“The Dawn is Breaking”

A Poem, written for the 15th anniversary of my conversion, December 13, 2010.

Reflections on Genesis 32, Exodus 33-34, and 2 Corinthians 3.

"Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." 2 Cor. 3:17-18

"The Dawn is Breaking"

What we were meant to be

Before the world began

His Image –

Goodness and Perfection – Glorified

Our eyes were veiled

And we lost the Brightness of the Dawn

The air we breathe, so far from Him

The world just a shadow of True Reality

How long and how far

Have we been separated

From our True Love, Our True Home?

Exiles to a Far Country

Flaming swords barring the Way

Under the Ban,

No longer permitted in His Presence

Is there a Way to make it back?

He came to rescue us

To set us free from sin’s dark curse

To give us life, to restore His Image in us

He became the curse for us,

Conquered death and rose again,

And now we can be forgiven,

Restored and Justified.

His Grace is able to Purify

And Glorify our Souls

We are His, We are His, We are His!

We shall reign with Him as

His Beloved Bride, The Bride of the Crucified,

The Bride of the Resurrected One.

We are His, We are His, We are His!

The Dawn is Breaking,

Do you see your Self as He sees You?

We are His Beloved Bride,

We are Forgiven and Made New

Purified, Holy, and Complete in Him.

He is All, He is All, He is All we can Imagine!

He is Light, He is Truth,

He is Majesty and Perfection.

He is Joy, He is Desire,

He is Who we were created for.

He is All, He is All,

He is All We’ve Ever Wanted,

He is All We’ll Ever Need.

Do we have the courage to remove the veil?

Do we want to see our Selves as He sees us?

Can it be True?

We are His? We are His! We are His! We are His!

Let it be True –

Magnify, Glorify, Transform, and Renew

Your Image in me!

I want to be Your Beloved Bride

I want to radiate Your Glory, welling up inside of me

I want to be A Worthy Bride for You

Give me strength and courage

Give me eyes to see You

Please show me Your Glory.

I Seek Your Presence, I Seek Your Face.

You are All, You are All, You are All to me,

My Beloved, My Joy, My Every Desire,

My King and My God.

The Dawn is Breaking and

I release all my old life to You

I am Yours and

You are Mine.

I am Your Own,

Glorified.

The Dawn is Breaking

I am Living Where the Air is Thin

And I see You,

My Beloved, My Joy, My Every Desire,

My King and My God.

And now I see me as you see me,

Glorified.

In Your Light,

I see Light.

The Dawn is Breaking.

I am His.

Last week I said to God, “You have said to me, ‘I am the God Who Knows Your Name.’ You know me, O God – all of my weaknesses, all about me.  Lord, you know my name – who I am, my true identity.  Lord, reveal me to me as You see me.  Convict me of my sin and transform me.  Teach me Your ways – teach me how to be like You. Set me free from the tyranny of Self. O Holy Spirit, may my one desire be to love God with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength – before all other things that distract me and pull me away from You.”

I did not know that God would answer this prayer for me so quickly and so beautifully. It says in Psalm 36:9 “In Thy Light, we see Light.”  How true this is!  When He shines His light in our hearts, we see the only True Light – His Truth - and we are transformed.

For the past year I have been asking God to “Please show me your glory,” just as Moses did – to “let all of His Goodness pass in front of me.”  I have asked to God to teach me his ways that I may know Him.  As I have prayed this semester, over and over again God has revealed Himself to me in profound and life-transforming ways:

He is the God Who Knows My Name.  He is the God Who Chose to Become Nothing and Humbled Himself and Became Obedient to Death.  He is the God Who Purifies from All Unrighteousness.  He is Love – Unbounded, Vast, and Free.  He is the God Who Has Known Me, Who Has Laid His Hand Upon Me (Psalm 139). He is The God Who Stays With Me. He is the God Who Rejoices and Sings Over Me.  He is the God Who Calls Me ‘Beloved.’ He is the God Who Cannot Stop Loving His People.  He is the Only True Reality, Worth all to Find and to Keep. He is the God of All Power in Heaven and On Earth.  He is the God Who Wants Us to Trust Him.  He is the God Who is Beyond All Fear, All Doubt, All Pain, All Anguish, All Hate, All Sorrow, All Malice, All Pride, All Selfishness, All Contempt, All Envy, All Competition, All Evil. He is Good, Trustworthy, and True. All His Pathways Are Love and Truth.

