ReformedRev's Quote of the Day

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world. - C.S. Lewis

ReformedRev's Quote of the Day

We may choose to ignore God's sovereignty, 
        but we can not strip it from him.
                   William Gurnall

God is Not Like Us!

Worship should acknowledge that God is not like us! God is unequal in his splendor, his majesty, his power, and his glory. The Scriptures remind us that his wisdom is beyond the grasp of human understanding and his mercy, grace, and love are inexhaustible and immeasurable. There is nothing and no one like our God.

As believers we are called to worship God. To worship God means to ascribe to him all the praise, honor, and glory he is due. Our worship should reflect our understanding of God’s “otherness.” In Hebrews 12: 28-29 we are reminded that we are to be “grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”

Classic hymns such as “Amazing Grace” and contemporary praise and worship music like “Holy is Our God” point to the uniqueness of God in a meaningful way. Music is one of the elements of worship that allows the church to focus on God’s “otherness” with “reverence and awe” or at least it should. Human beings can be notoriously self-centered and selfish. We often focus more on our own likes or wants rather than the needs of others or the task at hand. Often our bottom-line for everything is “What about me?”

We live is a narcissistic society where our tendencies of self-absorption are as real on Sunday as they are during the rest of the week So I want to be clear here when I say worship is not about us, what we like, prefer, desire, or feel we require. It is about God and acknowledging that God is not like us. Our focus on Sunday morning should not be on the style of music we desire but on our desire to move closer to God. It should not be on the length of the service but on our need to spend quality time with the one, true, living God.

In Ezekiel 44:16, God instructs the priest to “enter my sanctuary … to minister to me.” Our worship needs to be our offering to our God, not just another opportunity to complain that “our needs” are not being met or that we are “not being moved spiritually.” For we are not here for ourselves, but to worship in reverence and awe, and to acknowledge that that God is not like us. More to follow!

RefRev