Mike Bickle emphasizes the beauty of God and the importance of beholding His glory as a means of transformation. He explains that as we gaze upon God's beauty through His Word and creation, we are gradually transformed into His image, highlighting the partnership between our beholding and the Holy Spirit's work. Bickle stresses that understanding God's personality—His mercy, grace, and long-suffering—awakens love and affection in our hearts towards Him. He encourages believers to engage in a dialogue with God while studying the Scriptures, turning the reading into a conversation that deepens our relationship with Him. Ultimately, Bickle reminds us that God's goodness and character are the foundation of our faith and transformation.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you in the name of Jesus for the word of God. Lord, I ask you to bless the hearing of your word, the hearing of your word, even now in Jesus' name. Bless the speaking and the hearing of your word. Amen and amen. Well, we're spending a little bit of time, some months on the subject of the beauty of God. There's so many key verses in the Bible, so we're just kind of taking our time getting warmed up on it. I love it, because we may stay on it a whole year. Who knows, but I want to talk about encountering God's affections. Real, simple, foundational teaching, but one that I find myself returning to over and over again through the years. These basic principles. And we really, there's no way to go forward, and let me say it differently. We don't ever graduate from these principles. These are principles that I understood some time ago and years later, they're the same main and plain principles of scripture, and they're the things that I believe in and engage my heart in. One of the primary passages that I think of when I think of the knowledge of God or the beauty of God is 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18. Beholding the glory of the Lord. It says in verse 18, but we all beholding, as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord. Now the word the glory in the Old Testament often is the word beauty. It's used interchangeably. Not every time, but many times. The word glory, particularly in the prophet Isaiah. Many times, glory and beauty is interchangeable, and the translations will, one will pick one and the other will pick the other. We are beholding, as in a mirror, the glory or the beauty of God. And as we're beholding it, we're being transformed. But interesting, we're being transformed into the same image of what we're beholding. What we're looking at is what we're being changed into. And it happens step-by-step. Glory to glory means step-by-step. It's in increments. Doesn't happen all at one time. I mean, we get a real big giant step at the resurrection. A real big giant step. But mostly it's baby steps with some giant steps here and there. It's from glory to glory. Or Paul said in Romans 1, he called it faith unto faith. It means step-by-step, stage-by-stage. And this transformation isn't just the product of human determination. It's by the working of the Holy Spirit. When it says just as by the Spirit, it means that there is a supernatural dimension that's required for the transformation to take place. Now, notice, we do the beholding and the Spirit works to transform us. But we must do our part. We must behold the Lord. And in the context of the people that are beholding the Lord, and I'm gonna talk about that for a moment, what that means. Because we have to do our part. A lot of people trust the Lord in a wrong way to, Lord, transform me by the Spirit, supernatural. And they want the Spirit to do it in a vacuum, meaning while they're kind of going about their business, mildly attentive to the Lord, but mostly inattentive to the Lord. They wanna say, Lord, break in and transform me. The Lord says, no, that's not how the partnership works. You behold me, you become attentive to me, and I will transform you. And the transformation, again, it's more than just human labor, but there is human labor. We do fill our mind with the Word. We do resist negative thoughts. We do fast, we do pray, we do serve, we humble ourself. There is a human labor involved. That labor doesn't earn us a transformation, but it positions us in a place to receive the supernatural work. But we know by now that it takes a supernatural work to move the human heart. But we have to position ourself to receive that supernatural work. And that position is described in the New Testament many ways. But in this context, it's described as beholding the Lord. Jesus called it abiding in the vine. You could call it meditating on the Word. There's many different things we do, beholding the Lord. Now, the word beholding is talking about gazing on the Lord. Now, we gaze on the Lord in a number of different ways, but one of the primary ways we behold the Lord is in His Word. When we open the Word of God and we study it with a prayerful spirit, we're reading it with a devotional spirit, with an I love you in our spirit while we're reading it. We're taking the Bible and we're turning it into conversation with the Lord. I love to study the Bible. I mean, just study it, raw study. Find out data and information and really work my brain to figure out what phrases really mean and study commentaries. I love study. It's fun. But study's not enough because the reading of the Word has to turn into dialogue with the person. Most of the time, even when I study, not always, sometimes I just study and I just go on a hard run and don't come up for air, but more times than not, when I'm studying and I'm pausing, and I'm looking at a commentary, just