Live Free with Josh Howerton - Communication With the Almighty | Ep. 151 | Monday September 4, 2023

Episode Date: September 4, 2023

Jump back in with us as Pastor Mike specifically focuses on Moses' experience with the burning bush, a symbol of God's inexhaustible and self-existent nature. Holy ground is not the location, but God's presence that makes it sacred. You, like Moses, get to enter into that holy ground every time you seek God in prayer. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's Word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.comit. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, welcome to the Daily Drive. I'm Mike Bro, and together we spend a few minutes trying to get to know God better. And man, is that a worthy pursuit? And I know that some of you listen every day on the way to work or on the way to school or some of you might be on an elliptical machine or you're out taking a walk. You might be sitting on the porch sipping coffee or getting ready to turn out the lights and go to bed wherever you are. Hey, thanks for tuning in. We're incorporating talking to God, listening to God, singing to God, being still with God, diving into His Word to experience his greatness and his love for us.

us. We said that what comes into our mind we think about God is the most important thing about us. I mean, how we see God shapes how we see ourselves. It shapes how we see other people, how we see our life, our purpose, and our destiny. So I've been praying that our short time together each day will help us get to know the true and living God. And this week we're looking at an encounter that a guy named Moses had with God. It's kind of a famous scene from the pages of an Old Testament book called Exodus. You may have heard that earlier, in his life, he tried to intervene in a hostile situation, ended up killing a guy. And even though he was by birth a Hebrew, he was living as a prince of Egypt at the time, and his anger over the

mistreatment of a Hebrew slave got the best of him. And he explodes on the one doing the mistreatment, kills him, and tries to cover the whole thing up. Long story short, cover up doesn't work. He has to leave the palace. He has to run for his life, flee Egypt, and he's been hiding out for 40 years. and I'm sure he was full of regret, shame, confusion, maybe even some anger and bitterness, and probably feeling pretty worthless. Now Moses was an educated guy with a ton of potential, but now all that pretty much gone. You ever feel like that? Maybe you have a ton of regret, remorse, guilt, shame even, rolling around on the inside of you.

Maybe you think you'll never recover from what you've done that there is no way God would want anything to do with me. Well, like we said last episode, God meets us in the middle of our mess. And he does that with Moses. We read how he was out on the backside of a mountain called Sinai just out there in a wilderness tending sheep when he sees this bush on fire.

And he notices that it's burning, but it's not burning up. And he says, that's weird. I'm going to go check that out. And it's from that bush that God calls his name, Moses, Moses. And you know that had to freak him out. I mean, Bernie Bush aside, it still blows me away that God even knows my name. I mean, all the times I've tried to hide, lay low, isolated in my shame.

He still knows where I am, and he knows who I am. And he lovingly calls for me to encounter him. Now, there's a couple of cool things, I think, in this little passage. The first is this desert shrub, this bush that won't burn up, I think is representative of the nature of the self-combusting, inexhaustible, inextinguishable God. I mean, he is the self-existent one. We had to have a mother. God did not.

We need food to survive. God does not. We need electricity for energy and heat. God is his own power source. We can get sick, hurt, kill, distracted, swayed, scared, but God is never in danger, peril or jeopardy. He never wavers, never sleeps, never gets nervous, never burns out. Never has?

Never will. So right in the middle, make that the far side of the desert, Moses is having an encounter with the eternal God. And God says to him, the place you're standing is holy ground, not because this rocky sandy land is holy, but because I am here. You're having an encounter with the living God. Take off your shoes. I think that this is a very cool thing.

I may be totally wrong about this. And I know I'll never be able to comprehend the absolute holiness, the otherliness of God. But I have a good friend who's a respected Old Testament professor at a seminary. And we were talking about this passage one day. And we both were wondering about this whole take off your shoes thing. Because back in Old Testament times, anything holy had to be covered. When they would pass the Torah, for instance, they would wrap it in cloth.

So this take off your shoes? You would think if logic follows it would be, hey, Moses, this is holy ground. So put on your boots and three extra pair of socks. But maybe just maybe God was saying to Moses, take off your shoes. I want to get skin on skin with you. I want to get that personal with you. I want you to touch what's holy. Feel the bird of my consuming love.

And God wants to get skin on skin with you too. In fact, God would later wrap himself in flesh and live among us in the person of Jesus. And Jesus, the Holy Son of God, went around touching untouchables, restoring dignity and worth, embracing the broken, including those who thought they had done way too much, gone way too far, and were way too unlovable. And I pray that you would encounter that God today. His love for you is transcendent. It is holy.

It is otherly. It makes me want to take off my shoes and experience this touch. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturdays at 6 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. Also, if this podcast was helpful to you, would you be sure to rate, review, and share this podcast to help get the word out?

For more information about all digital ministries of Lake Point, visit lakepoint.compt.combe.combe. Church slash daily drive.