"The unfolding of your words gives light ..." (Psalm 119:130a)

Category: Worship (Page 2 of 3)

that T in the road

bumbling through life

Quite

Unaware

I encounter a

T in the road

What to make of this T?

An impasse? The end of my road?

A signal I should QUIT?

Or does the T signal, not a Termination, but a Transition?

As I consider my options something Emerges, standing between me and that fateful T

Exaltation of the King who rules my journey

Examination of my heart as part of my journey

Exploration of the King’s leading for the next stage of the journey

In fact, I discover the E is not just one thing, but many things

Yet it is not Everything

No, that is the Exclusive domain of my King

Him alone in that place between I and the T

Embracing Him as my Everything Transforms my journey

opening new options as I stand there before that great T in my road

there, with Him the T no longer demands I QUIT, but invites me to become QUIET

for, says my King, “in Quietness and in Trust is your strength” for this journey

Worshiping Whom?

worship.hands

In “… our consumer-oriented, western Christian culture … almost everything is bent toward the will of the worshiper, rather than toward the one to be worshiped. Worship in such a context becomes a celebration, not of the sovereignty of God, but the sovereignty of the worshiper. They come before God to allow Him a chance to meet their needs, to invite Him to bow to their troubles and give Him an opportunity to abandon His plans and join them in theirs.

This is nothing short of the retailing of God!

Our word ‘retail’ comes from the Old French. The prefix re– means ‘back,’ while tail means ‘to cut’ or ‘to trim.’ The resulting combination came to describe ‘a piece cut off, shred, scrap, paring.’

That is precisely what’s left after self-defined, self-directed worship–shreds and scraps of God. There is something of God here, but it is bits and pieces sown together into a quilt of worship after a pattern of one’s own making. Such worship constructs a patchwork, piecemeal deity, fit neither to command our allegiance nor meet our needs.” (Life as Worship, p.146)

Sacrifice vs. Obedience

obey.sacrifice

And Samuel said, “Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.” (1 Samuel 15:22)

Samuel told Saul to defeat the Amalekites, destroying all life (v.3). Saul led his troops in an overwhelming victory, but he spared their king and “the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fattened calves and the lambs, and all that was good …” (v.9a). God informed Samuel that Saul had not obeyed and that He had thus rejected him from being king over Israel (v.10). When confronted by Samuel, Saul said, “the people spared the best of the sheep and oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God.” (v.15).

God wants our explicit and exact obedience to His Word, not our self-manufactured notions of sacrifice. Oswald Chambers astutely observed that “The counterfeit of obedience is a state of mind in which you work up occasions to sacrifice yourself.”

We end up deluded by our own rationalizations, offering to God sacrifices of “worship” and “service” that He neither asked for nor desires, while withholding the obedience that is distasteful to us. It is possible to live one’s Christian life amid delusions and rationalizations dressed up like sacrifice and worship, which are in fact an avoidance of the very thing Jesus commands of us. We often embrace a sacrifice whose price we are glad to pay to cover for obedience whose price we are unwilling to pay.

Questions for reflection and prayer:

  • What might such “sacrifices” include?
  • What might we be trying to hide by making these “sacrifices”?
  • What motivates such “sacrifice”?
  • Why do you think such “sacrifices” are so convincing?
  • Apart from a “Samuel” pointing out the delusion of such “sacrifices” in our own lives, how might we become aware of our self-deception?
« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2024 Light to Live By

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