my own research with the Bible, open and taken notes or whatever, and I say the things that are moving me back to God. I speak them back to Him. I have a conversation with a real person while I'm reading the Word. So I read the written Word to enhance my conversation with the living Word, Jesus. Beloved, if you will turn the Bible into a conversation, a running dialogue, it slows you down a little bit, but it's good. It's a good slowdown. You slow down a little bit, you talk to Him. And you say things like, reveal more of this to me. Or you say, thank you for the truth of what I'm reading. Or give me more. Or Lord, I don't get it. Please reveal it to me. Show this to me. Lord, write this verse on my heart. Those just those different sentences that you can say to the Lord when you're reading the Word. As you're doing that, you're actually beholding the Lord. Instead of the word beholding, you actually put the word looking at, gazing on. You're gazing on the living Word because you're reading the written Word, talking to the living Word with the written Word moving you and touching you and giving you ideas of what to say. Now that's not the only way you behold the Lord. But that's one of the primary ways. And that's enough for tonight. Because my subject isn't so much the four or five ways we can behold the Lord. Well, one, since I'm on the subject, you can look up at the stars at night and you can see his handiwork and creation. You're beholding his glory in that regard. But you can look at it and go, wow, and move on. Or you can look at it and actually talk to a person when you look at it. Instead of going, wow, you say, Jesus, you're awesome. Look, this is wowing my heart. Actually, more than just be wowed by it, actually talk to a person and tell him you're wowed. And you will behold the Lord in that way. But again, there's several other ways to do that. But the point I want to get at is that when we behold his beauty or his glory, that's the vehicle of which we get changed into the same image of what we're looking at. We're looking at God's beauty, and then he releases his beauty into our character. Paragraph A, I call it the beholding and becoming principle. Whatever we behold by meditation, we first by just meditating on, thinking on it and talking to Jesus. That meditation turns into living revelation in a little bit of time. Starts off by just thinking about it with a spirit of prayer or a spirit of devotion. You're praying as you're thinking. You're talking to a man while you're thinking about the Bible verses or the glory of God in creation or whatever. You're actually talking to a man, and that meditation turns into revelation in a little bit of time. The water of the spirit of devotion turns into wine in a little bit of time. It really does. Just the natural element gets supernaturally touched, our thinking, and it changes. Whatever we behold in God's heart towards us, like the fact he loves us, he pursues us, he delights in us, whatever we see about God's heart towards us, whatever we behold, it's awakened in our heart back to God. Whatever we behold is what we become. It's a most amazing principle of how the spirit works. When we want to know about God's love, we study, I mean, when we want to love God more, we study his love for us. Because by studying that he loves us, it awakens love in us back to him. The same thing we're studying in God's heart is awakened in our heart back to God. For instance, you want to know how dedicated, you, I mean, you want to be more dedicated to God. Good. Study God's dedication for you. When you behold his dedication, his glory, you behold what his heart's like, it will awaken dedication inside of you back to him. I wrote a book some years ago called Passion for Jesus. People ask me, how do you get Passion for Jesus? I said, I can tell you for sure how to get it. It takes some time, it takes a little bit of energy, a little effort, but I can tell you how to do it for sure. Study Jesus's passion for you. You behold that dimension of his glory, it will awaken it inside of you back to him. I want to delight in the Lord. Good. Study God's delight in you. I want to pursue the Lord. Good. Study the Lord's pursuit of you. I want to give myself to the Lord. Good. Study the Lord the way he gives himself to you. Those are elements of his glory. It says in paragraph B, in 2 Corinthians 3, Paul was actually referring to an episode in Moses's life. It's a very famous time in Moses's life. This is exactly, specifically what Paul was talking about, was this episode in Exodus chapter 33 and 34. Here's what happened. It's one big event. It says in Exodus 33, Moses cried out, show me your glory. That's not exactly it. He said, please show me your glory. Don't forget the word please. Circle the word please. Put urgency. I mean, there was an, oh God, I'm gonna die if I don't see your glory behind that please. He wasn't, this wasn't a polite, domesticated please. This was a urgent, please Lord. You know, you got that in your, a lot of you got that in your heart that, oh, I got to see your glory. So he said, show me your glory. Again, the word glory often in the Old Testament is the word beauty. And God said in verse 19, okay, here's what I'll do. I'll make my goodness pass in front of you. I'll show you my glory by showing you my goodness. I will show you how good I am. That's what he's saying. He doesn't just mean the works of his hands, you know, the creation of the heavens and the earth. Undoubtedly, some of that's meant there, but I'm gonna show you, Moses, how good I am. And when I show you how good I am, in that way, I will show you my glory. Because the pinnacle of