When God is Your Whole World

[1]

Friday, October 11, 2019

Praise the Lord!  I will thank the Lord with all my heart as I meet with his godly people.  How amazing are the deeds of the Lord!  All who delight in him should ponder them.  Everything he does reveals his glory and majesty.  His righteousness never fails.  He causes us to remember his wonderful works.  How gracious and merciful is our Lord!  He gives food to those who fear him; he always remembers his covenant.  He has shown his great power to his people by giving them the lands of other nations.  All he does is just and good, and all his commandments are trustworthy.  They are forever true, to be obeyed faithfully and with integrity.  He has paid a full ransom for his people.  He has guaranteed his covenant with them forever.  What a holy, awe-inspiring name he has!  Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true wisdom.  All who obey his commandments will grow in wisdom.  Praise him forever!  Psalm 111:1-10

The amazement, wonder, awe, and gratitude for and to God flowing from the Psalmist’s pen are a sum of that in which my heart wants to lose itself.  I have lived long enough, and sinned big enough to know the vast difference between who is God and who is not.  And yet, my heart aspires to immerse all of who I am in God’s love, compassion, strength, and wisdom.  In short, I desire to desire Him more than anything.  I want to be (as Charles Wesley wrote), lost in wonder, love, and praise.[2]  Paradoxically, there also exists a side of me that fears to come that close; God is awesome, and His power is without measure.  Should God decide to not receive me with open arms, the mere thought of being in His presence immediately leaps to what terrible fate would become of a poor sinner like me.  (Toasted like a pop tart comes to mind!)

But God’s Word disagrees with that “toast” deduction.  Consider the evidence:

To a wicked culture that only paid lip service to being God’s people he said through the prophet Malachi: 

Return to me, and I will return to you.(Malachi 3:7)

Before David was king he was hounded by Saul, chased into the wilderness, living in caves, an outcast, man without a country.  David considered his experience and wrote: 

Taste and see that the Lord is good Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him!(Psalm 34:8)

To His dull-minded disciples who just could never quite get it, Jesus said: 

…those the Father has given me will come to me, and I will never reject them.(John 6:37)

To crowds listening Jesus offered:

“Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you.  Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.(Matthew 11:28-29)

And, to anyone who ever did choose to come close, on bended knee, willing to allow God to make Him their whole life, He said:

…I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.(Hebrews 13:5 KJV)

For You Today

It’s never smart to approach God casually, as if there is some slight chance that you can take Him or leave Him.  But, when you’ve made up your mind that you’re long overdue in getting things straight between your Creator and you…remember all those invitations to come close; God loves you too much to go back on that word!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image:  Pixabay.com    Unless noted, Scripture used from The New Living Translation©

[2] Charles Wesley, Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, The United Methodist Hymnal, (1989, UMC Publishing House, Nashville), 384

I Will Exalt YOU My God and King

[i]

Friday, November 4, 2016

I will exalt you, my God and King, and praise your name forever and ever.  I will praise you every day; yes, I will praise you forever.  Great is the Lord!  He is most worthy of praise!  No one can measure his greatness.  Let each generation tell its children of your mighty acts; let them proclaim your power.  I will meditate on your majestic, glorious splendor and your wonderful miracles.  Psalm 145:1-5^(NLT)

Somewhere in the wee hours of the night – perhaps during the rain delay just before the Chicago Cubs broke their 108 year non-championship streak with a World Series win over the Cleveland Indians (who, by-the-way, were only slightly less effective than the Cubs, having not won a World Series since 1948, and now own the distinction of being the longest losers on planet Major League baseball) – well, it was somewhere in the middle of all that baseball and nail-biting, big-time staying-up too late, I figured-out I have spent enough time staying up too late and nail-biting over a baseball game.  I went to bed and waited for the morning to find out who won.  Congratulations Cubbies, and hang-in there Cleveland; you played wonderfully, and if the Cubs are any indication, miracles still happen; maybe next year!

A second epiphany happened in the middle of the night concerning the staying-up too late, and all that nail-biting I’ve been doing over next Tuesday’s election. 

Hi; I’m Russell, and I’m an election-aholic!

What dawned on me is that I’m done.  No, I haven’t voted yet, I’m something of a traditionalist; it won’t feel right unless I get to the polling place and wait 3 months in line…so I’ll be voting on November 8^th. 

What I’m done with is placing so much attention on staying up late and nail-biting over the latest trend in the polls.  I’m done worrying about what I can’t control, and definitely wouldn’t want to control anyway.  I’m done with anxiety and election strategy!

Now, I’ve lived long enough, and sinned often enough to know that when you give something up, if you don’t replace it with something else, something else will rush-in to take the place of the something you gave up.  It’s that way in nature and with human beings…there’s no such thing as a vacuum for very long.  It’s like that vacuum-packed jar of pickles, or can of coffee you open…that sssshhhhhhhh sound you hear isn’t air escaping, it’s the outside air rushing-in to fill the emptiness.  If you give-up smoking today, you’re liable to take up eating tomorrow.  Give up drinking and you will find gambling makes a nice substitute!

So what’s an ex-nail-biting, stayer-up-too-late, election poll-worrying junkie supposed to do? 

Well, he’s supposed to do exactly what he should have been doing all along – meditate, as the Psalmist suggested, on the glorious splendor and wonderful miracles of God; to let THAT replace the nonsense of a lesser-things vacuum between your ears, and fill your mouth with praise for, and exaltation of, the one true living God.  When you begin to do THAT as your main diet of what you do with your day, there will be so much holy air rush in to replace what you gave up, there won’t be time to slip back into lesser things!  You’ll be as Charles Wesley expressed it, lost in wonder, love and praise[ii]

I don’t doubt I’ll watch another World Series game, and I’m not saying I won’t notice who won the election, but I’ve given up the all-consuming task of being God about it.  Besides, there are enough people on the ballot who already want that job.

For You Today

If your team won (or lost) the World Series, or if your candidate wins (or loses) the election, how much difference is it going to make when you place that fact alongside the majesty and exaltation of Almighty God?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

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NOTES

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[i] Title image:  By JFXie (Flickr: O Praise Him), via Wikimedia Commons

[ii] Charles Wesley, Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, 1747