Nothing satisfies both my craving for more knowledge and more relationship than reading the Bible. I praise the God who brought me here and gave me the ability to say that! The veil lifted high and torn down has changed my life. Has it yours?
I turned forty this year. On its approach, I felt less than excited to turn the big 4 – 0. I was embarrassed to be found as old as 40. As the year has progressed, I find it freeing, like maybe I finally do have a right to share something resembling “wisdom.” I even decided to let my hair turn gray (which could change). In Beth Moore’s bible study Entrusted, she says that 40 was considered in Bible times as the precipice of adulthood. Here I was thinking I was standing on the edge of death and doom by a silly number. She says life is still beginning, so I am taking 40 as street cred.
However, midlife and staring at the possibility of death coming soon does change you, mold you, and is a very real, sometimes crisis. So what seems silly on paper is an opportunity to grow closer to Christ, and can be very real. I had started letting my mind and my thoughts overtake truth.
Jesus stepped in as I turned to Him and His word over and over again. I’d seen His word become living and active, but this time I knew something about a living and active word I’d not known before. Maybe my heart was primed to receive the seeds.
In all my forty years, I’m not sure I lived the true Christian life. It feels like this year steps forward in the right direction. After all the writing/blogging, sharing interesting tidbits, teaching the Bible for over 20 years, etc. I am not sure I lived a true transformational life. Maybe I am also being too hard on myself, but I can say with certainty that I’ve never known God as well as I do now. I’ve never wanted Him as much as I do now, I’ve never broken free as much as I am now. Somewhere in the last year, I was falling deep into a pit, and I learned how with the help of the Holy Spirit to pull myself out. I have fallen deeper in love than I ever imagined.
Earlier, when we were all awaiting the solar eclipse, I kept thinking of how the created is a big giant metaphor for the spiritual. The sun is like God. The moon is like his people, reflecting His light, and so on. The eclipse reminded me of the time God hid his face from Moses with his hand while hiding him in the cleft of a rock (Exodus 33:22-23). None of us could stare directly at the sun during the eclipse. None of us can fix our eyes directly on God (not without Christ as mediator). The sun was covered for a moment as if our eyes were covered by God’s hand while His glory passed by. So many gazed at the eclipse and didn’t know God.
2 Corinthians talks about a veil covering the eyes of unbelievers just as a veil covered Moses (2 Corinthians 3). To the unbeliever, the veil has not been lifted. When one turns to the Lord, the veil is lifted. Our main work as Christians in regards to unbelievers is to keep sharing the glorious Gospel truth, so that the Holy Spirit can lift the veil.
As believers, we gaze on the glory of God through Jesus. None of us see the full Glory of the Father, except that it is veiled or hidden in Christ. One day when we are all glorified, we will see the majesty of the Father also. That’s why we fix our eyes on the Christ. He, and He alone, makes it possible for us to gaze at God.
As I was thinking of this veil, I couldn’t help but think of the other veil, the one that was torn when Christ died, the one that kept the priests safe from the Holy of Holies – the curtain divider between the Holy of Holies and the Holy Place where the priests were allowed to enter. The veil found in the tabernacle and again in the Temple. It was the divider between God and sinful man. When Jesus died, it physically ripped from top to bottom, giving us access directly to God. We the people become the temple of God. He is in me. I can go to him at all times. What a marvelous mystery! I can approach the throne of grace with confidence.
The veil lifted high and torn down! I can view the glory of God, but I am being transformed from one degree of glory to another. The more I know His glory and see it, the more I become more of that same glory. I’m not sure my newfound glory shows me any different to others than I was yet. In my heart though, I am being refined as gold.
However, one day, Jesus will return. There will be a final day, with no veils, even the unbeliever will see and know, but it will be too late. This motivates me to share how the veil lifted high and torn down is available now. Yet, I marvel at the Glory I will one day behold, the Glory unveiled by Christ, the Father’s full glory. My limited mind cannot comprehend it, so I await this glorious hope of a new body I am to receive. The hope of Glory Paul preaches. This Paul, who writes from jail reminds me, it is a glorious unveiled hope indeed. So I keep reading and keep believing. It strengthens me when I am weak. Daily, I grow deeper in love with a marvelous mystery, Christ in me.
This fall, a resource I’ve written on Romans 8 will be available for you to help you walk from defeat to victory. It will be free for blog subscribers and available in print on Amazon. If you are receiving this via email, please share the good news of this free resource and click reply if you’d like to do an online study together.
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