God's glory, the very height of God's glory is how good he is. He has all power and possesses all goodness with all power. You've heard the phrase that total power totally corrupts. That's true in human experience. When an emperor had more and more power, or a king, they almost always became more and more corrupt. Total power totally corrupts is a well-known statement, commentary on history that I'm sure most of you have heard that phrase. God has total power, but he has total goodness in his heart. It is absolutely fantastic. This is really good. He says, I'm gonna tell you how good I am. And here's how I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna proclaim my own name in front of you. Now, isn't that something, God preaching God? I mean, how much better can it get than God preaching God? I mean, Moses is in the seminary of the Holy Spirit. He's sitting there. The subject is the knowledge of God. The teacher is God. Whoa, I wanna get in that seminary. Well, we're in that seminary now in a limited way because we have the written word of the Holy Spirit. But beloved, in a short amount of time, we're all gonna be in the age to come. In a minute, we're all gonna be there. A minute may be a decade, it may be 100 years, but we're all gonna be there in a minute. And we're gonna be in the seminary of the Holy Spirit. And the subject is gonna be the knowledge of God and the teacher's gonna be God. It says in the prophets that God himself will teach them face to face. And we're gonna have this seminary forever and forever and ever, but we've got a down payment of it now. We're in the distance learning course right now, but we have the written word and we got the spirit living in us. And it's good. I mean, it can be a lot better than a lot of folks settle for. A lot of folks settle for just a little bit of this and the Lord will give a whole lot more. He'll give a whole lot more if we're determined to have it. So let's read verse 18 again. Moses says, God, please tell me what your beauty's like. Talk to me about your beauty. Well, it's okay. I'm gonna tell you about my beauty. I'm gonna tell you how good I am. Not just how good the works of my hands are, that's included. I'm gonna tell you how good my heart is. It becomes real clear that that's the emphasis, how good his heart is. That becomes clear in the next passage. And here's what he says. Here's what I'll do, Moses. I myself will teach you about myself. Now, interesting, we're not gonna get to this passage tonight, but this is the very promise that Jesus makes in John 17, 26, which is, it's been my life verse for many years. And if you're looking for a life verse, I recommend it. John 17, 26, where Jesus is right before he's going to go to the cross. He's just moments away from going to the cross. It's the upper room discourse. He's gonna go to the cross the next day. And he says, he ends it in John 17, 26. He says, I will proclaim the Father's name to you. And when I tell you about the Father, when I proclaim the Father's name to you, I will awaken love in your heart. The love that God has for me will be put in you when I tell you what God's like. The God's method of awakening love in us is Jesus preaching what the Father's like to our heart by the Holy Spirit. And Jesus is actually quoting this phrase, right? This passage right here. I mean, I have no doubt he was the one talking to Moses way back when, because he uses the same terminology in John 17, 26. I will proclaim. I will impress your mind and your heart with what my Father is like. And when I do that, I will awaken your heart supernaturally when I speak to your heart about my character. Well, a few minutes pass. Exodus 34, it's the same experience. The Lord passed before Moses. The hymn there is Moses. It's the same experience. And the Lord proclaims or preaches. I mean, this is God preaching God. I mean, this is so exciting. And what is God preaching? He's preaching his goodness to Moses. He told him a minute ago. He says, I'm gonna tell you my goodness. I'm gonna tell you how good I am. And so he says, I'm gonna tell you about my name. And my name means my character or my personality. Where it says in the passage before in Exodus 33, 19, it says, I'll proclaim the name. Where it says name, put the personality. I will proclaim my personality to you. I will tell you how good my personality is. Now, God wins best personality. If anybody's paying attention, although the nations hate God, but when everything is made known, God wins best personality. He has a absolutely, totally stunning personality. He's got tremendous gladness. He's really smart. He's witty. He's serious. He's funny. He's got incredible patience. He's thinking about you all the time and planning things for your benefit. He's got a very, very good personality. And one of the things he loves to do is to preach about his personality. Jesus loves to brag on the Father's personality. He says, oh, let me tell you what kind of personality my Father has. Oh, you will love him when you meet him face to face. But between now and then, I'm gonna tell you about him through the Spirit, through the written word. I'm gonna talk to you about my Father's personality. And when we get to know the Father's personality, it awakens love inside of us. I mean, we are not left the same. John 17, 26 says, when God reveals God to us, it awakens love. Love is awakened in our spirit. It's supernaturally imparted to us. So the Lord, and I'm assuming this is Jesus, passes before Moses, and he preaches on the Father's personality. And he says this, the Lord, the Lord God, number one, he's merciful. That's one part of his personality. That's the