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DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE

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Luke 9:34-36

34 While he was speaking, a cloud appeared and enveloped them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. 35 A voice came from the cloud, saying, "This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him." 36 When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone. The disciples kept this to themselves, and told no one at that time what they had seen.

NIV

Peter was in the process of trying to convince Jesus they should make three shelters for Moses, Elijah and Jesus when this cloud appeared and enveloped them. Just out of the blue, from nowhere this cloud appears. It certainly must have been like a heavy fog, but something even more as this cloud brought fear in the hearts of Peter, James and John.  Surely they had been in fog before in their boats during their nightly fishing times. But this was something like they had never seen or been in before to make them afraid. This was the presence of God the Father within that cloud and they must have sensed that presence even without knowing it was him. The Father could not allow those men to see him, or they would not survive the experience. It was the Father who spoke to Peter, correcting him, giving him instruction. Do not make shelters, do not start thinking how you are going to do something, instead listen to my Son. If there was any doubt before they could not have any now. They had heard the voice of God telling them that Jesus was his Son. What an experience these three must have had. Seeing the radiance of Jesus along with Moses and Elijah and then hearing God tell them Jesus was his Son and they should listen to him. But they kept it to themselves at that time, but obviously they shared this experience with the others. What do we learn from all this? What is our life lesson? It would seem that if we start thinking in the natural as to how we should be spiritual, that is making a shelter for Jesus, so to speak, God will correct us and tell us to listen to his Son. It is possible that we humans plan how we are to be Christians. We establish a statement of our faith, what we believe, what scriptures we decide to use as the basis for our beliefs. We create new denominations so we can be different from those we think are wrong in their chose of scriptures to base their faith on. We have kept up that process until we have so many differing denominational beliefs it is difficult to know who is correct and who is not. But the point is we cannot make our shelters for Jesus, we must simply listen to him. Jesus is not a denomination and cannot be held or sheltered by the hands of man. Man must hear the words of Jesus, man must hear the word of God. Jesus is the word of God, the scriptures, all of them are the word of God, each and every scripture is God breathed and therefore we must listen to the word, to Jesus. We cannot dismiss any of what the word says, we cannot discount any of the scripture. We cannot declare that some of it was just for then, but not for now. That is making a shelter by our hands for God. God is telling us to listen to his Son. We need to listen more and believe.