I am in Canada speaking at a youth camp. Although the lot of my time is spent hanging out with old friends until 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning, I am catching up on some reading. One book that I took with me was N T Wright's book, For All God's Worth. He says this about worship......
"True worship does not put on a show or make a fuss; true worship isn't forced, it isn't half hearted, it doesn't
keep looking at it's watch, doesn't worry what the other person in the pew is doing. True worship is open to
God, adoring God, waiting for God, trusting God......even in the dark."
How true is that?! At the core of worship is trust. I worship God with everything I am because I can trust Him. Even when I can't see my hand in front of my face. Even when I am in the darkest season of my life. I can love Him, trust Him, and subsequently worship Him.......in spirit(anywhere) and in truth(authentically).
4 comments:
I love the final thought---because that's the thing I love most about having a relationship with God--the "anywhere", & the "authentically" part...anything, anytime, anywhere, any circumstance. Always.
I'm glad you're blogging!
NT Wright is the man...well, God is the man, but you get my drift!
When I read this I thought of a passage from one of my favorite books, and needed to share.
"We are speaking of a time in which gods had sons. It was not so unusual to be a son of God. The miracle, at least in that time and in that pleace, was that ,Jesus- a peasant, a Jew, a nobody in an empire ruled exclusively by somebodies- was the son of that God, the all-powerful God of Abraham and Moses. That God's son was not an emperor. Not even a trained rabbi. A peasant and a Jew. A nobody like you. While the Buddha was special because he abandoned his wealth and noble birth to seek enlightenment, Jesus was special because he lacked wealth and noble birth, but inherited the ultimate nobility: King of kings."
When a close relationship is in trouble, fellowship is uncomfortable. You MAY begin to walk on emotional eggshells and carefully rehearse conversations and responses in your mind because there is fear of what will happen next. If this pattern continues, one or both parties will withdraw. Trust disappears.
When there is REAL love and trust, there is REAL honesty. The eggshell egos may crack a little but there is solid ground underneath. That is the example I have seen in Scripture in the past few days. God has a tough ego. He can even handle our misconceptions about Him and not be offended. He gives us the freedom to vent in His presence. In the past few years, all my religious facade has been stripped away by circumstances. I have felt very unspiritual. I HAVE been unspiritual.
I have been reading the psalms a lot since my divorce. In the past few days, I have been reading and re-reading one of the psalms of Korah...Psalm 88. I am not sure what happened in his life when he wrote this psalm but it must have been REALLY bad. In the Message paraphrase, he says to God, "Your wildfire anger has blazed through my life; I'm bleeding, black and blue. You've attacked me fiercely from every side, raining down blows till I am nearly dead. You made lover and neighbor alike dump me; the only friend I have left is darkness."
I can almost hear God saying, "Are you done yet?". I can also imagine that after Korah's verbal vomitting, he runs to God and says, "It's not YOU, it's me!" I love it that God is tough enough to handle our honesty and frustration. For me, when I have been REALLLY honest with God,then I can worship Him in spirit and in truth.
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