Pure Praise Week 3 – The God We Worship

This looks to be a very cool week… we are studying God! Day one is about the One, True God.

Wow…

We read through King Jehoshaphat’s cry to God for Israel in 2 Chronicles 20, Job’s conversation with God in Job 40 & 42, and we touched on Elijah’s day taunting the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18:36-39.

Do you realize what a powerful God we serve? He created the heavens and the earth… He can cause fire to rain down on an alter that has been doused with gallons and gallons of water and left to soak it in – and consume the water as well! He controls the animals, He controls the winds and the waves, He… well, He chose to give us free will. He could just as easily control every aspect of our lives by force just as He controls the elements, but instead He chose to let us have control of our lives.

Read through Job… The man was tortured by satan repeatedly – for no reason other than that he loved God! Yet, what was his reaction? He still chose to love God. Did he blame God? No. Did he choose to curse God – even when everyone around him told him to? No. He knew that God had a purpose for everything that was happening to him. Was he dissatisfied? Oh yeah. Did he question God? You’d better believe it! But… God didn’t come crashing down on him and curse him for questioning. God did come down. God did speak with him. God did reveal Himself to Job in a powerful way. And what did Job do then? He repented. He worshiped God.

Would you hold up that long? We all hope we would. I can’t imagine what he went through – to lose all of his children in one day. Who cares about the house & money – to lose your children! And not just one, but every child you had. All at once! And the only one left to comfort you was so torn up in their grief that they not only blamed you somehow, but told you to curse God and die! On top of that grief to have every worldly possession destroyed or taken away at the same time… He had nothing left BUT God. No, his “friends” don’t count. They were also blaming him – he must have done something to deserve this! Yes, God spoke the them too. He wasn’t as gracious to them…

Our culture tries very hard to make God into something that you can place into a little box and carry with you throughout your day. A little good luck charm to keep you safe, a little genie in a bottle to grant all your wishes. Do you really want to serve a God like that? Can you serve a God like that? That sounds to me like a pet that serves YOU!

No, Jehovah is not a genie in a bottle. Yahweh is not a good luck charm. Just because we call Him Emmanuel – God with us – does not mean that he can fit into our pocket to be our own personal protector. It’s ludicrous. We are talking about a being that was never created… a being that has always been. A being that IS always - He exists outside of time and space! We are talking about a being that was able to create this planet that perfectly sustains us. He created every plant that lives on it. He created every life form that thrives on land, in the water or in the air. He created US. He created every fiber of our beings, He knows the exact number of hairs that are growing out of our heads at every moment of our lives – and He knows the exact number that came out in the shower this morning! He knows how many skin cells we have still connected to our bodies, as well as how many are floating around in our homes disguised as dust.

You can’t put Someone that powerful in a box to be rubbed occasionally when you want your wishes to come true.

Yet, that is just what we try to do. We try to make God into something that He is not, simply because we are afraid to grasp who and what He really is. Not that we will ever fully grasp Who He is – our minds aren’t up to the task – but we are too afraid to even try to truly see His Majesty and Power.

We are afraid to be humbled.

We, as humans (you know, the top of the everything-on-the-planet chain) like to be the ones in control. We are, after all, made in His image! We were told to take care of everything else that was created! Yeah – great job we are doing there too… but that’s another topic entirely…

We don’t like to look to someone else to take care of us or to tell us what to do. We don’t like to admit that we aren’t enough. But God is! That’s the beautiful thing! HE IS ABLE! He created each of us, He knows us better than anyone else ever could!.  He gave us the free will to choose to love Him, or not. But He wants us to love Him. He wants us to realize our great need for Him and turn our lives over to Him. Remember that? He controls everything on this rock except us… but He is waiting for us to realize that we can’t do it without Him. He is waiting for us to look to Him to be our Lord, our Master and our Saviour.

Job realized Who God is… and he confessed. He begged forgiveness of the Almighty for questioning Him. Elijah realized Who God is when he taunted the false prophets. He prayed expectantly that God would reveal Himself in such a powerful way that no one could doubt His power! Elijah knew God well enough to not be afraid to stand up for God’s character. He knew God well enough to know that God would provide the fire that was needed – even under the most impossible circumstances.  He also knew that God would send the rain that the land so desperately needed.

What about Jehoshaphat? He was the king of Israel at a time when they were being attacked. He knew God well enough to know that the first thing they needed to do was to cry out to God! The news of the impending attack came and Good Ol’ Jo went to the temple! He went straight to God and cried out for deliverance! He commanded the priests to cry out to God – he called for all of Judah and Jerusalem to gather together and cry out to God. To someone who doesn’t know God, this looks to be a bad military strategy… Old Jo should have been preparing the troops for battle! Ah, but he was… he was reminding his people who was really in control. God was their true King. He would deliver them from the hands of their enemies!

And you know what? They never even had to fight. They worshiped our wonderful Saviour, and God took care of the battle.

You see, when we give the control of our lives over to God, we don’t need a genie in a bottle to grant our wishes! We don’t need to have a good luck charm in our pocket! We have the Holy Spirit of God living inside us! He is able to bring about His will better than any mere human could ever dream of.

Will there be times when our lives may be in danger? Absolutely. The word “martyr” is closely aligned with christianity for a reason – in fact, it was someone’s name. We may be called to stand up for the God of the Universe, and it may be the last thing we ever do. If that is the path that God has chosen for me though, I pray that I will have the faith and the courage to take that final stand proclaiming His glory for all the world to see and trust that He will use it to expand His kingdom.

I am guilty of trying to carry around a “God in a box” myself. It is so easy to get caught up in our everyday lives – the trials, the struggles and the joys – and forget that God created me for a purpose, and He has a plan for my life. It is so easy to forget to take the time each day to spend with Him – to build that relationship with Him, to come to know Him so well that I will be able to take any stand for Him that He calls me to.

We need to give Him that time!

After all, how willing will we be to take a stand for someone that is only an acquaintance? Someone that we know because of what someone else had told us about them? But if you KNOW someone – you know that you know that you know them – you will have the courage to stand for what is right. You will have the faith to believe that God will come through – one way or another – and that He will be magnified through your circumstances.

That is my prayer for all of God’s people. For myself, my family, my friends, my church family… it is my prayer for you! I pray that we will come to know God as fully as we are able so that our lives are turned back over to Him to control, and that we will walk out our faith in our daily lives to such a degree that His love and grace and mercy will overflow out of our lives and pour out into the lives of everyone who comes into contact with us. That they would not come into contact with us, but with the Creator of the Universe! That we would be the hands and feet and arms and legs and eyes and ears and voice of Jesus reaching out, going out and sending out into a world that needs Him so desperately.

But to do that, first we need to become intimately acquainted with our Creator. We need to know Him.

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