Promises, Promises.
I was listening to someone bring their appeal for help to the mayor of the city where she lived. Her group urgently needed some documents from a certain department of the city government and that department had verbally agreed to their request but had never given them the documents they needed. Her wording was a little unfortunate,” Please pay attention to us and give us your promise of help” The chairman was really ticked off. He asked the speaker if she was suggesting that the city council wasn’t paying attention, and reminded her impatiently that the city had already given a promise of help. The woman would have left feeling belittled except that another member of the board spoke up and thanked her for what she was doing and encouraged her to continue. The lesson could be that when we approach people who think themselves important we shouldn’t try to communicate our distress but instead express much gratitude and include a little flattery. .
If God were like that city council he would have given one promise to Abram and expected Abram to be content with that and remain confident through a long unspecified waiting time. God is not like that. He repeated his promise to Abram at least six times. (Six times that we know of) before the birth of Isaac. How nice you say; if only God would give me promises and repeat them. But God has; his word is full of promises from beginning to end. Every promise is available to you, because we are all God’s chosen people. Chosen meaning that God chose us before we chose him. Even before you see the fulfillment of those promises you can appropriate them and as you do so they will begin to be fulfilled. .
With the promise came instructions. First God instructed Abram to leave where he lived and go to place God would show him. When he got to that place God instructed him to walk about the land that his children would inherit. We have already applied this instruction to ourselves, firstly God calls us to begin a new life with him, and next he encourages us to explore all the different aspects of our life with God. The third instruction is to walk before God and be perfect.
That word ‘perfect’ really had me worried. In my thirties it caused me to feel guilt, failure and fear because I knew I was not and could not be perfect. I came into contact with a group of earnest Christians who really thought that they, but not me, were sinless. Later I realized that a person who imagines they are sinless does not understand what sin is.
A good translation of the Hebrew is to walk before God in integrity. Now there is word I can love! Occasionally we meet people who are genuine; their genuiness shines through all their actions. We can trust what they say, and we see that they are the same person in public as they are in private. They don’t have a division between what they do in worship and what they do at work. They have no private agenda but reveal their intentions in calm and clear conversations. Their emotions are neither suppressed nor out of control. Some of the pastors who cared for David and me when we were growing up were people like this. We can all be like this because it doesn’t mean we have no faults but that we can be open about the faults that we have rather than try to hide them.
When you were little did you ever have a Sunday School Teacher, or grandparent who in their effort to control your behavior warned you, “God is watching everything you do, he’s writing it down in his book” I rather shocked my well meaning grandma by replying, “He better be watching, that’s what he promised to do.” What a shame that people tell me their first impression of God was an angry God ready to jump on them. But then I stop and ask myself did they really believe that or are they just using that as an excuse for not liking God.
‘Walk before me’ has been translated as ‘walk in my presence.’ That is very consistent with the Hebrew. To walk in the presence of God is to be always aware of him. To scrutinize our own behavior by asking: is what I am about to do going to please God or offend him?
I feel that these three instructions roughly correspond to stages in our spiritual development. First of all we respond to God by stepping out into a new kind of life, a life shared with him. After we’ve been in this life a little while, God encourages to explore spiritual life, to see how many different practices and aspects there are and to have spiritual adventures. Then as we are becoming familiar with the spiritual life comes this instruction to always be aware of God’s presence, to subject our actions to the searchlight of his love and intelligence. I like the way the King James translates it, ‘walk before me’ because in another place God says to the huge army of pilgrims, I will go before you but also be your rear guard. That’s reassuring because if we begin to be open transparent people acting all of a piece with our hearts and our faith we might sometimes be in danger. For instance because we refuse to hate the people who do wicked things we may become very unpopular with the people around us who are reveling in hatred. (I recently heard a candidate say, The Christians want to hug terrorists, we want to kill them.) To refuse to hate and fear may make us very unpopular and that is why I like the translation that suggests that God is at my back as I walk before him. It’s the act of terrorism I hate, not the person, I don’t want to kill the terrorist I want the terrorist to stop doing terror.
The occasion when God gave the instruction to live in his presence with integrity was the occasion when God gave to Abraham his new name and instructed him how to place a sign on all the males in his household. That sign showed that they were children of God’s treaty with them. Ishmael also received this sign, making him also a child of the Holy treaty. God always keeps his end of the covenant.
God’s fourth instruction was the one that makes us shudder and we will come to that later.
When David died I could not endure the empty quiet house, I asked another widow how she managed and she replied, “Well, I live with God.” To walk in God’s presence is to have him with us in the awful empty places but also to have him with us when our baby grandchild looks into vacant space and laughs as though she sees something we cannot. To have him with us whether every one disapproves of us or whether everyone approves of us. It also means that we can scrutinize their disapproval or approval and ask whether it is deserved. If we have the answer in our hearts that what we have done is something that is honorable and fair, then we do not need to hide from the blazing light that shines in and around us as we walk with God.
