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