This might be a bit of a 'duh' corelation to you, but the more I begin to pray, the more prayers God seems to answer with, "Yes!" This week I prayed that God would show me a glimpse of His Glory. I felt that I was severely missing a reverence of some kind. So tonight my team gathered for worship. I didn't feel right about just starting up singing a familiar song. So many times in the last few days God has blown me away with how wonderful He is and I have wanted to burst into outrageous, spontaneous songs but refrained. And now, I felt like I had nothing. So I got on my knees and prayed. My team sang a couple songs and prayed outloud and I chimed in sincerely. But a couple songs passed and everything changed. An overwhelming image filled my mind and consumed me. I can't really describe what I saw or felt. I just know that my first thought was,

"God, please don't kill me by showing me all your glory!" I don't even remember what happened. I felt tiny. I felt dirty. I felt so sinful. I started begging for forgiveness for the first time actually owning up to my failures as if they were my fault and not just God's responsibility since He chose to put me into this sinful world. Even though it was incredible, I wanted to go through the floor just to remove myself from a situation for which I was totally unworthy. I praised and praised. I opened my eyes and was surprised to be back in a place of normal sights. 

 

My experience tonight was incredible, yet I knew that satan would try to worm his filthy way into my head to calm my otherwise obsessive worship to the Most High King. I was right. Anxiety sent a chill down my spine. I was so sinful, so unworthy. God will never accept me. That God cannot have messed-up, tiny, filthy, sinner me in his house. I am rejected, I am unfit, I am not good enough... "God please confirm Your love and grace for me, again. Convince me I'm worthy..."

 

Whatever happens, I will be found guilty. Even if I were to wash myself with soap and clean my hands with lye, you would plunge me into a muddy ditch and my own filthy clothing would hate me. ;God is not a mortal like me, so I cannot argue with Him or take Him to trial. If only there were a mediator between us, someone who could bring us together...

 

-Job 9:29-33

 

Oh Jesus paid it all

All to Him I owe

Sin has left a crimson stain

He washed it white as snow

 

 

I kid you not, no more than a few minutes after I opened my eyes from that intense prayer my team began sharing things that God was speaking to us, "Elisa," Michaela looked at me and smiled, "You are worthy... don't doubt that He loves you, that's why there is the cross."

Thanks God :) 

 

God sent [Jesus] to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law so that He could adopt us as His very own children. And becuase we are His children, God has sent the spirit of the Son into our hearts...

-Galatians 4:5

 

I think what God revealed to me today was a new way to fear God. I was afraid of God because He is so big and beautiful and I am so tiny and filthy so there is no reasonable way in which I can worship Him. I feared Him because He was simply so great - not because He was so wrathful. I think that when something is as big of an anomoly as God (inconceivably uncomparable) that He can be so great that it is terrifying, but in the absence of fear. 

 

The glory of the Lord is far greater than the glory of the things He has done for us or the ways in which He works in our lives. His glory goes on and on forever. And right in the middle of His great glory is His GREAT love and it is called Jesus. When we look at God as radiant, uncomparable glory, Jesus, as our High Priest, begins to look exactly like Love and Grace and Goodness and Peace and Hope and Joy and Life! All glory to God in the highest, all praise be unto His name! 

 

There is an analogy in the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan that goes something like this: 

 

Imagine a dam 10 000 feet high and 10 000 feet wide. You are standing only meters away from it and all of the sudden it collapses completely. More water than you can even understand is rushing to consume you and you can do nothing about it. But then, a chasm opens up in the ground and it is so big that every last drop of water is gone and you are saved.

 

Death is swallowed up in victory. (1 Cor. 15:54)

 

That's the gospel. It isn't as simple as the pain of a couple of nails. It is the greatest divorce and the greatest redemption in history. A great gap and a great bridge. A great wave and a great chasm. A great, great fear and a great, great relief. A great misdeed but a greater Savoir.