Why did Jesus have to die on the cross? This question has been on the minds of many since the beginning of the church. Theologians discuss and debate the reasons the crucifixion was necessary. Some try to explain it away, saying that God the Father could have chosen another way to forgive us that didn’t involve Jesus’ self-sacrifice. Modern atheists disdain the death of Christ as “child abuse” and ask how a Father could put His Son through that kind of agony. It is definitely an important question.

Here in Matthew 26:36-46 we do not see an answer to this question, but we do see that Jesus states that His death is necessary. As He faces the cross, He prays to His Father to let “the cup” pass from Him. The imagery of “the cup” refers to the cup of God’s wrath poured out on those who rebel against Him. It is the full judgment of God, the infinite King who has been infinitely wronged by people whom He created. The prophetic pictures are not pleasant, and they served and still serve as a warning about the fearsome judgment that awaits those who reject God and His chosen Savior.

Jesus asks that He be spared this wrath. Since He was fully God and fully man, He knew just what this judgment would entail. While Jesus was willing to sacrifice Himself for our sins, that doesn’t mean He looked forward to how taking our judgment would affect Him and His relationship with His Father. He asked if there was any other way to pay the price for humanity’s sin, and by His own words acknowledged that there was not. He could not escape the cross while at the same time providing redemption for us.

There are many theological observations that could be made about why this was true, and other Scriptures deal with some of the reasons. But I think sometimes we try so hard to figure out the divine “why” that we miss the major thrust of this passage: Jesus was willing to go to the cross to fulfill the Father’s will so that He could save us from our sins. He did this willingly, despite the prospects. He chose to give His life for those who were unworthy of His sacrifice so He could make us worthy through faith in Him. Here in Gethsemane Jesus shows His own strength, love, and mercy in His conversation with His Father.

I believe if there were any way our redemption could have been gained without Jesus going to the cross God would have done it. Even that statement, however, betrays a human prejudice that Jesus’ death had to be the only way, not just the best way, for God to require it and Jesus to offer His life. The biggest issue in understanding the “why” of the cross is that our minds are not God’s mind. We have the capacity to understand everything God wants us to know, but not the capacity to understand things it is impossible for us to know. That is why we have to trust Jesus and accept His Word on this.

It all comes down to faith. If we believe in Jesus, we will trust that all He does is what is right. Our faith and trust in Him brings us to the place where we acknowledge Him as the Lord, and where we can receive forgiveness and redemption through His shed blood. Gethsemane is hard to see, but in it are the seeds of what makes Jesus’ sacrifice so amazing, and it humbles us to see what He suffered to make us right with God. We may never fully comprehend the “why,” but the fact of redemption changes our lives for all eternity.

Judas Iscariot is one of the most difficult characters in the Bible to understand. Here is a man who was personally chosen by Jesus to be one of His followers, who was considered capable and trustworthy enough to handle the group’s money, and who travelled with Jesus for three years and heard not only His public teaching but also His private sessions for the disciples. Yet he became a traitor and conspired with Jesus’ enemies to hand Him over for arrest.

Many have speculated as to why Judas did this. Here in Matthew 26 the story of Judas’ betrayal follows the story of Jesus’ anointing at Bethany, which Judas in particular found wasteful (perhaps because he thought he could have profited personally from the proceeds), so perhaps greed was involved. Judas could also have found Jesus’ talk about dying perplexing, since many Jews thought the Messiah would come in triumph and restore Israel’s fortunes. Some even propose that Judas was trying to force Jesus’ hand, and that be turning Him over to His enemies Jesus would be forced to act in power and conquer His enemies. The Bible doesn’t tell us why Judas betrayed Jesus, except for one detail in John: Satan entered Judas, and influenced him to turn against Jesus.

Judas met with the priests and offered to help them arrest Jesus. The Jewish leaders wanted to avoid a scene, which might have set off a disturbance among the people that would catch the attention of the Romans. They needed a quiet place, and one of Jesus’ disciples was perfectly placed to tell them where to go. They accepted Judas’ help for the price of thirty pieces of silver. This was a doubly symbolic number, reflecting the price of a slave in the Law (Exodus 21:32) and the wages of the rejected shepherd in Zechariah 11.

