Entering Covenant
Tony Nester
Exodus 19:1-8
Frederica Mathewes grew up in South Carolina and in the religion of the Roman Catholic Church. She reports that when she was 8 years old she experienced a burst of religious fervor and thought she would be a Roman Catholic Nun. That desire faded away and by the time she was 13 years old she had begun to doubt and then reject Christianity. Eventually she identified herself with Hinduism because she judged it to be the most colorful of all the world religions.
But here spiritual search continued. One day she and her husband were sightseeing in Dublin, Ireland and walked into a church. I'll let her tell the rest of the story:
We're admiring the windows and altar and so forth. In a corner of the church there was a small altar with a white marble statue that showed Jesus' heart exposed on his chest with flames coming out of the top and thorns wrapped around the heart. As I was looking at this, I suddenly realized that I was on my knees. And as if a radio inside of me suddenly clicked on, I could hear a voice. I didn't hear it with my ears, but it was like a presence that filled me. The voice said, "I am your life. You thought that your life was your history, your name, your personality. You thought that your life was the fact that your heart beats. But that is not your life. I am your life. I am the foundation of everything else in your life." It was pretty incontrovertible who it was that was speaking to me…"
I started reading the Bible, and I found that I just disagreed with Jesus about a lot of things. But something had happened to me in that church in which I realized that I didn't know everything about the world. [1]
That's a burning-bush-like experience much like Moses had undergone — some physical object (a bush for Moses and a stature for Frederica Matthewes) bursts into spiritual awareness, and then one hears or senses inwardly the voice of God addressing the deepest part of you.
Moses' e ...
Tony Nester
Exodus 19:1-8
Frederica Mathewes grew up in South Carolina and in the religion of the Roman Catholic Church. She reports that when she was 8 years old she experienced a burst of religious fervor and thought she would be a Roman Catholic Nun. That desire faded away and by the time she was 13 years old she had begun to doubt and then reject Christianity. Eventually she identified herself with Hinduism because she judged it to be the most colorful of all the world religions.
But here spiritual search continued. One day she and her husband were sightseeing in Dublin, Ireland and walked into a church. I'll let her tell the rest of the story:
We're admiring the windows and altar and so forth. In a corner of the church there was a small altar with a white marble statue that showed Jesus' heart exposed on his chest with flames coming out of the top and thorns wrapped around the heart. As I was looking at this, I suddenly realized that I was on my knees. And as if a radio inside of me suddenly clicked on, I could hear a voice. I didn't hear it with my ears, but it was like a presence that filled me. The voice said, "I am your life. You thought that your life was your history, your name, your personality. You thought that your life was the fact that your heart beats. But that is not your life. I am your life. I am the foundation of everything else in your life." It was pretty incontrovertible who it was that was speaking to me…"
I started reading the Bible, and I found that I just disagreed with Jesus about a lot of things. But something had happened to me in that church in which I realized that I didn't know everything about the world. [1]
That's a burning-bush-like experience much like Moses had undergone — some physical object (a bush for Moses and a stature for Frederica Matthewes) bursts into spiritual awareness, and then one hears or senses inwardly the voice of God addressing the deepest part of you.
Moses' e ...
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