"Your wickedness will punish you; your backsliding will rebuke you. Consider then and realize how evil and bitter it is for you when you forsake the Lord your God and have no awe of Him." declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty. ~Jer 2:19
I've just started reading Jeremiah this week and it is wild. Jeremiah is surrounded by a nation of corruption and rebellion to God and God tells him to stand up and be a prophet to that people. Delivering God's wrath and His desire to rebuild them.
"See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant." Jer 1:10
Today I read the top verse, 2:19, and God hit me with a thought about worship. God says that it's not only evil and bitter of us, but evil and bitter for us to forsake Him. Like we were created to worship Him and when we hold that back from Him it actually destroys who we are. Our undoing is our own doing. He won't force us to worship Him, so He'll never force us to be healthy and alive and safe and fulfilled.
Maybe we feel like he should sometimes, it would seem easier. Or maybe not force us but at least ask us. But He doesn't, He does something different, He commands it. The truth is that God's presence, more than God's person, commands our worship. He will be worshipped. ("the stones will cry out." Luke 19:40) My prayer is that I'd not be offended by the command but I'd respond with "awe of Him."
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3 comments:
"God says that it's not only evil and bitter of us, but evil and bitter for us to forsake Him."
That hit me hard - because it's true. When I'm living life focused on myself instead of devoting myself to Him in worship, it does start to destroy the core of who I am. The Heidelberg Catechism says that "the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever" (Happy's paraphrase: we were created to worship) - and when we're not doing it, we're not living into who we were meant to be.
This post makes me think of that Rush of Fools song, Undo - specifically the lines in the chorus - "You're the Only One who can undo what I've become."
God, forgive us when we try to unravel the fabric of who You meant us to be - and undo all the tangled messes we've made of things.
Question for you, Brandon - can you elaborate on what you meant when you said that it's "God's presence, more that God's person [that] commands our worship?"
Yeah, actually rereading that I'm not entirely convinced to agree with me. :) It was honestly probably silly to start any sentance with "the truth is..." I would rather rephrase it "it sometimes seems like... God's presence more than his person (at a given moment) is commanding my worship." And in that sense I'm probably using the word "command" more like the word "inspire". I actually didn't mean to refer to the actual Person of God either in that statement. I more meant that just being in his presence is commanding (inspiring) me to worship. That, more than Him "person"ally commanding me to do it, I'm just being ispired to worship Him by being there. It was a very awkward way of phrasing it now that I look at it. I was refering to the "awe of Him" nature of worship and how that seems to be taught to us more through experiencing the presence of God than from an instruction to worship Him. But using "God's person" to say that is probably very misleading to that meaning. To be sure God does "person"ally command us to worship Him, like it's seen in Scripture. But God's Person is an entirely different thing. As I grow to know God's Person better I'm inspired to worship more. Anyway, I hope that makes more sense, and thanks for asking Happy. :)
~B
Thanks for the clarification, Brandon. :) That was really helpful.
Worship's kind of an interesting thing sometimes... there are times when we do FEEL inspired to worship because we're experiencing (and are aware that we're experiencing) God's presence, and it does inspire awe... and then there are other times when we really do just have to CHOOSE to worship simply because "the truth is" (sorry, just couldn't resist!) God IS worthy of our worship simply by virtue of who He is (His Person).
I saw a cartoon about that the other day; I'm not sure how to link to it as a comment, so I'll put it up as a separate post.
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