first thing that the Lord mentions is how merciful his personality is. Beloved, this is a good one. This is, we're glad this is the first thing he emphasized. This is the thing we need most. And this is what we need first, is mercy. Then he says, I'm not just merciful, my personality is very gracious. I'm really gracious to people. And not only that, I have long suffering. Do you know what long suffering means? It means suffering long. But it actually means that. I mean, we kind of get used to long suffering. Well, it means long suffering. No, it means God suffers with our, he suffers with what's in our heart. He suffers, it hurts God's heart, what is in our heart, in our journey. God's heart feels it. But he says, I'm not writing you off. I'm not letting go of you. I'm going to suffer a long time with what's in your heart. I'm gonna work with you because I love you more than the pain it causes me. That is a massive word, long suffering. And we really need to buy into this word long suffering because it has the word suffering. I mean, God feels, the Spirit's grieved with things I do and things I think and things I say. He's grieved, he goes, oh, that hurts my heart again. That grieves me, Mike. And I can tell because it grieves me. Because when he gets grieved, I get grieved and my spirit fills and I go, oh, that yucky feeling. How many of you know that yucky feeling? A couple of you. Well, the Spirit suffers in that sense. But beloved, he doesn't just suffer a long time with you and me, he asks us to suffer long with the people we relate to. He says, I'll suffer long with you, but I want you, Mike. Mike, I want you to be in a relationship with people I've put you with and some of them really bug you, but I want you to be bugged. That's okay, work through it. But I want you to suffer and not push the delete button on the relationship, I want you to suffer long in it. Because that's what I do to you. Okay, that was a freebie, that's off the subject tonight, but I just wanted to throw that out there for you. But I'm going to get back to the main subject. Jesus is preaching the Father's personality and when he's preaching the Father's personality, he's telling the Father, he's saying, my Father will suffer with you. He won't write you off, he will suffer long with you. I love this. And then he's going to abound in goodness. He abounds in goodness. Let's look at C. To proclaim the Lord's name is to proclaim his personality. Now, when God proclaims his name, it's more than his personality, it includes his power and his wisdom as well. When God's glory is revealed, we get insight into his power, like the glory of creation, the glory of redemption. We get insight into his great wisdom. I love to be awed by God's wisdom. I love to be awed by his power, but I really love to be awed by his emotions. I love to be awed by what he does, but more than what he does, it's why he does it. The what of God is part of his glory. What did he do? He created in Genesis one, wow. What did he do? He redeemed us on the cross, wow, wow. What did he do? He leads history with profound wisdom and power. He's bringing us to the new Jerusalem. Wow, that's really good too. What he does in creation, redemption, and his leadership over history is fantastic, but there's something better than what he does. It's why he does it. What is burning in his heart that moved him to do creation, redemption, and to plan history to wear his bride in the new Jerusalem? What was he thinking and feeling when he created this plan? Beloved, when we tap into that a little bit, that sets our mind and our hearts on fire in the most powerful way. I love to know what he does, and we will spend billions of years, I mean billions, awed by the what of God. We will never, ever be wearied, or we will never get familiar, over-familiar with what God did, and what he continues to do, because God's not finished doing things. Billions of years from now, he will be doing things that absolutely stun us. I mean, he's not done with taking our breath away by what he does. Many years, billions and billions of years, he will do this or that as the head of creation. We'll go, oh my, who would have thought such a thought? It's fantastic. Oh, that you did this, but we'll stop. And we'll say, but why did you do it? And then that burning fire in his heart, we'll begin to peer into it in a new, fresh look. I love the why of God. Number one, well, we just kind of look through this, but let's say God is merciful. He's tender with our weakness. Isn't that amazing? He's tender with our weakness. When we're weak, and we're weak, put failure, put sin. When we're in need, he is tender with our weakness. Now he wants us to be tender with one another's weaknesses. Matter of fact, we have a hard time receiving his tenderness towards our weakness. He says, forgiven. And we say, no, let me like, let me kind of burn, you know, go a few more rounds on the rotisserie. You know, let me go around on the hot burning oven a few more times and pay for it. The Lord says, no, forgiven. Forgiven, no, I don't want to be forgiven. I feel so miserable. Let me suffer for another week or two, and then I feel like we evened the score a little bit. No, forgiven, I am tender with your weakness. It's really hard for people to receive, it really is. People reject and they repel God's mercy because it violates their own sense of justice. And the reason it violates their own sense of justice, they have no idea what measure of wrath it was that God crushed Jesus was. Beloved, justice was fully satisfied. We don't understand who it was, the father who crushed the son with wrath in the son's innocence. And when we