Judas probably thought he was careful to cover his tracks, but at the Last Supper Jesus let him know indirectly that He knew exactly what Judas had done. While the other disciples were shocked and sorrowful at this, I picture Judas trying to keep himself calm while pretending to also be surprised. Jesus gives a severe warning, one that Judas could have used to repent of his actions and turn back to Jesus. Judas chose not to do so, and in fact in John we are told Judas immediately left.

One of the lessons we can take from Judas is that merely spending time around Jesus isn’t enough to bring us close to Him. In a modern context, you can go to church every Sunday, pray in a way that impresses people, read the Bible for factual knowledge, and do good deeds, and still not yield yourself to the Lordship of Christ. On the flip side of that, a church can proclaim the gospel, share the truth of God’s Word, and minister faithfully to people, and they can still reject the Jesus we serve and represent.

It amazes me that someone so close to Jesus here on earth could be so far from Him spiritually. That story, sadly, plays out many times in our own ministry to other people. We must continue to be faithful in serving the Lord and proclaiming Christ to others, but we should not be surprised when people serve themselves rather than Jesus no matter what they see. It is truly sad, but it is an unfortunate reality of our sin-tainted world. Like Jesus, however, we must always hold out hope and the possibility of repentance and acceptance for those willing to turn from their sin and their self to come to Him.

In today’s reading, we go from the ordination of Aaron and his sons as the priests in charge of the Tabernacle to a severe judgment on two of Aaron’s sons. Nadab and Abihu were the elder sons of Aaron, given the way their names are listed prior to this passage. Nadab was presumably the next in line to be high priest. They had just gone through a ceremony that set them aside with great symbolism and specific instructions, and had just embarked upon their work as priests, when this incident occurred.

The ESV calls Nadab and Abihu’s offering “unauthorized fire.” Other translations use the word “strange,” which is a bit more of a literal translation of the Hebrew. The idea is that this fire was alien to the Tabernacle; it didn’t belong there. We aren’t told what was wrong with what they did. There are a number of possibilities: they used the wrong incense, they brought it at a time not commanded by God, they entered in to a place they should not have been. The main problem was that Nadab and Abihu were doing what they wanted to do to serve the Lord, rather than what He had directed them to do.

There may have been something else involved in this as well. Scholars look at the warning about not drinking wine or strong drink before entering the Tabernacle in this context and wonder why it is placed there. This leads some to think that Nadab and Abihu may have been drunk when they performed their duties. If this was so, it was a callous disregard for the holiness of God and would have set a terrible precedent for Israel had it gone unpunished.

We may think that God was overreacting by striking the two of them dead for this sin. Here at the beginning of the Tabernacle service, which would lead to the Temple service as well, God judges a disregard for His holiness, His commands, and His majesty severely. In a way, it’s similar to the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts. The Lord sends an unmistakably powerful message to His people about how they are to serve Him.

Aaron and his remaining sons are not even allowed to mourn their sons and brothers as they continue to bring the offerings before the Lord. Others in the family are given the responsibility to bury and to mourn for them. Aaron and his sons do engage in some mourning as they do not eat their designated portion later, and their action is approved. But through every circumstance of life, the priests must continue to serve the Lord first. Later in the Law rules for their conduct would be laid down to clarify this.

The principle we can take away from this incident is one many Christians need to hear today. We cannot look at what God commands us to do and what He tells us about our conduct and our worship, then decide we’ll just worship God our own way. While in this era we are not likely to be struck down by God, we will find ourselves drifting away from the Lord and damaging our relationship with Him. If we consistently put ourselves above God, we may even have to question if we truly believe in Him. There are many places in the Bible we find hard commands, and others that tell us that the Lord sees things very differently from the world around us. We must remain faithful in order to serve Him rightly and to keep close to Jesus on our journey of life.

In Jesus’ time, a Jewish wedding involved a procession that began when the groom left his parents’ house with his friends to go to the bride’s house for the ceremony. After the ceremony, the wedding party would process to the location of the wedding banquet, usually the groom’s house. The virgins in this parable are the equivalent of modern bridesmaids, part of the extended wedding party.

If the procession took place at night, lamps would be needed to light the way. Even in cities there were no light sources in the streets, so everyone needed to supply their own. A lamp sometimes needed to be refilled every 15 minutes, since they were just small containers for oil lit by a wick. To keep your lamp lit, you needed a flask of oil you could use to refill it periodically. If everything ran according to schedule, you could figure out how much oil you needed and have it on hand.

