sometimes we forget

Well, sometimes my life just don't make sense at all
When the mountains look so big
And my faith just seems so small

So hold me Jesus, 'cause I'm shaking like a leaf
You have been King of my glory
Won't You be my Prince of Peace

And I wake up in the night and feel the dark
It's so hot inside my soul
I swear there must be blisters on my heart

So hold me Jesus, 'cause I'm shaking like a leaf
You have been King of my glory
Won't You be my Prince of Peace

Surrender don't come natural to me
I'd rather fight You for something I don't really want
Than to take what You give that I need
And I've beat my head against so many walls
Now I'm falling down, I'm falling on my knees

And this Salvation Army band is playing this hymn
And Your grace rings out so deep
It makes my resistance seem so thin

I'm singing hold me Jesus, 'cause I'm shaking like a leaf
You have been King of my glory
Won't You be my Prince of Peace

You have been King of my glory
Won't You be my Prince of Peace

-Rich Mullins, “Hold me Jesus”


Sorry, another long song. Please take the time to read it all. I needed to give you the whole song because it makes so much sense to me. I actually was going to give you another song, but the Lord led me to this one. It works.

Sometimes I forget. God has presenting Himself so many times in my life, but here I sit waiting for more. I listen to songs about Jesus, I work at a church, and sometimes I still forget. Things we cannot see can sometimes lose out to our life that actually is playing out all around us.

When I am tempted by pornography, or I think back to my chemically induced haze, I feel like I am lost all over again. And I forget.

But take heart dear soul, because I am not the only one to forget. If you take your handy Bible and you look through some of the first stories, you find some people who forgot big time. I will show you a few.

Let us set up the story. Moses has been told to lead God’s people, the Israelites, out of Egypt and into their promised land. Remember that in Egypt, these people were slaves, and they were not treated very nice at all.

Ok. So Moses is leading them out. God has a great big helping hand in this endeavor. Let’s look at a couple of examples of God in this adventure. They’re walking through the desert and-

“By day the Lord went ahead of them on their way in a pillar of cloud to guide them and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night.”-Exodus 13.21-22
Imagine God in front of you like that. Could you forget it?

Here is another one. This time, the Egyptians want their slaves back so they start chasing Moses and his followers. They reach the sea and panic. Maybe you have heard of Moses parting the red sea. Here is how it is portrayed in the Bible-

“Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land.” Exodus 14.21-22 imagine that, walking through the sea, it raging on either side of you. Could you forget?

One more. The people are grumbling that they had it better off in Egypt. They are hungry. So what does God do?

“I will rain down bread from heaven for you.” Says God.

What luck. These people knew that the Lord loved them. How could they not? It was evident every day that God was front and center, loving them, feeding them, guiding them. Could you forget?

“…the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, Is the Lord among us or not?” Exodus 17.7 What? How could they not know God was among them?

Again. Moses goes up a mountain to meet with the Lord. He is gone for a while. Here is what happened.

“When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, ‘Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”-Exodus 32.1

Can you believe that? They ended up making a golden calf to worship. Which make God pretty angry. Not surprising.

I often wonder how they could forget God so easily. He rained down bread from heaven to feed them and they forgot Him. They had it so easy compared to us now. Now we have to believe something we cannot see at all. How can we handle our lives knowing Jesus is truly right beside us?

I will tell you next week!