understand the magnitude of what Jesus bore and the heat and the fire and the weight of God's anger that was vented on Jesus, we don't play around with this. Let me kind of, you know, pay the price a little bit because it violates my sense of justice. That justice is out, that problem is solved because God's justice was fully satisfied in Jesus. Therefore, God could show his tenderness towards us in our weakness. So we need a real big delete button. When we mess up, honestly, we need to push it. And I don't mean that we ignore some of the issues that brought us to the place of why we did what we did. I don't mean that we don't look at some of those things and figure out so we don't do it again. But I'm talking about in terms of our relationship before God, we push delete and we stand confident in his presence. Now, this is Jesus preaching about the Father. Again, I assume it's Jesus. It's the Lord preaching about the Lord. He says he's merciful. That's number one. Number two, he's gracious. He doesn't give you what we, what, he does not give us what we deserve. Isn't that amazing? He's not just tender in relating to us. He says, not only am I gonna relate to you with kindness and tenderness, I'm gonna give you that which you could never, ever deserve. I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna pay you so well for what you did. We're serving the Lord and we see our weaknesses and the way we serve the Lord seems so, oh, Lord, it doesn't seem very, very complete. Our service looks so, ugh. The Lord answers, I'm gonna pay you, not double, I'm gonna pay you tenfold for what you've done. Beloved, every cup of cold water we give in his name, every little minuscule act of service that we do because we love him, he remembers it. He writes it in his book. Man forgets, even you forget the very things you did. You and I have forgotten more things over the years of what we did before the Lord. We can't remember it and when we stand before God, we will be really surprised that he remembers five, 10, 15, 20, 25, dah, dah, dah, dah, here's back for some in the room here. He will remember the most seemingly insignificant cup of cold water because of the way that God's grace is, it gives dignity to every moment of our life. Every moment of our life has dignity and meaning to it. I mean, when we just show a innocent, or innocence is not the right word, a simple courtesy to somebody, the Lord remembers it. Every moment is sacred because God remembers everything done towards him. Everything that's done with integrity and kindness in his name or because of our love and our heart for him, everything is remembered. That makes the most boring or even the most difficult hour where nobody knows what you're going through, it sanctifies it because God remembers it. That's what grace is and he's gonna pay us not double, tenfold, yay, more than tenfold. He will pay us so much more than we thought we would get paid for that act of service. The Lord is saying, I'm gracious. I'm telling you how good I am. I am really, really going to pay you very well for everything you've been through. For every secret act of humility, where you're in the conflict and the guy puts the heat on and you humble yourself and he wins, but in God's court, you win. Because humility is what wins in God's court, not answers that are forceful with more wit and more logic. Humility and love wins in God's court. And God marks that's a win. We forget it, years go by, you forget it, but God remembers it. Beloved, that gives sanctity, it gives glory to every boring hour of your life and every hard hour. It's powerful because it can be remembered forever with reward on it. That's part of God's graciousness. It's the way he views our life. It's the way he pays us. It's the way he rewards us. It's the way he evaluates our labor. All of this is under the word gracious. Like, wow, Jesus, I love your father's personality. Well, it's Jesus' personality too. Number three, he suffers long. We already talked about that. He bears, he bears with us. He does not write us off. When others would write us off, he will not write us off. He suffers a long time and he wants us to suffer long with one another. And you know, I can't suffer long with you. If I am not in a revelation that he is suffering long with me, the more I know that he suffers through the years with my bad choices and responses, but he stays a whole, he keeps his hand on me and says, no, I'm enthusiastic. I've not lost any enthusiasm for you, Mike. Your decisions and your thought processes at various times have wounded my heart, but I've not lost any enthusiasm. When I understand that from him to me, I can have it a whole lot more from me to you. And when a person's got real short fuse and they have a real kind of a heavy spirit of retaliation, that's a man or a woman who doesn't know the good deal they're getting with God. The answer isn't to rebuke them into a kind heartedness. I've never seen an old grouchy guy get rebuked into kind heartedness. You old grouch, get with it. They never get with it ever. The only way that that old grouchy guy ever becomes patient is when he understands he received patience. Then he goes, whoa, it's the point. We behold the Lord and therefore we're transformed into the very image, the same characteristics. That word there earlier, to the very image, into the same character traits, the same character traits. The characteristics. Number four, the Lord Jesus says this. He says, my father's abounding in goodness. He has so many good ideas. Your little mind, if I spoke all day long to you about the details of the good ideas, he is abounding. He has so many plans that all