In Jesus’ story, the bridegroom is apparently delayed. No one knows when he is going to show up. As a result, the lamps go out while they sleep. Suddenly they hear the groom coming, and hurry to light their lamps again. Five of the virgins came prepared for such an event and have extra oil, while five have used up all they had. Without a lamp they will be unable to join in the procession.

Those who were unprepared ask those who have oil to share with them. The answer they get may seem insensitive, but the five who brought extra only had enough oil for their own lamp. If they gave some away, no one would have enough. Fortunately, during weddings a merchant would be nearby, so they tell the five foolish virgins to go buy some more oil. But as they are shopping, the groom comes, the procession moves on, and the five who were unprepared miss the procession and are locked out of the banquet. They are refused entrance, as their unpreparedness shows they are not part of the party.

This parable may seem a little perplexing to us on the surface, but when we consider the broader context of preparation for Jesus’ return we can make sense of it. The wedding imagery fits with Jesus’ description elsewhere in the New Testament as the husband of His bride, the church. Those who know He is coming and are prepared at all times for His return will not be caught by surprise and will be ready to join Him. Those who are not ready will miss His coming. No one can be prepared for anyone else; as in this parable, each one must make her/his own preparations.

The main thrust of this parable is for Jesus’ hearers to understand that they must be prepared for His coming. Jesus still had much to accomplish in His earthly life, but He laid the groundwork for His disciples and His followers to be aware that He would return after His ascension. This theme is amplified throughout the NT, until John writes the last book, Revelation. For us, the question is simple: are we ready for Jesus to come back for us? Have we committed ourselves to Him in faith, and are we living in a way that shows we are waiting? When we remember what the Bible says about the Second Coming, we will seek to prepare ourselves at every moment to see our Savior come back.

When you read through the Bible, Leviticus can be a point at which you start to wonder if you can do this. Offering after offering, sacrifice after sacrifice, details about how to bring your gift to the altar that don’t apply to us anymore because Jesus is the final sacrifice- it can be a little overwhelming and make you question why the Holy Spirit inspired all of this. Yet Leviticus can be a very significant book if you keep a few things in mind. Let’s look at the sin offerings in chapter 4 as an example.

The offerings outlined here are for unintentional sins. These are sins that a person or the community commits without being aware of it at the time, but which they recall later. Each category has its own required sacrifice, which all require the offering of an unblemished animal brought to the priest. This animal is slaughtered and completely consumed, whether by the fire on the altar or the one outside the camp. No one profits from the giving of this animal, whether the person or the priest.

The sprinkling of the animal’s blood was a reminder to the person involved that sin is a capital crime against God and that something had to die to atone for that sin. The complete consumption of the animal pointed out that it now belonged to God. As Christians, we recognize that these elements are foreshadowings, pointing to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, of the shedding of His blood and His death. For the Israelite, it was a picture of how serious sin was.

We may think that God could have done something less drastic than the sacrificial system in Israel or the giving of His own Son as a sacrifice for our sin to make atonement for our sin. That is because we look at sins, not at sin. When we look at one sin, no matter how heinous, it is just a limited act in and of itself. It has limited consequences, although they may be very serious. It only lasts for a short time. It seems to us from a human standpoint that God goes overboard in requiring something or someone to die to pay for that. (This, by the way, is the problem some people have with the doctrine of hell.)

When we look at sin, however, we see a completely different picture. Sin isn’t just acts; it is a state of heart and mind, a rebellion against the eternal, holy God. Every act of sin is an infinite affront against infinite majesty. The penalty for sin is death (Romans 6:23). If we are to be spared, something must take our place. Ultimately, that was Jesus, the perfect man who was also the perfect God, but in the Old Testament it is an animal that represents both the sinner and the future sacrifice that would take away all sin.

As we look at the offerings and the sacrifices in the OT, we can see in them pictures of what the unfolding plan of redemption will entail. We also see the sheer overwhelming scope of what it took to remain right with God. This helped the Israelites understand that they were unable to satisfy the Lord on their own; they needed help and needed it often. Even for us today, it shows the magnitude of any attempt to remain in a right relationship to God on our own efforts. Leviticus helps us appreciate a little more just what Jesus came to do for us, and to help us see that we needed Him to be perfect for us when we cannot be perfect on our own. As you read about other offerings, think of why they are there, what they meant for the person coming in faith to God, and how Jesus set us free from the Law.

The Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 is one of the most significant passages in the New Testament discussing the events of Jesus’ return. As a result, it has become quite controversial, and the way it is interpreted owes much to the way the scholar views the teaching of the rest of the NT on the Second Coming. (Or, as we like to put it in our big theological terms, eschatology.) Evangelical Christians are in agreement that Jesus will retutn one day, and that His return will be a shock to the world as it is when He comes. The timetables and details are what we argue about.

I want to look at something specific that Jesus says here in verse 6. He has been asked by the disciples what signs they should be aware of that would signal His coming. Many Christians throughout the centuries have looked at these signs and believed that Jesus was coming back in their lifetime. So far, they’ve all been wrong, but one day there will be a generation that is right. We do need to be aware that Christ could come at any time, what we call the “imminent return” of Jesus. Christians should maintain a watchful and ready attitude, always prepared to see Jesus at any moment.

Often overlooked in any discussion of this passage and Jesus’ return is the end of verse 6. Jesus given several signs to watch for: false Messiahs, wars and rumors of wars, and natural disasters. Right in the middle, He says that when these occur, “See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.” Some of these signs are events that have occurred with regularity throughout history, so they are always a reminder to be prepared for Jesus’ return. The world is going to be a real mess, but the end may not come when we think it should just because all these things are happening.

So why would Jesus give them as signs of His coming? I think first of all that these events will become more frequent, or maybe just more frequently reported. It’s hard to tell in our modern world if wars and disasters are more common because they’re more frequent or if we just hear about them more due to advances in technology. It’s probably a little bit of both. As the population of the earth grows, and people come into contact with others whose ideologies differ from them, strife and warfare will become more common. Some disasters may become more frequent due to humanity spreading over more of the face of the planet. The combination of all these will allow sin and discord to spread more and more, even as we draw closer to the time of Christ’s return.

The second reason is to keep His people aware of the fact that He is coming soon. Our definition of “soon” may not match God’s, but the return of Jesus is always possible at any moment. We see the world going through all the turmoil Jesus warns us about, and we are reminded that He is definitely coming back. When we read and study the Scriptures, not just here but elsewhere, and we put all that the Word tells us together, we can and should be prepared for our Lord to come back.

Jesus doesn’t give us enough information to set a particular date, no matter what some teachers try to say, but He does give us enough to be prepared. As we look at our world through the lens of the Bible, we should see what Jesus told us about unfolding. We can’t bury our heads in the sand and hope nothing much will happen. It is time now to get ready, to warn people that Jesus will return, and to look at the future with hope in Him.

The building of the Tabernacle was an extremely significant event in the history of Israel. As you read through Exodus, you keep coming across detailed instructions for the Tabernacle and its furnishings, first as God gave them to Moses, then as the workmen built the structure, then as Moses assembled the tent. When the Bible repeats something, God usually wants us to take notice. Yet we don’t have a Tabernacle now or build churches on this pattern. How does the Tabernacle relate to our worship today?

All of the preparation, construction, craftsmanship, and assembly had one objective: to provide a place that represented the presence of the Lord with His people. At the end of chapter 40, which is the end of the book of Exodus, we see God making His approval of the Tabernacle clear by settling the cloud of His presence on it. The glory of the Lord was so overwhelming even Moses could not enter the tent. The fiery cloud would become Israel’s guide through the wilderness, although apparently later the priests were able to enter the tent to perform their duties.

Even after Israel entered the Promised Land, the Tabernacle would serve as a reminder of their duties toward God. The same tent and furnishings would continue to be used for centuries. Some of the contents of the Tabernacle even made their way into the Temple when Solomon built it almost 500 years later to become the same symbol of God’s presence with His people. God was not confined to the Tabernacle or the Temple, but the building served as a reminder that He had a special place with His people.

There is no church today, no matter how elaborate, expensive, ancient, or historical, that fills the exact same role the Tabernacle did. The New Testament teaches that the church “building” is now made up of the living stones that are connected to Jesus as the cornerstone. Where the followers of Christ are, there is the church. There are no other building instructions in the NT.

