66 Love Letters

66 Love Letters

Love Letter Two:

Exodus

YOU MUST KNOW ME TO TRUST ME

God, what do You want me to hear as I read Exodus?”

“Hear this above all:

I will do whatever it takes to carry out My plan!

“I didn’t create you to be miserable or empty. My plan was, is, and always will be that you would share My joy. But you got yourself in such bad shape, so far away from Me, that you had no hope of real happiness. I couldn’t bear to leave you in that condition.

So I revealed My power by setting you free, My holiness by letting you know how you must live to stay close to Me, and My passionate love by moving in with you. All of that is in Exodus.”

“You’ve got to help me here, God. If that’s what Exodus is all about, why didn’t You just say that simply and clearly as You just did, rather than write such a long letter?”

“Listen carefully: until you hear My message wrapped up in the stories of real people, you won’t trust that My power could enter your story. And until you imagine what it was like to begin life in the desert by hearing Me lay down laws nobody could keep, you won’t feel the crushing weight of My holiness. But you must feel that weight to understand all that’s involved in letting unholy people get close to Me. And what’s involved is pictured carefully and powerfully in the tabernacle.

“The drama of the first eighteen chapters of My second love letter shows the lengths I must go to in order to free weak and helpless people from bondage to an evil power greater than themselves. Ask any sex addict what I’m talking about. Or consider it this way: I can and I will detach you from everything that numbs your sacred hunger for Me and makes you feel hungrier for something other than Me.

“But you will never on this earth depend fully enough on My power to live exactly as I want you to live. That’s why I had Moses write out the Ten Commandments and all those other rules, not to beat you down into self-hatred over never getting it right, but rather to lift you up into the liberating experience of looking bad in the presence of love. When you read Exodus 19Ð24 and see how particular I am about all the rules you should obey but never do, let the weight of My holiness draw you into the delights of My love. I still want to be with you.

“Don’t ever forget: I do have a plan, a plan to make you deliriously happy in the circle of My love. As you read Exodus 25Ð40 about all those architectural details about the tabernacle, realize the lengths I’m willing to go to be with you. Imagine Me, the God of the universe, clothed in splendor and arrayed in glory, living in, by My standards, a simple tent set up in a barren wilderness. Sure it was fancy, but compare it to what you imagine heaven to be. But that’s where I lived, just to be near people like you.

©2009 by Dr. Larry Crabb

Used with permission from Thomas Nelson Inc.