Seeing God Amongst The Clouds

On numerous occasions people will share something with me that they are convinced is from the bible. Recently when I was helping a family arrange a funeral they wanted to know what book and chapter the Footprints prayer came from.

To their surprise they discovered although it was based on scripture, it was not a direct quote from scripture.

Also many of us have beliefs and ideas about God,

that we have received from family and friend over time.

It is important that we check these out against scripture itself.

Some of these are quite accurate, whilst others at best distort and at worst conflict with what God is saying through His word.

They are based on cleverly invited ideas and stories.

One of the issues that exist is that some people want a nice neat story of Jesus.

One without any paradoxes or inconsistencies.

And they soon begin to feel a little uncomfortable when we begin searching the scriptures together because the story of Jesus as revealed in the scriptures is not a nice neat story,

it is an eye witness account.

Now people working in insurance claims and police investigating crimes have said

when you have eye witness accounts

most of the story will be the same,

however there will be discrepancies, slight variations,

some witnesses will emphasis when aspect of the story,

others another.

And when we look at particularly the four Gospels this is the exact case.

The Gospels are four eye witness accounts of Jesus life, death and resurrection.

They are not all the same, but they are eye witness accounts.

They are not a nice neat story.

This is not a problem,

in fact a policeman once told me,

the times he get suspicious that the story is not true is when the story is too neat.

That all eye witnesses tell exactly the same story,

with the same words.

He said rarely is this possible, because each of the witnesses saw what happened from a different advantage point.

So we need to be aware of the cloud of our desire to have a nice neat story of Jesus.

The Good News is what we have in the bible are accounts of people who were around with Jesus,

and not only use to tell us what Jesus said, but to reveal how he created a future for us.

Now lets turn to Matthew chapter 17 verse 4

After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. 2 There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. 3 Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

4 Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”

Peter wanted to keep this experience on the mountain.

And this is a cloud for us too, to keep Jesus and our experience with Him to ourselves.

Some people say that many of us read only part of verse 9 of chapter 17

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, “Don’t tell anyone what you have seen,

Often we are very comfortable with this section of scripture, however we need to read the complete verse.