That doesn’t mean that a church building serves no purpose. While the early church had no dedicated church buildings, and many places in our contemporary world cannot have them, Christians have been drawn to build places where they can meet together to worship God, fellowship with other believers, and engage in ministry to the world. While it has fallen out of fashion lately, people used to speak about going to church as going to “God’s house.” Of course God isn’t confined there, any more than He was confined to the Tabernacle. We still should have a sense when we go to a place dedicated to the Lord’s service of the space being sacred, a place where we can meet God in a way we don’t in our own homes, businesses, and secular meeting spaces.

The Tabernacle was set up in the middle of the Israelite camp, so that all the people would be able to see it and be reminded. Even though a church you attend today isn’t necessarily the focal point of the community, when you go it should remind you of the Lord’s presence. As a place set aside for God’s worship and service, we should remember His glory whenever we enter, and we should encourage our brothers and sisters in Christ, the living stones of the church, to focus on Jesus, our Cornerstone. A renewed sense of God’s presence with us can help us recharge as we face the week ahead and revitalize our effort to serve the Lord.

Pride is a struggle for anyone who is given any position of authority. You don’t have to be someone with a high secular rank or a prominent position in a church. When people are placed in a position with some authority, it can be very easy to let the power go to their head. They start feeling like they are what is most important, and that they have the right to boss around others and tell them how to do their job or even live their life.

The Pharisees of Jesus’ time found themselves on the receiving end of His critiques several times for this problem. They believed that they were the cream of the crop of Judaism. They were scrupulous about keeping the Law, and added many more rules which made it even harder to be perfect. The looked down on the masses of their fellow Jews who were unable to maintain their high standards. They saw themselves as the ultimate faithful followers of the Lord.

Jesus saw right through their proud pretense. He pointed out how they violated the very Law they claimed to keep through their rules and interpretations. He revealed a greed that valued gold over God. He even discounted their teaching, since He stated that the way they made converts was worse than useless since those converts were further from God than even the Pharisees were.

In turning from the Pharisees to His disciples, Jesus provides them with reminders to keep them from suffering from the same kind of spiritual pride. He warns them not to seek after titles of prominence, like rabbi, father, or teacher, since there was only One who deserved those titles. They were to serve humbly, not try to subjugate people to their personal authority. The point of their teaching was always to be the Lord, who was the source of all wisdom and knowledge.

What Jesus is driving at here is not the role of His disciples or of future believers in the church. While God is our only Father, later in the New Testament the Holy Spirit is said to gift some in the church as teachers. Today there are many teachers in the church, and they perform an important function in the process of discipleship for many Christians. Jesus wants those who are given the responsibility for teaching and other leadership roles to be driven by a desire to use their gifts to honor Him rather than to accumulate titles for themselves. We can serve the Lord as leaders without being driven by our egos to seek more and more authority and recognition for ourselves.

This can be applied in a broader sense to everyone who is called to serve the Lord. It’s tempting to serve for ourselves. We may want recognition of our efforts, praise for our skills and talents, the ability to give orders to others, or just a sense of self-satisfaction that we are making God proud of us. To follow Jesus, we need to place His will and His work ahead of our own wishes. There is nothing wrong with a title, or receiving recognition, or a sense of having done well for the Lord, as long as these are not our primary motivations for service. Our goal is to work as humble servants of our great Lord, and leave the rest in His hands.

In the past few entries we have looked at the role of the Law in showing God’s people His requirements for holy living. The Ten Commandments are in some ways a summary of the Law in an easily remembered formula. Like any other list, though, the scholars would argue which of the commandments or of the traditional 613 laws in the Pentateuch was the most important. How you answered that question said a lot about your ideas of how to relate to God and to other people.

One of the Pharisees, called a “lawyer” here in Matthew, asks Jesus the question. The word translated “lawyer” means someone who was an expert in the Law. He would have studied all of the commandments as well as the rabbinic commentaries on them. Perhaps he wasnted to know if there was a way to condense the principles of the Law in one saying, or maybe he just wanted to add Jesus’ opinion to those he had already studied. In any case, he does appear to be sincerely seeking an answer (in the parallel passages), rather than trying to trip up Jesus.

