our lives and has proceeded to refill that emptiness with His Word; commonly known as restoration.  Just as my first articles reflected a person who knew little about writing, I can look back at my life, not only about writing but about many other issues as well, and see where I was and where I am at today.  It is this process that still frustrates me because of how far and deep I allowed the world into my life, but at the same time I see the work that God has done in my life over this wilderness period and I now can reflect toward others this restoration process that He wishes to give everyone.

After you complete this message from God, take a while to reflect on you wilderness to see if you have kept any portion of your life from God.  Are you in the wilderness still?  If you are, where are you at, just beginning, in the middle of nowhere?  The important part is to understand that God has you right where He wants you and that He has you there for a reason and that reason is to restore you according to His Will for your life.  It is a process that is painful, I know but it is one that needs to be completed for until we allow this to occur by God’s standards we shall never know just how infected the world has become in our lives.  It is this process that while God accepts you just as you are He cannot allow you to go unchanged after you have been set free.  It is a lifelong process of growth that has its rewards every single moment of each day but in order for us to understand this vital truth we must not be like the Israelites and ignore what God is showing and telling us.

Which brings me to the final point of this article and it is this: God is calling for His nation of America to turn back to Him so that we can fully understand that it was He who freed us from our captivity setting and it is He who has brought us into this present wilderness.  Times are tough and answers are few, that is not an arguable position but what and who we declare as our enemy is arguably the underlying question yet we are so blinded by the wilderness conditions that we cannot see who our legitimate enemy is.  It is not our fellow mankind nor is it the atmospheric conditions but it is the one who deceived Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the one who lied to the children of Israel in the deserts, the one who provoked evil spirits to control lands, and the one who thought he had won victory when God’s own Son died on the cross.  But in that time of wilderness, God proved Himself as God by uplifting those who believed in Him and by raising His Son from the dead to establish the path of restoration for everyone who wishes.

It is our duty and responsibility to make sure that the wiles of the devil are told and seen so that all can be witnesses for God and the true Light of the world.  Church open your hearts back to God and shun the world for it is the only way that we can escape from our wilderness.  Yes, we are in a wilderness for when numbers of a youth group outweigh the numbers of those youth entering the ministry we are in a wilderness.  When we would rather sit in a pew in church on Saturday / Sunday mornings and then do absolutely nothing with what is taught we are in a wilderness.  When we allow the world to enter into our lives and then entertain it instead of telling it to flee we are in a wilderness.  So the question now becomes this: which path will you take and will you allow the wilderness to rule your life or will you allow God to guide you through the wilderness through restoration and teach you about Him so that you can tell the world?  In other words, are you saying “just as I am” or are you allowing God to grow you?

DLB