There Won't Be Anything Normal About It

Once again we find ourselves on the journey between the Spring feasts, from Passover to Shavu'ot (Pentecost).  Every year during this time I am reminded what these 50 days are to be about.  Even as this Passover was a totally unique, God-ordained time of each family being in their own household, applying the blood of the lamb to the door posts, so now we begin the "wilderness journey" like the Israelites.  They left Egypt and life as they knew it.  We have left life as we knew it in America too. The similarities continue to bubble up in my spirit.

So, what was the purpose of the wilderness journey - that long trek on the way to the Promised Land ?  God had one very important, vital purpose for taking His people on such a long, difficult road and it is explained simply in Deuteronomy 8:2: Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.

Again I see the parallel He is making right now in our journey between Passover and Pentecost.  Still prevented from experiencing life as we knew it in "Egypt," we are trying to find our way through this strange wilderness time and God is humbling us and testing us in order to know what is in our hearts.  We are not talking here about getting a Covid 19 test! We are talking about our attitudes. Do we REALLY want to go back to the "normal" we knew before this virus changed everything?  Or could we use this time to examine our hearts and truly find what needs to change?  Perhaps we can peer back into the past to see what things and activities were highest on our priority list. To what were we giving our valuable time and energy? Did it really matter? Or have we found something more meaningful in this lock-down time?  Maybe you're finding precious time with your family at the dinner table, that was never possible before.  Maybe, in the stillness, your spirit is yearning to know who God really is and you've found yourself drawn to worship you are seeing online.  Maybe your marriage is healing because you have some time to give one another.

He is testing our hearts to see whether or not we would keep His commands. And when we truly search out His commands, we can find (in Romans 13:10), that the "sum of the Torah is Love."  I wrote a song about that a number of years ago, when I was studying the Torah and my heart was so impassioned to learn how to walk as my Messiah walked. I was trying to make it really complicated, but then He showed me, through His Word, that if we REALLY approached every person and every situation with a Godly love, we wouldn't need the commandments. If you loved God with all your heart, and put no other gods before Him, would you steal or kill or commit adultery or lie?

We must not waste this 50-day wilderness journey.  We must not long to "go back to normal, " but rather look with great joy and anticipation for the fulfillment of Pentecost, when the people are filled with a supernatural outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the Bride is made ready for her Bridegroom.  And then, even after that, keep your eyes looking up, for beyond these tests, these birth pains, there IS a birth coming -- the birth OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD!  That won't be back to "normal," my friends. There won't be anything normal about it. 
Matthew 24:29-31:
“Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

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