Ezekiel 40: 1-3
"In the twenty-fifth year of our exile, at the beginning of the year on the tenth of the month—it was the fourteenth year after the city fell—God touched me and brought me here. He brought me in divine vision to the land of Israel and set me down on a high mountain. To the south there were buildings that looked like a city. He took me there... and I met a man deeply tanned, like bronze. He stood at the entrance holding a linen cord and a measuring stick. Ezekiel's instructions: Look and listen carefully to all God is going to show you. That's why you've been brought here. And then tell Israel everything you see." So the deeply tanned man went to work measuring everything.
Ezekiel knew God's touch. Where do I sense this day the touch of God? A postcard came in the mail a few weeks ago about a new church plant launching out today. OneChapel in ATX. God brought me there. The pastor felt God's touch and moved from Colorado Springs to start this church this day. I don't know if we will end up there. But God was in the place! As soon as I started sharing with friends that we were going to visit OneChapel this morning, it turns out that the lead pastor came from a church in the Springs where we know several awesome families. And here in Austin, all last week people kept showing up from different walks saying they knew the church planters. Psalm 81:10 They opened their mouths this morning and God Himself filled them.
Lord, make us all like Ezekiel, so willing to follow your Voice, your Touch, your Face to do any work, even if its menial measuring. It's not about numbers. It's all about God's Glory!
"In the twenty-fifth year of our exile, at the beginning of the year on the tenth of the month—it was the fourteenth year after the city fell—God touched me and brought me here. He brought me in divine vision to the land of Israel and set me down on a high mountain. To the south there were buildings that looked like a city. He took me there... and I met a man deeply tanned, like bronze. He stood at the entrance holding a linen cord and a measuring stick. Ezekiel's instructions: Look and listen carefully to all God is going to show you. That's why you've been brought here. And then tell Israel everything you see." So the deeply tanned man went to work measuring everything.
Ezekiel knew God's touch. Where do I sense this day the touch of God? A postcard came in the mail a few weeks ago about a new church plant launching out today. OneChapel in ATX. God brought me there. The pastor felt God's touch and moved from Colorado Springs to start this church this day. I don't know if we will end up there. But God was in the place! As soon as I started sharing with friends that we were going to visit OneChapel this morning, it turns out that the lead pastor came from a church in the Springs where we know several awesome families. And here in Austin, all last week people kept showing up from different walks saying they knew the church planters. Psalm 81:10 They opened their mouths this morning and God Himself filled them.
Lord, make us all like Ezekiel, so willing to follow your Voice, your Touch, your Face to do any work, even if its menial measuring. It's not about numbers. It's all about God's Glory!
One Day, ...! We serve a God of order and detail. I confess I skimmed the numbers but feel the impact of the specificity, the attention to magnificent details, and the accuracy of rebuilding the temple.
ReplyDeleteRebuilding is a theme of hope we can draw from in these words. Restoring magnificently is a God-size job. We desperately need Him, and He chooses to need us.
When I first read these words, I really didn't feel anything. I asked what do you want us to know, Lord? I wondered why we need to read so many chapters of numbers. I felt disengaged as I read verse after verse of details. But details matter to Him. And we are so well taken care of because of just that.
"The walls separated the holy from the ordinary."
ReplyDeleteHe kept measuring the thickness of the walls, noting how many levels and steps, a table before God was noted, the holy garments explained.
I come away from these verses feeling how difficult it would be for the ordinary to get into the holy.
How hard is it for me to enter the holy?
Reminds me of a hospital. Lots of people are there to
visit,
to work,
to be tested
to be healed or
to be delivered (with a baby).
But there is one area that is so secure and set apart because of special things that are being done.
The operating room.
Picture the doctor and the patient in this place of healing. The patient is completely sedated. The patient has no control in what happens in the healing.
The doctor heals.
In the deep, hidden interior, secure operating room. And sometimes the work he accomplishes is miraculous. As close to holy as the ordinary can be.
No germs allowed. Ordinarily safe things become killers in the operating room.
God works holy works in our "temple" dwellings now. By His Spirit living in us. And they are miracles that we receive, but they are straight up the work of God in our lives.
It is holy. Separate from the ordinary. And it is the one who seeks the holy that navigates through the walls and into the inner sanctum.
God is in the details of our lives. Measure by measure. Planned in the beginning of time.
Plan A.
I want to give a testimony that He showed up in some very small details of my life this past week. He has done this many times before...but He really showed up the other night...Paise His Holy Name...
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