It is sooo special how God work with us and talk to us, preparing our minds gently to drop revelation when the time is right… A while ago I was led to think of a “Place”, deeply thinking of “A place of being.” We sing songs of “God fill this place”, we pray prayers of “Lord, come down into this place.” And without me knowing it He started speaking to me about His presence, which is a place of being, not a place of visitation or to be moved around as and when we need it… He is all around us, His whole creation is evident of His majesty… His presence is permanently hovering over this place we call earth, be aware of it, you need to step into it, live in it… “Carriers of… His Presence.”
Similarly, the last few weeks I had the thought of “Be clothed” … it popped up quite often… “Clothe yourself, be dressed by…”, very subtly… I am usually quite aware and attentive of such, but I think I prematurely posted “Be Carriers… of His Character.”, even though it was in line with being undressed of death / burial clothes and be dressed by Jesus’ character… this week my eyes went open to something else that I would like to share…
During the week I went to visit a friend I haven’t seen for a long time, she is more of a mentor than a friend, the Jesus love she has is mind blowing; she is a firm carrier of God’s presence and of Jesus’ character… and surely a carrier of God’s people. Conversations with her always leads to revelations… she will sow seeds of knowledge that can keep my meditation time occupied for days.
She shed knowledge of the weapons of the enemy, which are always the same; shame, guilt, fear… The first man, not knowing better, failed to resist this, the 2nd man not only resisted it, He defeated it… By Him (Jesus) doing it, He equipped us and brought atonement for our sins.
But our God is a God of Faith, Love and Grace…. She worded it so beautifully “We have Faith through Love, wrapped in Grace.”
During her explanation of the above she referred to Adam… In Genesis 3 we are taught about the fall to sin… It caused guilt followed by fear and shame, they sewed clothes of fig leaves and hid themselves from God because they realized they were naked. Our conversation ended here as I had another appointment.
The thought of this kept me busy… “There is something else here… Holy Spirit, do what you do, share it with me.” I read Genesis 3 over and over… read and pray, read and think…
Before God sent Adam and Eve on their way, out of the Garden, He clothed them with coats of skin. Where did the skins come from? And why replace the fig leaves?
Adam and Eve dressed themselves with leaves to cover their shame of nakedness resulted from their awareness of the sin… Looking at the word “Leaf” elsewhere in the bible led me to Isaiah 64:6; ‘ For we have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteousness our best deeds of rightness and justice is like filthy rags or a polluted garment; we all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away far from God’s favor, hurrying us toward destruction.
This takes me back to Zechariah 3, with Joshua and his filthy rags, the same filthy rags God instructed to be removed from him, which will fade and wither; eventually have him standing in guilt and shame again, but God caused his iniquity to pass and clothed Him with rich and royal robes.
The lies (of shame, guilt and fear the enemy make us believe) have a cause and effect, resulting in us clothing ourselves with things to make us feel better… things that is short lived; greed, addictions, pornography, sexual immorality etc… these will fade and before long we will find ourselves worst off then when we have started, by choice we move away from God’s favor, and hurrying towards destruction. Nothing we try to do will ever come close to the value of the grace that Jesus’ sacrifice brought us… NOTHING will come close to it!!!! Neither will it bring any comfort, nor peace… stop trying, stop running from it.
But God comes and clothe us with…
For the skin to be present and available to make the coats, something had to be stripped of their skin… By conclusion it is believed that this was the first event of a sacrifice, and it was done by God himself, to cover Adam and Eve, and once again this is much deeper than just apparel… COVERING as He sent them into the unknown.
In the very next chapter Abel brought an offering of the first born of his flock, and it found favor with God, more over the offering of Cain’s fruit offering… it is clear that blood being shed finds favour with God, I mean that’s what Jesus went through for our atonement.
Let us quickly look at the detail of the events in Genesis 3 and try make sense of it in the natural realm and let common sense shed light on this.
The devil deceived Adam and Eve, they committed sin. They immediately knew what they did was wrong, they felt shame, guilt and fear. They clothed themselves with leaves to cover their shame and sin. They then hid themselves from God. God found them hiding, asking “Who told you that you are naked?” God then spoke to them about the consequences of their choices and their giving into the temptation by taking action in it. God then made them coats out of skin and leather… the one and only God, the God that created heaven and earth with a spoken word, this same God, took time to make them coats; He could just have spoken a word to clothe them, He did not… there is significance in this, which make me believe and agree with the studiers of the Word, that God made an offering of sacrifice and used the skins of the sacrificed animal to clothe them. Then, somewhere in the transition from fig leaves to leather they had to be stripped naked, they stood in front of God with no covering, even in their recent sin they stood in their purest mortal form before God, with the withered leaves being removed, stripped naked, then clothed with skin.
God clothed them with the sacrifice!!!! But wait… Jesus was the ultimate, once and for all sacrifice… does this mean we need to be clothed in the sacrifice, being Jesus? ABSOLUTELY YES, we need THIS covering!!! We cannot be without it!!!
Stripped Naked
In one of my previous posts, Be true to yourself, I wrote about coming to the realization that we are absolutely nothing without God… being honest and true to yourself will show the deficit and short fall of your true identity, which is in Christ. You can lie and pretend to the onlookers, but deep inside you know and God sees what you know, He knows it all too well; this is the moment when the leaves are removed and we humbly stand “naked” before our God with a repentive heart… and it is exactly here, at the point of humility, in front of our God of Love, Faith and Grace that He will clothe us with the gift of righteousness, when He replaces the heart of stone.
And by common sense, Joshua (in Zechariah 3) was also stripped naked between the filthy rags (as God removed His iniquity from him) and clothed him with glorious and royal robes.
My dear friend, the darkness is always there, the snakes are always present, but so is God and His great light… be true to yourself, humble yourself and allow God to strip away the temporal and clothe you with the eternal… Your true and royal identity is found in Christ, thus be clothed with Christ’s character, this will be developed as you are living a life in God’s presence.
Let me leave you with an afterthought with one of my favorite scriptures (LOL, I have a lot of favorites, each for every season, flavor of the week) which is 1 John 4:17… this scripture is with such a beautiful background of LOVE, true LOVE, John goes on by saying; ‘Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world.‘
I pray that this penny just dropped for you, if not, spend some time in 1 John 4 and ask for revelation, and rebuke the enemy’s lies, because you ARE whole, you ARE complete, Jesus paid the price, It’s DONE… “As He (Jesus) is, so are we in this world.” This is quoted in the present tense and in the realm we are currently treading in, this place, we call it world.
God’s first instructions to us were “Be fruitful, multiply and have dominion.” You will only bear fruit if you live in His presence, strive and allow for His character to be formed in you; having His character will give authority and dominion to step on serpents’ heads… Go now and duplicate, copy and replicate it, become fishers of men.
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