the books of the earth could not contain all the plans he has. He's abounding. Now when the God of Genesis one, now think how smart he is. If he did Genesis one, he's gotta be really smart. Think about all the universes. I mean, all the galaxies. I mean, they say there's a hundred, hundred million galaxies. A hundred million galaxies in which the Milky Way is one of the smaller ones. A hundred million. He is really smart. He's really powerful. And when he uses the word abound, I mean, he's so big, he's got a hundred million universes. What does abound mean to him? I mean, what abound to you and me might mean one thing. When he says I abound, I mean, his scope of things, his measuring system is so much bigger than ours. He is saying, Jesus is saying, my father is abounding. He has so many good ideas for you. He has so much goodness that's already written in the book and it will take your breath away. Every million years, you're gonna be stunned a thousand times, a thousand times. Every season is gonna be another series of overwhelming discoveries of God's abounding goodness his plans for you. Now, this is an amazing reality. This is truly amazing that God is like this. Now, notice we're gonna go back to verse 18. So if you put it even on the PowerPoint, go back to, because not everyone has the notes, verse, no, I meant 2 Corinthians 3, 18, not Exodus 3, 18. 2 Corinthians 3, 18, I didn't make it clear. Okay, there you go, verse 18. Now, look at this. I want you to catch this little phrase that is so easy to miss. It says, but we all beholding as in a mirror, that's the phrase right there, as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord and we're being transformed. Do you know the mirror in the ancient world? The mirror 2000 years ago when Paul wrote this was not like the mirror of today. The mirror of today is a perfect reflection. What you see is what you get. But the mirror of 2000 years ago was a very dim reflection. Like a mirror of 2000 years ago was like polished piece of metal. You look in the mirror and you go, I can't quite tell if I'm ready or not. You know, you look in the mirror. You couldn't see, it was a very dim reflection. It's a piece of polished metal. You know, 2000 years, that metal wasn't very good. I mean, in terms of the reflection qualities. Here's what Paul is saying. I mean, that was a really important point. He's saying, if you behold, if you gaze on the Lord, if you meditate on the Lord, if you gaze on the Lord, even in a dim way, I'm not talking about a negligent way. I don't mean negligence. I don't mean you do a little here, a little there. But I mean, the beholding is aggressive. We're doing it with all of our heart. We're doing it a lot. We're filling our free time with us. We're making time to behold the Lord, to think on him and to talk to him through his word. But so I'm not talking about the amount of time, and it will vary for every person in every season. I'm not talking about the diligence of the beholding. I'm talking about the quality of the beholding. And what I mean by that, I hear it all the time. Guy says, when I read the word, it's so my mind is scattered and I can't really picture it. And I forget one minute later, what I was thinking a minute ago. And they asked me this like really ridiculous question. They go, have you ever had that? I go, are you kidding? Have I ever had that? I'm the pro at that. What do you mean, have I ever had that? I've had that 10,000 times. They go, no, you haven't. They kind of think maybe I just opened the Bible and they're Jesus, right? No, no, it's not in that way. And so it's always funny when I, to me, I guess it reminds me how old I'm getting, because when a young person says, have you ever had that? I go, are you kidding? I wrote the book on unanointed, boring prayer. I mean, absolutely. I couldn't make my mind stay focused on anything at any minute, anything. The Bible was so confusing and so boring and none of it made sense when I was 20 years old. I love God and I was going hard after him, but it was a total confusion to me. I would read it and three minutes later, I couldn't remember anything I read, couldn't make sense of most of it. I said, yes, I know about beholding. Yes, beloved, the quality of our gazing is not this dynamic encounter. It's this dim, polished piece of metal that you can't really see good in. That's the only kind of beholding God requires us to do, which means the beholding that we're doing in this season of our life, all of us on this side of the resurrection, all of the beholding is dim. The guy says, when I talk to the Lord, I mean, it's like face-to-face. He's not telling you the truth. He might have, maybe that one time, it was like face-to-face, that one time for a minute and a half. Sometimes I read these books of some of these guys and they, the Lord was so near always forever, you know, just for years and years right there. And I go, not true, written by a starstruck biography guy, you know, because biographies are written by somebody who's starstruck. That's why they wrote the biography because they liked the guy. The guy's been dead for a hundred years. And he writes, and the Lord was face-to-face. You know, the guy's been dead a hundred years. He never met the guy, but he's writing his biography. Now it's another hundred years later. You're reading it going, oh, I'm going to quit. They're exaggerating. It took me years to figure that out. I was so liberated. I tried to do everything that those well-meaning lying biographies told me to do. They're well-meaning. I mean, they were, they liked the guy they wrote about, but they were starstruck. When God writes a biography, he