Falling on Our Faces

Numbers 16:41-45 says, “But on the next day all the congregation of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron, saying, ‘You are the ones who have caused the death of the Lord’s people.’ It came about, however, when the congregation had assembled against Moses and Aaron, that they turned toward the tent of meeting, and behold, the cloud covered it and the glory of the Lord appeared. Then Moses and Aaron came to the front of the tent of meeting, and the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Get away from among this congregation, that I may consume them instantly.’ Then they fell on their faces.”

I lack knowledge when it comes to the power of prayer and even more so when it comes to the power of God. Sometimes I read different passages and think different things about prayer. When I read this, I think it’s one of the most impactful things. Looking at things in the Old Testament is so hard because Jesus doesn’t always come out to say whether what happened was wrong or not. All we get are the stories and the after effect. But honestly right now, I’m not too worried about the morality of the matter.

The truth is that Moses and Aaron fell on their faces and pleaded with God to save the Israelites. Because of the constant rebellion of the people of Israel, God burned with furry against the Israelites and came to the point where He wanted to smite them. Moses responds by throwing himself on the ground to pray for the sake of his people. If you look abroad in the book of Numbers, you’ll find that this is not the only time Moses falls on his face. Nor is this the only time God has wanted to smite someone.

What does this mean for us? I don’t think we understand the fullness of what prayer can do. As I said earlier, I hardly know anything about prayer and what it can do besides what I read in the Bible. Shouldn’t that be enough though? If we believe that God is omnipotent and if prayer is taking the keys out of our hands and giving them to God so He control the situation, than isn’t prayer a way for amazing things to be done? I recently met with a youth minister that told me about the success of Charles Spurgeon. One of the things I’d never heard before about him is that when he preached in the London Tabernacle, he had a hundred people praying underneath the floor of the chapel. No wonder God used him to change the hearts of hundreds and still millions even today.

I remember when I held my first pistol at a father/son campout. Some of the dads brought their own guns for us to shoot at an on-site range, and so I went to go try them out. At age 8, my only experience shooting was shooting a BB gun and a 22. My friend’s dad handed me a small revolver, which thinking back was actually pretty big when I held it in my hands. I wasn’t intimidated as I pointed it down the range. I slowly pulled back the trigger, waiting for the gun to go off. After a certain point, it went off and the kick was more powerful than I thought. Instead of keeping the gun pointed down-range, the kick propelled my hands to point the gun in the air at about 60-degree angle. However, I brought it back down to fire a few more times. As you might be able to guess, the owner of the gun was not in any hurry to grab it out of my hand as he ran in fear for his life.

I didn’t know the power of the gun would be able to do what it did, and was truly surprised by what it could do. Isn’t the prayer similar? We don’t know the power of it until we try it out. If you read my last post, you know my previous experience with prayer and how it kind of surprised me that it worked. Think about how dangerous it would be for the devil to see us wield prayer like a professional marksman.

This is my prayer: for us to pray. When we lift our hands and ask for God to take our situation and show up in amazing ways, we can pray for God to show us something new. If God truly is endless, shouldn’t we pray that He would show us something different every moment? I think of the Casting Crowns song from what seems like ages ago (Which is just a few years but also equates to half my lifetime) that says, “What if His people prayed?” I heard that and walked away thinking, “Yeah, that’d be cool.”… I pray that we aren’t content with just hearing about the need for prayer. Right now, it might be good for you to “fall on your face” for a situation in your life.