There are more ways He has revealed Himself to me, but I am limiting them due to space considerations.  I have not been placed in the cleft of the Rock as Moses was, and I have not met with Him face-to-face as Moses did, but I have encountered and experienced Him beyond all my hopes and dreams.  Last week, when I asked God to reveal me to me as He sees me, I expected to see myself again as I mentioned in my last blog – a sinner, deserving nothing from God, having no rights, not even the right to exist apart from Him.  But God surprised me and removed the veil from my eyes once again.  All semester the Holy Spirit has been prodding me to go back and read “Till We Have Faces” by C. S. Lewis.  That book is about spiritual formation, and when I went back and read the last few chapters, I realized that the main character, Orual, had to have 2 veils removed before she had a “face.”  The first veil to be removed was to see herself as she really was in the world – a sinner who worshiped herself her whole life – self-centered, resentful of the gods, demanding her rights.  The second veil to be removed was to see herself as God sees her – as His beloved, as belonging to Him, as His Bride, and as His Glorified Possession.  She realizes that He is the Answer to all of Her questions.

We have a tendency to feel guilty and to feel the weight and the burden of our sinfulness, but in Christ Jesus, God does not view us this way any longer spiritually. No. He remembers our sins no more. He is the Lord Our Sanctifier and the Lord Our Righteousness. Now He sees us as His pure, spotless Bride.  We are clothed with Christ.  We are His.  God answered my prayer and surprised me by showing me that in Christ I am glorified and sanctified, and I am His Beloved. I am His.

The fact that we are His is often also seen, I think, in a somewhat negative light, because it means we are not our own. But in reality, what could be more wonderful and good than to belong to Him? To belong to the King of Kings, the Lord of Hosts? To be His treasured possession? God is All that is Good, Perfect, True, and Wonderful.  He wants us. To be chosen by Him is the greatest thing there is.  It is a wonder that Christians don’t run around and exclaim, “We are His! We are His! We are His!” all the time. What a glorious, beautiful thing it is to be His! We are His!  So good.

I believe Moses must have had a glimpse of this reality, too. For after God reveals Himself to Moses in the cleft of the rock, this is how Moses responds:

“Moses made haste to bow low toward the earth and worship. He said, "If now I have found favor in Your sight, O Lord, I pray, let the Lord go along in our midst, even though the people are so obstinate, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your own possession."

He asks God to make them His Own.  The face of Moses radiated God’s glory after this, and he had to cover his face to keep the Israelites from staring at it. But he removed it when he went to talk to God.  In 2 Corinthians 3 it says this:

“But if the ministry of death, in letters engraved on stones, came with glory, so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, fading as it was, how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory? For if the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory. For indeed what had glory, in this case has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it. For if that which fades away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory.

Therefore having such a hope, we use great boldness in our speech, and are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not look intently at the end of what was fading away. But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ. But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”

We are being transformed into His Image, a beautiful Bride fit for the King of Kings. This is who we are in Christ Jesus.  How can we not be changed and transformed by this knowledge?  I sense this is something beyond “awakening,” beyond even “revival.” This is so much more than even sanctification. This is truly a second act of grace. The first is to recognize we are sinners and need a Savior, and to receive His forgiveness and pardon. The second, now I see, is to know we are His, His very own possession, and to receive this honor with great joy. We are The Beloved of the King. We are The Bride of Christ, clothed in His Righteousness. How can we not live with unveiled faces, radiating the Glory of Christ that is within us? Surely, this knowledge and this truth transform us and give us a passionate desire to live completely surrendered to Him, the Lord of Glory, Our Beloved, Our King. This is a Truth which must be experienced to be truly known, it must be more than intellectual consent. Surely, this is a Truth revealed to us by Our Father in heaven. We are His!

May we now “live up to what we have already obtained” as His Beloved Bride, as His Own Possession, as those Clothed in Christ. What grace, what wonderful grace!

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus, I await Thy second Advent! Come, come and claim Thine Own Possession, and take me as Thine Own! You are All, and I adore You! 

Written for the 15th anniversary of my conversion, December 13, 2010

Two Questions

This past August, during a prayer time, the Lord asked me, "Who do YOU say I am?" I sat in stunned silence, unable to answer. Has the Lord ever directly asked you that question? Finally, all I could whisper was, "You know, Lord." He replied, "I am the God Who Knows Your Name."

I was stunned because He was revealing my heart to me, and He was showing me that He is the Only One who knows, really knows, me, and the only One who is capable of telling me my name - my identity. I don’t know myself, but He knows my true Self.  He said to me, "Your identity is NOT that YOU know ME. It is that I know YOU." I was slain and could only lay prostrate before Him. I realized that many of my prayer meetings, emails, and preaching have been for my own glorification, in a desperate attempt for an identity. The identity the world gives us is short-lived, false, and never satisfying. I feel like a Pharisee because I realized I have been using my spirituality like a piece of jewelry or some fancy garment in order to be noticed and praised by others, to feel that I have worth and value. In essence, I have been treating God like He is some cheap trinket to flash around, that I use to get attention. I've never felt so convicted or sorrowful over my sin.

