Adore Him.

ACTS.

Adoration.

Confession.

Thanksgiving.

Supplication.

To Adore Him.  To accurately express who He is.  To marvel.  To worship.  To recenter and refocus.  If we saw Him as he actually was, it would naturally lead us to realize what we are…

“Indeed, how can a human being be righteous before God?

And how will he who is born of a woman be pure?

Look, even the moon is not bright,

and the stars are not pure in his sight.

How much less for a human being who is a maggot,

and a human who is a worm?”  Job 25

And then if we are faithful to confess our sins and our shortcomings before Him and we remember the Gospel, how can that not lead us into Thanksgiving?  And as we remember all we’re thankful for, we know we must be thankful too for our sufferings which are from Him for our good even as we ask him to concern himself with them, to heal us, to bind us, to redeem what’s broken.  

And it all starts with Adoration. 

i struggle with pure adoration.  As i was driving home last night i wondered…Do i really know Him well enough to adore Him?  When i begin to pray, do i just repeat lines i’ve read in the psalms?  Lyrics to songs?  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, Psalms came readily to Jesus’ lips as they should to ours!  We should be steeped and deeply marinated in the psalms as we should the prophets and the law and the epistles, there are wonderful ways to express worship in all of Scripture.  

i’m not asking though do i know Scripture as well as i should, i’m asking do i know HIM as well as i should?  When i contemplate my Creator without the benefit of some amazing vista, some sanguine sunset, some staggering starscape, some infant’s newborn cry, someone’s unexpected act of love, some surprising good fortune, some heartbreak, some close brush with death, some whispered interruption of the divine in my daily grind, when i just stop, on my own, to pray, do i know this God to whom i pray enough to adore him without rote, without prompt, without muse, from the punt, from the gate, has my heart been so filled with Him from time spent with Him, seeking Him in all the ways He has given us to find Him: in His Word; in the Communion of the Saints; in His creation; in His faithfulness and good deeds; and in the seeking itself?  Am i amazed?  Am i stunned?  Am i still bowled over by Him?  Am i driven to my knees?  Am i lifted up?  Will the rocks cry out, the trees clap their hands and the oceans roar because i am dumb, mute and silent in my ignorance?  Do i know Him?  Do i love Him enough to get to know Him?

“Jesus said to him, “Am I with you so long a time and you have not known me, [my name here]? The one who has seen me has seen the Father!”  John 14

Sabbath

The angel of Yahweh appeared a second time and touched him and said, “Get up, eat, for the journey is greater than you.”  1 Kings 19: 7

That could be my life verse.  All of life has felt too great for me.  Every decision.  Every day.  Every gosh. Darn. Day.

And it hasn’t gotten better as i’ve gotten older.  The responsibilities have piled on with the consequences of all the decisions i did make along the way so that each morning feels like the day after the camel’s back broke and mercilessly, still, someone is beating him awake and telling him to get his lazy (buttocks) to work!  i seek and relish moments where no one can ask me why i’m not doing something else.  As i write this, i’m cooking dinner.  i like to cook.  Cooking was a love language in my dysfunctional family.  To cook for someone is to love them.  But i also like that its not questioned.  What i make is often questioned!  How i make it is picked apart careless of the care that was put into it.  But no one asks why i’m doing it.  

It’s not that i hate work.  i don’t.  i hate purposeless work.  i hate meaningless work.  i hate the idea of spending minutes, hours, days, a life, doing the wrong work.  Of not living up to my potential.  Of not doing what i was meant to do.

Of not hearing the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

And then comes the Lord of the Sabbath, the one who knows the purpose of all things.  The Son of God who came from God to become the Servant of God so that we servants might become sons.  The One who was greater than the journey gave us His body, his life, to eat; his good work and faithful obedience to take as our own, undeserved, unwarranted, unearned, without picking it apart, without complaint or question, without trying to add ingredients of our own, but just to sit, and gratefully enjoy because the journey and its demands are too great for us and all the work which need be done, is finished.

Tomorrow is Monday and i’ll have to, if i haven’t by then, decide what to do with it, what the world expects of me, what my God is doing and what i can join Him in, what work is good and what is meaningful, how i can use this life to bring glory to this God who would do this for me but today, today is the Sabbath.

Today i just rest in Him alone.

From Wells to Wastelands

“From there they went to Beer (it means ‘Well’, not beer), which is the water well where Yahweh spoke to Moses, “Gather the people, that I may give them water.” Then Israel sang this song, “Arise, well water! Sing to it! Well water that the princes dug, that the leaders of the people dug, with a staff and with their rods.” And from the desert they continued to Mattanah, and from Mattanah to Nahaliel, and from Nahaliel to Bamoth; and from Bamoth to the valley that is in the territory of Moab, by the top of Pisgah, which overlooks the surface of the wasteland.”  Num 21

Forty years to follow, literally, like the literal meaning of literally, God around the desert to finally, finally enter into the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey.  Forty years of being sojourners in a land not their own to finally enter into their own land and to join God’s work of judging nations and building a kingdom at rest, a kingdom for His glory and honor, a kingdom with God Himself in its midst.  Forty years of being attacked, of deprivation, hunger, thirst, possibly boredom (not much agriculture and masonry to do when one is on the move constantly).  Desert nomads.  Rootless.  Landless.  But not Godless.  God is there, a pillar of cloud during the day, a pillar of fire at night, His voice and His glory emanating from between the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant, the proof of the promise He had made to them to be their God and lead them like a Father, like a shepherd, with His Staff of Kindness and Rod of Unity, he showers bread upon them every morning, quail some nights.  He opens the rock and gives them fresh water to drink, no trickle this, six hundred thousand people require a lot of water for themselves and their livestock.  When they rebel against Him fire, serpents and the earth itself disciplines them, purifies them, purges them of their sin.  Not because He hates them but because of His faithful promise to them to make them a holy people.  Because he loves them, he chastens them and grows them and prunes them and leads them into the wilderness to be alone with Him.  He is giving them the greatest gift of all, Himself.  His undivided attention and love.  What child has ever asked more from their father?  And what does He ask in return?  That they trust Him and obey Him.  The two are inextricably tied together.  To obey what you do not trust would be foolishness.  To not obey what you do trust is hatred to the point of idiocy.  And it is not blind faith He is asking, it is rational faith!  They saw with their own eyes the proof of who He is and what he is doing from the moment Moses came to them out of this very desert where God tested him for forty years.

Forty days to sojourn with and seek God.  Forty days to give up whatever He calls us to give up.  Whatever is holding us back.  Whatever is grieving Him.  Whatever we have turned to instead of Him and as a result lost who we are, who He is making us to be, a holy nation, a royal priesthood, sons of the Living God through Christ, who will one day walk from this wasteland to the true land of milk and honey that flows from the Rock of our Salvation, the cleft of which we hide in on Good Friday when God purges all that is unholy from the earth and heaven, the Rock which sojourns with us, which was split for us and spilt for us.  And it is our privilege as sons when we thirst to no longer need strike it.  It answers to whomever falls upon it and speaks to it.  Or better yet, sings to it…

Arise,

living water!

Grace to it!

Well water that the Prince of Peace dug, 

that the King of Kings dug,

with His staff and His rod.