Prayer is a weapon that no government can take away, yet ten times as powerful – Forsake All

The Presence of God

Exodus 33:12-15 says, “Moses said to the Lord, ‘See, You say to me, “Bring up this people!” But You Yourself have not let me know whom You will send with me. Moreover, You have said, “I have known you by name, and you have also found favor in My sight.’’ Now therefore, I pray You, if I have found favor in Your sight, let me know Your ways that I may know You, so that I may find favor in Your sight. Consider too, that this nation is Your people.’ And He said, ‘My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest.’ Then he said to Him, ‘If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here.’ ”

This has been my desperate cry because I find myself lacking just as much faith. Living in the family that I do, I have become so analytical, which is great when it comes to discernment, but I believe there is a door of faith that can only be opened if you throw your analytical mindset away. Jesus said that if we even had the faith of a small mustard seed that we would be able to move mountains (Matthew 17:12). Shane & Shane say it beautifully in one of their newer songs, “I don’t need to see the cancer go away, I just wanna everything will be okay”

Sometimes we don’t need to move mountains but all we really want is to feel the presence and movement of God. We are told to pray, but isn’t it hard when you feel like you’re just talking to yourself? My prayer always feels so one-sided, like I’m talking God’s ear off. I know He loves and hears me because the Bible says He does, but why can’t I hear His voice? Why don’t I feel His presence? If He’s by my side throughout the entire day, shouldn’t make sense that He’d assure me of such things, maybe by tapping me on the shoulder or putting His hand on back telling me He’s right behind me?

This is what I wanted. This past Sunday I got up early to pray for the congregation and their hearts. I wanted the Spirit to fall on the building like a consuming fire and just fill people with His presence. Even though I had no idea what it all meant or what it looked like, I wanted it. This passage kept coming back to me; just the reality of Moses’ simple request. I prayed that God would show us His glory (Exodus 33:18). I wanted it to be real. My faith was so small and so basic; I just prayed that God would literally walk into the room to reassure us of His reality. I prayed this all morning and during the last song of the last service, I left the stage to go and pray thinking that more people would be touched by me pleading for the presence of God to fall than just simply hearing a tenor voice that was still trying to wake up.

I prayed and pleaded, and when the song was over, the room was so heavy you could feel it. Or, at least, I did. The worship leader told the congregation just to pray because he knew that God has shown a glimpse of who He was, and we needed to stay in that moment for a little bit. I rushed into the sanctuary not knowing what I’d see, but nothing visual had changed, besides everyone sitting in their seats praying quietly. But as I stood in the back, I could feel it… But I still feel like I miss it.

You may have read this post to learn something new about the presence of God, only to find out that I know basically nothing about it. All I know is that I want to be there for the rest of my life. Moses shows his reliance on the glory of God when he says, “If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here.” After being in the presence of God, he knows how vital it is to live near or in it. However, in his day, to be in the presence of God took sacrifice and a whole procedure. I’d encourage you to read through Leviticus and understand that God is holy and no one who is unclean can enter into His presence. Like Paul says in Romans six, the law helps us understand how unclean we are so that the Gospel becomes more powerful.

Like I previously stated, I don’t know a lot about what it means for the presence of God to fall in today’s world, but I know because of His power and might that it doesn’t just happen on Sunday, Wednesday, or special revival nights. How do you seek after the presence of God? What can you do every day to experience the goodness of who He is? I’d love for you to contact me with thoughts and questions, with the understanding that I probably don’t have the answer, but I’d love to search after it with you.

It just takes a simple prayer and an open heart for the presence of God to be shown; I believe that – Forsake All

Strength in Weakness

2^nd Corinthians 12:10 says, “Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

The Christian worldview is so backwards. In our world, the most popular are the strongest. We envy those who are stronger and those who seem to have more control in their situations. As guys, we strive to be the strongest, partly because we have a desire to fulfill our own needs and not have to rely on others to help us. We don’t want to be helped, or even have to ask. Doesn’t this sound right?

Sometimes our culture mixes into Christianity as well. As believers, we sometimes try to have all the answers, memorize the most scripture, and even be the wisest so our friends will come to us to ask for spiritual advice. It sounds weird, but isn’t that the truth? Jesus starts to turn our world around when he starts giving the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5. Everyone there must have been wide-eyed because everything he said was completely radical, in the sense of being complete opposing to the normal ideals.