Over the past few weeks, I began reading the Bible from front to back, and when I came to Genesis 32, the Lord overwhelmed me again, with this question: “What is your name?”  Just like he asked Jacob that question as he wrestled with him.  He had revealed Himself to me as the God Who Knows My Name, but I never thought to ask Him, “What is my name? Who really am I?”  Was God allowing me the adventure of self discovery? This question caused me to think about my given name and what it means.  “Cathy Ann” means “Pure Grace.”  I am sad to admit that I’ve always thought of this from a selfish point of view – that God gave me as a gift to the world (I KNOW!  How arrogant is THAT?!). I realized this time, however, that in reality, my name is true in the sense that my very life is a gift to me from God. I have done nothing to deserve being called from nothingness into existence.  Every breath, each moment, is pure gift from God to me.  I exist simply because of God’s grace and His goodness.  Like Jacob, I needed to wrestle with God to see my true self.

Jacob means “deceiver” or “one who grasps.”  Surely when he spoke his name to God in this divine wrestling match he was finally seeing the truth – the truth about himself, but also the truth about God. God has been leading me on the same journey of self discovery.  Once again I realize I have been believing lies and not seeing the truth. My heart and the world would tell me “You are a gift to others.”  No.  My life is a gift to me from God. My life is gift, pure grace to me.  I do not deserve to exist, to breathe, to BE.  Surely, like Jacob, all of my life I, too, have been a fraud and a deceiver. How can any of us hope to be transformed to be someone who is really real, who is genuine, who is true?  The only hope is again through grace – sanctification is a gift that comes through God alone. Only He can transform us to be like Him, the Only True Being.  None of our feeble and sad attempts to make ourselves true and right and holy – none of our plans, rules, or strategies will work. We must surrender totally to Him to become who we were meant to be in Christ Jesus.

I’ve been praying for revival for Bethel for a long time, and I have often asked the questions, “WHY do we want revival? What really IS revival?”  As I have encountered the Holy Spirit, I keep coming back to the same answer: to be immersed in His Presence.  In His Presence, who can stand?  Only when we have the veil pulled back and become aware of God’s presence and His absolute Holiness, his transcendence and his “otherness” do we begin to see ourselves for who and what we really are.  I know God has been revealing connections to me between His two questions to me, “Who do YOU say I am?” and “What is your name?” and revival and Jacob’s wrestling with God.  I think I have finally understood the connections.

When Jacob wrestles with God, God does not overcome Jacob, but He simply tells him to let go because the dawn is breaking.  God himself never lets go of Jacob.  All of his life, God had been with Jacob, and He went wherever Jacob went, allowing Jacob to have control of his own life.  But as God wrestles with him, God manifests himself and asks the question, “What is your name?”  He is challenging Jacob to see himself as he really is. The last time Jacob was asked this question was when he deceived his father into believing he was his brother Esau and then stole his blessing. All of His life Jacob took matters into his own hands to try and control his destiny.  God had revealed Himself to Jacob at Bethel and told him, "I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”  But, Jacob had not believed God’s promises that He would bless Jacob and be with Him. He had not trusted God. Now, as he wrestles in God’s manifest presence Jacob is finally aware of himself, and he surrenders to God and lets go.  The result? Now God has Jacob, and now Jacob goes with God. 

We also see Jesus wrestling in the Garden of Gethsemane – will He allow the Father to be in control, will he surrender to God’s will? Jesus responds and restores humanity by trusting in the God Who Knows His Name. Jesus knew the Father and trusted His promises to raise Him from the dead and exalt him. Sanctification and the baptism of the Holy Spirit are similar to Jacob’s encounter with God.  When we are born again, we receive the Holy Spirit and He is always with us; He goes wherever we go. But when we are baptized and filled with the Spirit, we see ourselves as we really are and surrender all control of our lives to Him.  Wherever He goes, we follow. The receiving of the Spirit and the baptizing of the Spirit are two separate events (John 20: 21, Acts 2). 

Revival is about God’s people being immersed in His Spirit, seeing God for who He really is in all of His holiness, and seeing ourselves as we are and then surrendering control to Him.  When this occurs, God pours out his blessing and many lives are saved.  Revival is not about miracles, signs, and wonders, it is all about surrender to God and trusting in all of His promises and who He says He is; it is about letting go and no longer wrestling with God and our identity, but letting God tell us who we are in Christ and letting Him be in control.

“Who do you say I am?”

“What is your name?”