puts the bad stuff in. You read the life of David. David says, Lord, you know, you don't have to write my whole story. And the Lord said, I didn't, David. And David goes, oh yeah, that's right, Lord. Thank you, thank you. I remember. I like biographies. I'm a biography fanatic. I've read many of them over the years, but I want to urge you, when you read a biography, don't, you know, read it with a little common sense. Read it, know that somebody who's wild about the guy or gal wrote it, and typically 100 years after the guy died. And so what I'm trying to tell you is this. I would read these biographies about these people, and they just, every breath they took, the Lord was right there, and that's not biblical. In this age, we behold him as in a mirror. It's a dim beholding, but it's a sufficient beholding. It's a dim one, but it is a sufficient one. It gets the job done, because if you read this in 2 Corinthians 3.18, it says we all beholding, we're doing our part, we're gazing, we're meditating, we're putting the word into our mind, but we're doing it in a dim and a less than perfect way. We're doing it like the dim beholding of an ancient mirror. But when we look at God's glory this way, we still get transformed. Now, we can't measure the transformation. One thing that I always wanted, I always did in my younger days, I don't do it all anymore, is I wanted to measure where I was. It's like the little boy, we'd get up there and we'd put our height against the wall, and then a year later, six months later, you went, ooh, an inch bigger, yay! We grew up measuring. But in the spirit, we wanna measure, and we can't put the marker on the wall, and then six months later, find out we're ahead. It doesn't work that way. And in my early days in the Lord, I was real obsessed with measuring. Am I further than I was before? But here's the problem with measuring. There's a bunch of problems with measuring. When you measure, when you do good, you get proud, and when you do bad, you get condemned. When you measure, you inevitably, you can't help not doing this, when you measure yourself, you inevitably start measuring yourself against others. And then again, the same thing. You either get condemned or you get proud. And some years ago, I decided to throw away measuring. I said, I am gonna behold you, I'm gonna stare at you. I'm gonna meditate, I'm gonna think about you. I'm not gonna measure if I'm further than I was last year. All I know is I'm gonna go hard today, and then tonight, I'm gonna push delete. Whatever I did good, I'm gonna push delete and say, Lord, you're worth much more than that. And whatever I did bad, I'm gonna say, oh, Lord, you paid the price. So if I did it real good, Lord, you're worth way more than I offered you. And if I did it bad, I'm gonna push delete at the end of the day and resolve to go hard the next day. And I just quit measuring some time ago. It got so confusing. It's so, so much kind of emotional traffic gets in our brain. Am I doing better than last year? Am I doing better than the guy in the biography? Am I doing better than the guy on the other, you know, my friend? Forget all that stuff. It doesn't say measure yourself, it says behold the Lord. Stare at the Lord. And it's not just stare at him like you're staring out in the sky. What I mean is gaze or fix the posture of your mind where you're thinking on God. Now we're beholding his glory. Let's go to paragraph D. Let's go back to where we were a moment ago. We're not gonna get very far on this. But that's okay. We got lots of Friday nights. D, the emotions of God, the emotions of God that are most easily grasped are his tender mercy and his gladness. See, when we behold, no, actually what I need to go is to see. What I need to go is to see. I've said this, but I wanna emphasize it again. Let's go back to see. To proclaim the Lord's name is to proclaim his personality. Because the Lord said I'm gonna proclaim my own name. I'm gonna tell you what my personality is like. God's glory includes his power and wisdom. We hit this, but here's the key point. The pinnacle of God's glory, the height of his glory is not his power and his wisdom. It's not what he did, it's why he did it. The ultimate of God's glory is his emotions. When you study the glory of God, when you look on the glory of God, yes, you look on his power, what he did in creation, redemption, and how he leads history. Yes, you look on his wisdom, on how smart he was to pull this stuff off. But beloved, if you wanna go to the pinnacle, the heights of his glory, study his emotions. Because that's really what God's telling Moses. He's telling Moses, I'm gonna show you my glory. And when he showed God Moses his glory, he revealed his emotions to Moses. Do you see this? When he revealed his glory to Moses, he didn't show how smart or how strong he was. He showed how passionate he was for Moses and for the people. Now God, all through the Bible, tells us how smart he is, his wisdom, and we're awed by it. And we need to study his glory, i.e. his wisdom. We need to study his power, i.e. the glory of God, his power. But in the process of studying his wisdom and his power, which we always wanna do, and again, a billion years from now, it will still strike us powerfully, we always want to mostly be preoccupied with his emotion. It's the passion in his heart, not just the power of his hand. It's the passion of what he feels when he thinks about us. Okay, let's go to D, paragraph D. Actually, we're gonna end with this. And so I'll give you some notes to look at and bring them next week. Although I'll probably have new ones next week, but you never know, just bring these anyway. I