I posted to Facebook this morning that I recognize that God has given me all good things. I am certainly blessed with abundance in many ways, yet sin still entangles many areas of my life. I am still dealing with the curse, and much which I have brought upon myself. Has it occurred to you that the need to follow God's law actually produces freedom and health in your life?
There is a great battle with evil that we each fight every day and I fear that we are encumbered by our ignorance, taken captive in our blindness. How often do we really only honor God with our lips while keeping our hearts safely tucked away for our own tending? Have the "religious fanatics" found the life lived to Christ that we so say we desire? Are we aware of how different that life might actually look from our own if we were to indulge our conscience in holy discernment over the actions and words we give life to daily?
Even as we act in worship weekly, as tradition has taught us, we strive for vast amounts of control, sometimes even squelching the Spirit's calling to open our mouth in praise or raise our hands, only inviting the working of God's presence in our meetings at specified times for minute intervals, and only if He works through the prescribed liturgy or prepared hymn or the rehearsed sermon. I wonder how we will ever truly see and experience God in our worship without a willingness to strip away all that we call "worship" and wait for HIS leading. But to many, that would seem grossly out of order, partly because it removes the element of control from a human hand. But can God not be God? Has he not sent his Spirit to give EACH one of us gifts to share? And God forbid we don't make it through our order of worship in the allotted time. All the elements of worship must surely be played out in rote fashion for us to have achieved a "service." Then we can walk away knowing that things were smooth, and the sermon was nice, the music was "worshipful" and certainly God will honor that. After all, everything was done decently and in order. Yet I fear as we polish and refine the smoothly executed worship experience, we are only walking away with stale breadcrumbs from the ritualistically mystified communion table. We are walking away with a hint of fresh baked bread coming out of the oven, but from another room and another building and another church.
We (and I) desperately desire more of God Himself in our corporate worship services, but we utterly fail to recognize that God is not defined within a liturgy, a prayer, a heartfelt song, a sermon series, a creed, or where we put the announcements in the service. He is absolutely above and outside of all of that. A brief "chat" with him (or is it at him?) once a week will not open us to deeper revelation, understanding, or relationship - at least not if we want more than what we have.
I want more. What do you want?
