"The LORD replied, 'My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.' " (Exodus 33:14 NIV)
Have you ever been invited to a party with this request in the invitation: "No gifts, please...your presence is our present"?
God has invited us to His party, but it is we who are the recipients of a great gift: the present of His presence.
All God's countless good gifts are wrapped up in this one perfect package.
One of the most striking deliveries of this package is tucked away in the tiny Old Testament book of Haggai. The prophet has, typically, been sent by God to get His people's attention. The temple of the Lord has been destroyed and needs to be rebuilt, but God's people are too busy building their own houses to worry about His. Through Haggai, God essentially tells them, "Think about what you're doing! Don't you wonder why your life is a mess? Get your priorities in order!" (This is, obviously, a VERY loose paraphrase.)
God's message through Haggai apparently takes, because "the whole remnant of the people obeyed the voice of the LORD their God and the message of the prophet Haggai, because the LORD their God had sent him. And the people feared the LORD" (Haggai 1:12).
How does God respond to this reverence? What gift message does He send His people?
"Then Haggai, the LORD’s messenger, gave this message of the LORD to the people: 'I am with you,' declares the LORD" (Haggai 1:13).
"I am with you."
These four little words in our English translation shout such big meaning.
God is the I AM, so in essence, He is saying, "I—the I AM—am with you." And this tells us that every good gift wrapped up in the I AM's being is also with us.
Beloved, take that in for a moment. Because the I AM is with us, all that the I AM is, is with us. All that the I AM is, is His gift to us.
His love is with us.
His grace is with us.
His strength is with us.
His comfort is with us.
His hope is with us.
His redemption is with us.
His power is with us.
All these presents of God's presence would be more than enough to carry us through to our eternal celebration with Him. But God so wanted us to see His presence in the flesh, He sent the Promise: Emmanuel...God With Us.
"I am with you," says the I AM. It is a gift, and what more can we say but, "Thank you." But then, with God, the invitation follows the gift: "Come, be with Me."
And what more can we say to this, but one, saving response: "I accept."
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I'd love to hear from you! Feel free to tell me what you really think. Years ago, I explained to my then-two-year-old that my appointment with a counselor was "sort of like going to a doctor who will help me be a better mommy." Without blinking, she replied, "You'd better go every day." All of which is just to say I've spent some time in the school of brutal honesty!