well i had some things to share and i’m waaaaayyy behind on blogging anyway, so why not?
i was revisiting Kyle Lake’s book [re]understanding prayer when i ran across this and thought it was interesting.
“there continues to be a great debate as to whether the miraculous continues to take place today. Scripture provides no indication that miraculous experiences or supernatural modes of communication would cease with the ancient world or with the close of scriptural canon. God is perfectly capable and continues to enact miraculous events and communicate via the supernatural today. I fully believe God continues to communicate with us through the medium of dreams, visions and angelic visitations. However the story of Aaron, Miriam and Moses provides a window into God’s end goal, His truest intentions.
In the twelfth chapter of the book of Numbers, Aaron and Miriam, absorbed in their own jealousy that God would speak to Moses and not them, were fuming.
1-2 Miriam and Aaron talked against Moses behind his back of
because his Cushite wife (he had married a Cushite woman). They said, “Is it only through Moses that God speaks? Doesn’t he also speak through us?”God overheard their talk.
3-8 Now the man Moses was a quietly humble man, more so than anyone living on Earth. God broke in suddenly on Moses and Aaron and Miriam saying, “Come out, you three, to the Tent of Meeting.” The three went out. God descended in a Pillar of Cloud and stood at the entrance to the Tent. He called Aaron and Miriam to him. When they stepped out, he said,
Listen carefully to what I’m telling you.
If there is a prophet of God among you,
I make myself known to him in visions,
I speak to him in dreams.
But I don’t do it that way with my servant Moses;
he has the run of my entire house;
I speak to him intimately, in person,
in plain talk without riddles:
He ponders the very form of God.
So why did you show no reverence or respect
in speaking against my servant, against Moses?9 The anger of God blazed out against them. And then he left. (Numbers 12:1-9, MSG)
Aaron and Miriam’s jealous reponse proved the were incapable of being the sort of people with whom God could freely interact–as He did with Moses. Moses, characterized by humility, couldn’t have cared less who had the inside track on “hearing God.” For Moses, the ability to hear God wasn’t prized as being especially important in the eyes of God. And this passage certainly seems to indicate that, from God’s perspective, a distinction was made between His speaking in visions or dreams and His speaking “intimately, in person, in plain talk without riddles.”
It becomes clear from the story that, though supernatural modes of communication were evident, they weren’t the ideal form of communication between God and the individual. In fact, the story even tells why: God’s ultimate desire isn’t to create a relationship based on occasional, periodic experiences of ambiguity–dreams and visions. His ultimate desire is to create an ongoing relationship of conversation….”
wow, am i seeking after dreams and visions or am i pursuing the kind of relationship with God that has the “ongoing relationship of conversation”?
do i crave the “special status” or do i care less about the “inside track”
oh that God would always speak to me.
chuckazooloo