look at them again, then I wanna add a few more verses to them, then poor Ann has to do all the work. Paragraph D, we'll end with this. The emotions of God that are most easily grasped, because remember, his emotions are the pinnacle of his glory. That was what we looked at a minute ago. The emotions most easily grasped are the ones that the Lord emphasizes to Moses. It's his tender mercy and his graciousness. I'm gonna add the word his gladness. King David revealed God's gladness second to nobody. Well, Jesus did more than David. But in the Old Testament, King David focused on the gladness of God. And the book I wrote on the pleasures of, I can't remember which one it's in, but I spent two or three chapters on the gladness of God. I know that. And so we have documents on our website on the gladness of God. And so I would encourage you to study his gladness. It's a fantastic subject. I mean, I love the subject of God's gladness. When I study God's gladness, what ends up happening is I discover his gladness for me, and that makes me glad back to him. And when you become glad towards the Lord, when you become happiest to who God is, then you become happy to who you are. Most people hate themselves. The only way to really love yourself is to know God is glad with you. And the only way to know that is to see the gladness of God. That's why David had one of the freest spirits. He had a free, happy spirit because he knew God's gladness, and he knew God was glad with him, and then David was glad with God, and then David was glad with himself. I don't mean there wasn't issues that he was struggling with. He always had issues that he was resisting and trying to improve, but David had the overflow of God's gladness in God's personality, and David understood God was glad towards David, and that made David be glad towards David. And you get into that a little bit, into that mindset a little bit, into the gladness of God, and I encourage you to study those couple chapters. Again, I'm spacing out which book it was in, but we got it on the internet, and just at least a note for him, but I have it more written out on that. But if that's a subject you don't know about, you really want to study the gladness of God. But look, it says here in paragraph D, we will not really comprehend his affection. That's what I really like talking about is affection, but until we have an understanding of his tender mercy and his gladness. We don't quite understand his affection. We want to know his affection, and some people go, I want to know his affection tonight, and I go, well, let's work our way there. Let's believe to know God's affection tonight, you know, an installment, a down payment, but let's focus on his tenderness and his gladness towards us, because that prepares our understanding for his burning desire of his affection. Look at these two verses here in paragraph D. It says, let the Lord forsake his way. I know, no, no, let the wick, I was. I'm glad you guys are paying attention. That encourages me. Let, let, I'm gonna have the worship team come up real quick, kind of bail me out here. Let the wicked forsake his way, that's it. Let him return to the Lord. Now, here's a believer, because he's returning to the Lord. He's not coming to the Lord the first time. He's somebody who knows the Lord, but he's ensnared in a wrong way. It says, let the wicked forsake his way. Let him return to the, he has a relationship with God, and God will have mercy on this person. And God will, look at that word again, abundantly. God will forgive him a little bit. God will forgive him entirely. Isn't that amazing? Beloved, God's not interested in forgiving us a little bit. He wants to forgive us abundantly, and that's how he wants us to forgive one another, abundantly, but again, I'm not gonna forgive you abundantly until I know I'm forgiven abundantly. And so, when a person's got a mean spirit, and so many do, even the body of Christ, about transgressions against them, they are in need of revelation that they've been abundantly forgiven. When this thing overwhelms them, it will come like a wave crashing over their soul, and it will give them an abundance to forgive other people and to suffer along with them. Here's what the Lord says. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as high as the heavens, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Now, you know what we normally do in verse eight? We quote this, God's thoughts are higher than our thoughts. We quote it according, apply it to wisdom. God's plans are higher than our plans. That is true. God's plans are higher than our plans, but that's not what this verse is talking about. This verse is not talking about wisdom. This verse is talking about the extremity of mercy. When he goes, my thoughts are not your thoughts, he means my willingness to forgive is beyond any man's willingness to forgive another man. Another man has no grid for forgiving like I forgive, because my thoughts, my logic, my processes of forgiveness are so far beyond any example on the earth. There is no man that forgives at the quality that I do. And so let's apply this in our own relationship to the Lord, because we'll never give it to somebody else till we receive it, till we are awed with this. I mean, overwhelmed with how God's abundantly forgiven us. We don't have the ability to give it to others. And so I'm saying to the Lord, Lord, you've abundantly pardoned me. Your ways aren't my ways. You don't wanna keep me in probation for a while. You want me to have a confident, free spirit. I repented. You want me to have the first class citizen status before your presence. Amen, let's end with that.