Jesus responds with two commandments rather than one, neither of which are from the Ten Commandments. The first stresses the importance of loving God with all you have. Jesus calls this the “first and greatest” commandment. Without a proper relationship with God, you can’t have a proper relationship with others, or have the power to keep the rest of the commandments. The priority in our service to the Lord is to love and honor Him. All the work we do doesn’t matter if we aren’t part of God’s family and kingdom.

The second commandment Jesus cites is a broad one relating to people: love your neighbor as yourself. It isn’t enough to feel kindly towards other people, or to do nice things for them. You have to love them the same way you would love yourself. That means caring for their needs, respecting them as people, and seeking to move them closer to God. Just leaving people alone isn’t showing the kind of love Jesus expects us to have for them. We need to actively care for others.

These two commandments are the basis of all the commandments. They line up with what we saw in the Ten Commandments, the four relating to God and the six relating to people. All of the 613 commandments found by the Jews in the Law go back to one of these two commandments. They also relate not only to practice, but to heart and motivation. Jesus doesn’t tell us any particular activity we are to do, but gives us an attitude we are to have. Love must be the foundation on which our obedience to God and our relationship to others is built.

If we want to move along our journey with Jesus, we must be ready to follow the commandments He said were greatest. We need to love the Lord with everything we are and have, not just with our spare time and Sunday effort. We need to love others the way we should care for ourselves, not with whatever we have left over from loving ourselves. This isn’t easy, and we will have to continue to progress until the day Jesus returns or calls us home, but when we work toward these goals the rest of our Christian life will fall into place.

For the believer, nothing can create as much anguish as a sense of losing connection with Christ. We know that the Lord does not abandon us, but our own sin can cause us to drift away from Him to the point that we realize our relationship with Jesus has been compromised. We want to know the reality of the presence of God and to feel close to Him.

Israel experienced this repeatedly throughout history. Here in Exodus 32-33 we have one of the most significant breaches between Israel and the Lord. As Moses is receiving the detailed commandments from God, along with the tablets of the Ten Commandments, Israel was creating a new god for themselves. God warned Moses in language that disassociated Himself from the nation, and Moses hurried to see what had happened. After seeing the extant of Israel’s rebellion, Moses reacted impulsively in anger and shattered the tablets that symbolized God’s covenant with His people. Punishment was given, and many died for their part if rejecting God.

The Lord told Moses to continue the journey, but also said that He would not go with Israel, lest He be forced to judge them along the way. The people repented and mourned, and as a symbol of that repentance took off their jewelry, which was like that used to build the golden calf. They recognized that they would not succeed on their own, and that their sin stood between them and the presence of the Lord.

Moses recognized that for Israel to move on without the Lord’s presence was futile. They could not succeed in fulfilling God’s promises on their own. They needed the Lord to provide for them and to give them the strength to defeat the enemies before them. Moses knew that he was an inadequate leader without God, and Aaron had proven himself to be even worse. Moses needed the Lord’s constant presence to do what the Lord had called him to do.

This is what he reminded God in Exodus 33:12-13. God had told Moses he had found favor in the Lord’s sight, so His statement that He would not go with Moses and Israel seemed out of place. Moses reminded God that he needed the Lord to show him His ways so that he could make the right decisions and remain in the Lord’s favor. He also reminded God that Israel was His chosen people, and that the other nations around them knew this and would judge God by how He treated His people. Moses was more concerned about God’s reputation than his own.

Moses said something in verse 15 that every church leader and Christian should be ready to repeat whenever they seek to move forward for the Lord: “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.” Moses knew that if God was not involved in Israel’s journey there was no sense in even making it. I think this realization should be with each of us. If what we are doing, whether in our personal lives, our jobs, our churches, our ministries, or our daily activities, is not done with God going with us, we should just stop and not move on. It is better to wait to move along with God than to just move because you want to see something done. Like Israel, we need the Lord guiding us on our journeys.

God did relent and promise to go with Moses, and even showed Moses a glimpse of His glory. Moses could be assured that what he was doing was done with God’s guidance and presence. Israel would stumble and fail some more, including their spectacular failure when they first came to Canaan, but God would always be available to them on their journey. We need to remember that whatever happens in our lives, God is always there, and we can remain close to Him through faith and obedience. When it seems that God is far away, it is really us who have moved. The continued presence of the Lord in our lives is needed in order for us to go where He has called us to go.