My prayer was this: That I would be humbled in His presence and finally be able to see how great my God is and how small I am.
Why is this so dangerous? Well, for anyone who has prayed this prayer before, they know why. But for everyone else....this is dangerous because it has a tendency to blow your world as you know it up.
Our world's tend to revolve around ourselves. When we allow God to show us who we really in are in light of HIS glory, our own glory fades away and we begin to see the depravity of our own selves. This is a painful realization.
Our pastors began taking us through the first part of Revelation last week - God's message to the Churches. In the first chapter of Revelation, John explains a vision that he was given as he was exiled on the island of Patmos - a vision of the Risen Lord that made him fall at the Lord's feet as though he was dead. John saw the glory of God and his only response was that.
Our pastor yesterday made a point that really stuck with me. He said this: If you have - or if someone claims to have had - an encounter with God that does not result in that person seeing their own depravity and being ruined in the presence of our Most Holy Almighty God, then that encounter was false.
No one can stand on their own in the glory of God - no one.
Isaiah 6:1-5: "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another : 'Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is filled with His glory!' At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. 'Woe to me!', I cried. 'I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I lived among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty!'"
Ezekiel 1:26-2:2: "Above the expanse over their heads was what looked like a throne of sapphire, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded Him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the gory of the Lord When I saw it I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of the one speaking. He said to me, 'Son of man, stand up on your feet and I will speak to you,' As he spoke, the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet, and I heard him speaking to me...."
Revelation 1:17-18: "When I saw him, I feel at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said, 'Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys to death and Hades.'"
As these men were brought closer and closer to God, they began to see who they really were: A sinful, depraved, lost people. They were ruined. Broken. The beautiful thing is, when you look at the text that follows their encounter, God raises them up. They were broken in the presence of God, and God restored them.
That is the gospel. We are broken, ruined and depraved - whether we choose to recognize it or not. God sent His only Son, Jesus, so that God might pour out His wrath on his own Son rather than on us. God has restored us through Jesus, by nothing that we could do on our own, but completely because of His own goodness and love.
And that is why God is big and we are little.
That is why I want to recognize my own wretchedness - not so that I can wallow in the ugliness of my sinful self, but so that I can see for the first time, the beauty and glory of the God that I worship. So that my heart might be driven to worship HIM rather than my fleshly desires.
I want to be made small so that God would be seen as the Sovereign, Almighty God that He is.
"To Him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you into his glorious presence without fault and with great joy - to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and fovrever more. AMEN!" Jude 24-25