The main reason I’m writing this is because I think there is a lot of people who look at others with big, old, and word Bibles and start to think, “They’re totally ‘Holier Than Thou.’ ” It’s weird though; when I find myself in the darkest of times, I end up reading my Bible shortly after. Why is it like that? Why do I read my Bible? Well, my motive for reading the Bible should be because I am weak am in need of a Remedy. However sometimes it really is to highlight as much stuff as possible so the people sitting next to me on Sunday will see how spiritual I am. It’s so backwards! When I read my Bible, what I’m really doing is focusing on the glory of God and taking my eyes off myself.

Why do you read the Bible?

I used to get on to a lot of people who never read their Bible, and still sometimes do. It just doesn’t make sense that if you truly understood the state that you are in that you wouldn’t want to read the Bible, but I have to understand that God’s timing is His timing. Someone could totally come up to me and say the same things, about how I should read the Bible more, which I should, but really, my heart really just needs to be broken enough sometimes in order for me to really want to know God more.

I have to come to a place where I understand that God is the One thing I need because whatever I’m doing really isn’t working well for me. It’s my cry of desperation. Maybe you look at all the blogs I’ve written (Somewhere around 80) and say, “What an awesome and spiritual guy!” I assure you that the only reason I write is because I need to be taught things. Most of the entries were written about the things I was learning or going through. It’s like talking to a friend about an issue and then coming up with the answer before they even speak. I pray that people would look at me and comment on how weak, disgusting, and useless I am without the power of God giving me life and the ability to love Him.

Let your weakness show. Tell people how weak you are. Read you’re Bible because you are weaker than you think! And like I said earlier, I’m writing this to myself more than anyone. But maybe you need to hear this. Maybe you need to understand the strength of weakness. When you’re weak, you’re giving God the glory of having the victory. When God took over Jericho, He made sure that Joshua was completely out of the way so that the complete glory would go to Himself.

We are weak but He is strong – Forsake All

Salvation

Ephesians 2:4-10 says, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

Maybe you’re reading this and you don’t know what it talks about. Maybe you’ve heard this message before but the idea of grace has never really caught your attention or resonated with your heart. It doesn’t always make sense to me. If you knew my life and all the things I’ve done, you’d understand how much of an enemy I was (and still am) to Christ. Almost everyday I show just how much I hate the light, things of God, and enjoy the darkness, things that don’t glorify God.

Maybe you’re like me and you hear this message almost everyday, but it gets old. We get so used to hearing about the grace of God and how much He loves us that I think we don’t really understand how powerful it is. But we notice the times when we forget. I find myself with loads of guilt when I am constantly trying my hardest to do what’s right, but only to build my relationship with God. The thing is, the only way I can build my relationship with God is by trusting in His love and grace, so it really doesn’t make a difference whether I start reading my Bible more or start praying more unless I surrender myself to His grace.

The Christian life is known to be backwards. We aren’t saved by doing good works or being good people. Think about the word “saved.” We didn’t attribute the word to salvation, but the Bible uses it several times. When you are saved, it’s necessary to assume that someone indeed is doing the saving. When you are drowning and someone comes to the rescue, the best thing you can do is just relax. When you’re about to sink in sinking sand the best thing you can do is to remain still. In both cases, you’re salvation is relying on the strength of the person getting you out of the situation.

When we say we are Christians, we are publically proclaiming that we are the weakest beings on the earth, only held together by the grace and will of God. We are called to be weak and live in constant dependence of the salvation that was made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Maybe you need that. How do I know that? Because we all need it.

In the first three verses of Ephesians, it says that we were brought from being sons of disobedience and we were literally dead. How is this possible? Well, if life is found in Christ Jesus, than being apart from Him is spiritual death. That’s why hell is complete and utter separation from God, which is where we’ll end up if we don’t accept salvation and the saving grace of Jesus Christ.

I encourage you to look more into. Maybe you already have and are turned off by religious thinking. Maybe you’re already a believer but grace is still something that you don’t fully understand or even appreciate. I’d love to open myself up to talk to you. You can contact me by e-mail. robertwegner1433@gmail.com.

His message is life-changing, and I’d ask you to pray about accepting and growing in it. – Forsake All