Thick darkness...

I am leaving Bongolo either Tuesday or Wednesday so i will have more to blog about as far as work and things like that go once i am in Libreville again. Bongolo is much more relaxed and secluded. A person like me can only handle that for so long...it has been a wonderful stay though, but i do miss my family back in Libreville dearly :). OH and Mama Mer comes home on Thursday! good week...this is gonna be a GREAT week. :)
Ok so on with Moses.
OH MY GOSH! I am pretty sure a giant cockroach just fell from the ceiling and landed near my feet. I cant find it right now....kill me? thanks...ok so anyway back to Moses. I have been jumping through Exodus back and forth, trying to figure this whole thing out. I still am working through that (when i figure it out i will let you know...don't hold your breath...) Ex 19 talks about how Moses went up to God, and i wrote on this in the beginning of my blog, but Moses is doing all these wonderful things and then Jethro comes in and says...woah woah wait a minute, you're doing this all wrong Moses! So Moses decides to go spend time with his creator and his deliverer. He goes up to the mountain never expecting what would happen next...He is given the Ten Commandments. The way this happens is interesting though. God tells Moses that he is coming to him in the form of a dense cloud so that people will hear him speaking (via thunder by the way...) and always trust Moses. God doesn't do this to be showy, or to set the example of his power, instead he does this so that the people will have something tangible to trust.
God speaks to Moses directly and says "ok Moses get up here...Now i want you to go back down and tell those Israelites that you and I need some alone time and they are not allowed to come into my presence. In fact, they cant even touch Mount Sinai, and if they do they will die. Oh yea and here are the 10 commandments." So Moses comes back down to tell them. I never realized that Moses came back down to tell the Israelites about the 10 commandments before going back up to receive some more of the law.
Moses came down to tell them about the 10 commandments and to stay away from Mount Sinai, but these next few verses get me so pumped...
Ex 20:18-21 says... When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance 19 and said to Moses, "Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die." 20 Moses said to the people, "Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning." 21 The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was
another translation puts verse 21 as "And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near to the obscurity where God was"
You mean, this is the same Moses who:
1. Was hunted as a newborn
2. then with a blink of an eye, he became Royalty.
3. After Murdering someone, he gets kicked out of his own land
4. Meeting God face to face saying how fearful he was to do anything because he had a stuttering problem
5. Had to go back to Egypt where he not only had to face the people of his past, but he had to go back to a Pharaoh who he probably lived with at one point in his life and tries to convince him that the God of the Hebrews is saying let the slaves go. Still using Aaron at this point to do all the talking because he is afraid still
6. Going through all of the plagues
7. The parting of the red sea
8. The Manna and Quail
9. The water rock incident.
10. He goes up to meet God after being reamed out by his Father-in-law to hear that he needs to go back down to tell the people that you need more time with God to show them the real way.
hmm...does anyone else feel for Moses here? I can't imagine how he feels or he stress of this task. I imagine he aged quickly, another story for another day though.
So he goes from being the shy, defensive, unwilling, Moses to the Moses we now have. We see Moses transforming before our eyes. This is a huge step for Moses. He steps into the darkness while everyone else steps back. He trusts God with everything he has, because he knows that there is no turning back once he makes this decision. He has decided, now he is stepping into the unknown. God was drawing into the obscure place. Webster says that obscurity is going into the unknown. Moses has no clue what this holds for him, but he does it...Why? Because Moses wanted God. He wanted to be obedient to what God was calling him to. He knew that God wanted him to tell the Israelites the law. That's it, he didn't know how God was going to do that or why, he just knew and had a certainty that this is what he needed to do to go where God was.
I now ask myself...am I going to be one of the Israelites who "remained at a distance" saying, "oh hey God. I am gonna stand over here where its safe with all my bagage and crap that i am holding on to because it looks to dark and stormy over there. I mean there sure is a lot of thunder and darkness up there, so i think I'm just gonna chill here. I don't want to give you all of my life because its so scandalous and dangerous to completely trust you because if i do that, i have absolutely no control. Just make sure you stay over there God...i don't want to die"

Side note:...Now I struggled with this for a little bit because I thought, well of course they are going to shrink back, you just got done telling them if they touch mount Sinani they are going to die, but we need to consider the consistency of the Israelites. They never listen, first of all. Second of all they consciously withdrew and stayed at a distance, not because God told them to, but because they had fear. It was a much different dynamic then i had realized....

Anyway....
Or can we be a church and generation of lovers who stand up and "approach the thick darkness where God is". I choose option two. I don't want anything less than Jesus, but i cant just stand at a distance. I need to start approaching the thick darkness. I think we all do, if we are honest with ourselves.
Lets approach this darkness together shall we? Keep each other accountable for being radically daring. I have no idea what the future holds for me, for Ty, for my family, but that's right where i am supposed to be. In the darkness, trusting God as my guide with all my might and strength(which comes from Him anyway...kinda ironic huh?) This is not a pep rally, or a "go get em" speech. It is a cry for the church to wake up and stop looking at God from a healthy distance. It is a cry that we would walk into the darkness, scared out of our minds, but yet with a peace comes with each step because we know that God is leading us there, and that He is our end result....
I'm going into the thick darkness....anyone with me?