Genesis 17:1
Isaiah 51:8 and 12
Version: God's Word Parsons press, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
I was listening to someone bring their appeal for help to the mayor of the city where she lived. Her group urgently needed some documents from a certain department of the city government and that department had verbally agreed to their request but had never given them the documents they needed. Her wording was a little unfortunate,” Please pay attention to us and give us your promise of help” The chairman was really ticked off. He asked the speaker if she was suggesting that the city council wasn’t paying attention, and reminded her impatiently that the city had already given a promise of help. The woman would have left feeling belittled except that another member of the board spoke up and thanked her for what she was doing and encouraged her to continue. The lesson could be that when we approach people who think themselves important we shouldn’t try to communicate our distress but instead express much gratitude and include a little flattery. .
If God were like that city council he would have given one promise to Abram and expected Abram to be content with that and remain confident through a long unspecified waiting time. God is not like that. He repeated his promise to Abram at least six times. (Six times that we know of) before the birth of Isaac. How nice you say; if only God would give me promises and repeat them. But God has; his word is full of promises from beginning to end. Every promise is available to you, because we are all God’s chosen people. Chosen meaning that God chose us before we chose him. Even before you see the fulfillment of those promises you can appropriate them and as you do so they will begin to be fulfilled. .
With the promise came instructions. First God instructed Abram to leave where he lived and go to place God would show him. When he got to that place God instructed him to walk about the land that his children would inherit. We have already applied this instruction to ourselves, firstly God calls us to begin a new life with him, and next he encourages us to explore all the different aspects of our life with God. The third instruction is to walk before God and be perfect.
That word ‘perfect’ really had me worried. In my thirties it caused me to feel guilt, failure and fear because I knew I was not and could not be perfect. I came into contact with a group of earnest Christians who really thought that they, but not me, were sinless. Later I realized that a person who imagines they are sinless does not understand what sin is.
A good translation of the Hebrew is to walk before God in integrity. Now there is word I can love! Occasionally we meet people who are genuine; their genuiness shines through all their actions. We can trust what they say, and we see that they are the same person in public as they are in private. They don’t have a division between what they do in worship and what they do at work. They have no private agenda but reveal their intentions in calm and clear conversations. Their emotions are neither suppressed nor out of control. Some of the pastors who cared for David and me when we were growing up were people like this. We can all be like this because it doesn’t mean we have no faults but that we can be open about the faults that we have rather than try to hide them.
When you were little did you ever have a Sunday School Teacher, or grandparent who in their effort to control your behavior warned you, “God is watching everything you do, he’s writing it down in his book” I rather shocked my well meaning grandma by replying, “He better be watching, that’s what he promised to do.” What a shame that people tell me their first impression of God was an angry God ready to jump on them. But then I stop and ask myself did they really believe that or are they just using that as an excuse for not liking God.
‘Walk before me’ has been translated as ‘walk in my presence.’ That is very consistent with the Hebrew. To walk in the presence of God is to be always aware of him. To scrutinize our own behavior by asking: is what I am about to do going to please God or offend him?
I feel that these three instructions roughly correspond to stages in our spiritual development. First of all we respond to God by stepping out into a new kind of life, a life shared with him. After we’ve been in this life a little while, God encourages to explore spiritual life, to see how many different practices and aspects there are and to have spiritual adventures. Then as we are becoming familiar with the spiritual life comes this instruction to always be aware of God’s presence, to subject our actions to the searchlight of his love and intelligence. I like the way the King James translates it, ‘walk before me’ because in another place God says to the huge army of pilgrims, I will go before you but also be your rear guard. That’s reassuring because if we begin to be open transparent people acting all of a piece with our hearts and our faith we might sometimes be in danger. For instance because we refuse to hate the people who do wicked things we may become very unpopular with the people around us who are reveling in hatred. (I recently heard a candidate say, The Christians want to hug terrorists, we want to kill them.) To refuse to hate and fear may make us very unpopular and that is why I like the translation that suggests that God is at my back as I walk before him. It’s the act of terrorism I hate, not the person, I don’t want to kill the terrorist I want the terrorist to stop doing terror.
The occasion when God gave the instruction to live in his presence with integrity was the occasion when God gave to Abraham his new name and instructed him how to place a sign on all the males in his household. That sign showed that they were children of God’s treaty with them. Ishmael also received this sign, making him also a child of the Holy treaty. God always keeps his end of the covenant.
God’s fourth instruction was the one that makes us shudder and we will come to that later.
When David died I could not endure the empty quiet house, I asked another widow how she managed and she replied, “Well, I live with God.” To walk in God’s presence is to have him with us in the awful empty places but also to have him with us when our baby grandchild looks into vacant space and laughs as though she sees something we cannot. To have him with us whether every one disapproves of us or whether everyone approves of us. It also means that we can scrutinize their disapproval or approval and ask whether it is deserved. If we have the answer in our hearts that what we have done is something that is honorable and fair, then we do not need to hide from the blazing light that shines in and around us as we walk with God.
Genesis 17:1
Isaiah 51:8 and 12
Version: God's Word Parsons press, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
posted by Jessie Coates at 11:25 PM
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