The Need For God

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Greetings,

I hope you had a great Christmas and they you are expectant for the new year. As we come to the close of our year, I wish I could say that all or our problems will now be gone and the new year will be a year of ease; but I don’t believe that is the case. This is a year to stand on the Rock of Christ. This is not a year of merely receiving the blessings of God in our lives. It is a year to know the blessing of God in our lives.

When Moses was on the Mountain of God receiving the commandments of the Lord, the people grew impatient and created a god in the form of the golden calf, the worship of a creation as those in the world serve. Rather than trust the Creator of all life, they gave life to exalt a created thing, making the treasures of their own hearts to become the likeness and image of their god. The people made the golden calf from the treasures wore upon their own ears. Rather than trusting God to give them His desires, they sought to make God in the likeness and image of their own values. The golden calf was a created work made of treasures that look and sound like the ways of the world. It was a created work of human values, desires, and expectations. It was at this point that God presented to Moses the option of going into the Promised Land with a stiff-necked people, but God would not go with them.

Exodus 33:1 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Depart and go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your descendants I will give it.’ 2 And I will send My Angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanite and the Amorite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. 3 Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; for I will not go up in your midst, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”

Moses knew that an Angel is not the same as the manifest presence of God. It wasn’t a miracle from God that God’s people needed. It was the miracle of knowing God that they truly needed. Moses knew that the supernatural power of God was not the same as a knowing of God in life. The Presence of God is more valuable that all of the miracles or promises fulfilled in life. To know who God is and to live with Him in all things is the secret to all of life. It is the source of true strength and the root of true love.

Exodus 33:15 Then he (Moses) said to Him, “If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here. 16 For how then will it be known that Your people and I have found grace in Your sight, except You go with us? So we shall be separate, Your people and I, from all the people who are upon the face of the earth.” 17 So the LORD said to Moses, “I will also do this thing that you have spoken; for you have found grace in My sight, and I know you by name.”

It was at this moment that God put Moses in the rock and revealed a glimpse of His glory to him. The glory of God is the manifest presence of God in our lives that gives us our true identity, testimony, and purpose in life. That identity, testimony, and purpose can only be found in a place of being transformed by God to become expressions of His character, nature, way, power, and authority. This is the testimony of God’s manifest presence working in the through men to cause them to become people of God in the earth. Moses knew that without the manifest presence of God it would not be possible to be the people of God in the earth. God wants us to know His glory. He doesn’t want us to settle for earthly blessings in our lives. He wants to give us heavenly realities in every earthly situation. Rather than remove the giants of the land, God left challenges that were greater than His people. He left them to draw out the character of God from the hearts of His people.

Deuteronomy 7:1 “When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, 2 and when the LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. 3 Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. 4 For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the LORD will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly. 5 But thus you shall deal with them: you shall destroy their altars, and break down their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images, and burn their carved images with fire. 6 “For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. 7 The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; 8 but because the LORD loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 “Therefore know that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; 10 and He repays those who hate Him to their face, to destroy them. He will not be slack with him who hates Him; He will repay him to his face. 11 Therefore you shall keep the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments which I command you today, to observe them.”

Those who hear God and respond to what He says are those who dig down to know who He is. These are those who are a house of His presence, built upon the foundation of the Rock of Christ in all things. God wants for us to live with Him in every aspect of our lives. I believe that 2021 is a year to know the Rock of Christ in our lives. It is a year to stand upon the Rock of Christ and to know another measure of God’s grace working in and through us to be the people of God in the earth. To hear Him and respond to all that He says. To know Him and to respond to who He is.

Blessings,

Ted J. Hanson