THE NAMES OF GOD

/in ,

“Let them praise the name of the LORD: for his name alone is excellent; his glory [is] above the earth and heaven.” Psa 148:13

Names are important it’s what identifies us.  In the Old Testament times, a name was not only identification, but an identity as well.  Often times a name  revealed the character or make up of a person . Abigail in explaining to David her husband’s poor decision explained,  Nabal, whose name means fool, “For as his name is, so is he; Nabal is his name, and folly is with him:” – 1Sam  25:25).

Throughout Scripture God reveals Himself to us through His names. When we study these names we will better understand who God really is. The meanings behind God’s names reveal His central personality and  nature. In the disciples prayer Jesus taught us to declare, “Hallowed be Your name.” To hallow a thing is to make it holy or to set it apart to be exalted as being worthy of absolute devotion. To hallow the name of God is to regard Him with complete devotion and loving admiration. The Priestly Levites declared to the Children of Israel,  “Arise, bless the Lord your God forever and ever! Oh may Your glorious name be blessed and exalted above all blessing and praise! (Neh 9:5). We should never take the  name of the Lord lightly (Ex 20:7; Lev 22:32), but always rejoice in it and reflect  deeply upon its true meaning.

ASTONISHED REVERENCE

/in ,

O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth, Who have set Your glory above the heavens!—Psalm 8:1
Then there is admiration, that is, appreciation of the excellency of God. Man is better qualified to appreciate God than any other creature because he was made in His image and is the only creature who was. This admiration for God grows and grows until it fills the heart with wonder and delight. “In our astonished reverence we confess Thine uncreated loveliness,” said the hymn writer. “In our astonished reverence.” The God of the modern evangelical rarely astonishes anybody. He manages to stay pretty much within the constitution. Never breaks over our bylaws. He’s a very well- behaved God and very denominational and very much one of us, and we ask Him to help us when we’re in trouble and look to Him to watch over us when we’re asleep. The God of the modern evangelical isn’t a God I could have much respect for. But when the Holy Ghost shows us God as He is we admire Him to the point of wonder and delight.

 

THE ART OF TRUE WORSHIP

/in
And every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard saying: “Blessing and honor and glory and power be to Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, forever and ever!” —Revelation 5:13
It remains only to be said that worship as we have described it here is almost (though, thank God, not quite) a forgotten art in our day. For whatever we can say of modern Bible-believing Christians, it can hardly be denied that we are not remarkable for our spirit of worship. The gospel as preached by good men in our times may save souls, but it does not create worshipers.
Our meetings are characterized by cordiality, humor, affability, zeal and high animal spirits; but hardly anywhere do we find gatherings marked by the overshadowing presence of God. We manage to get along on correct doctrine, fast tunes, pleasing personalities and religious amusements.
How few, how pitifully few are the enraptured souls who languish for love of Christ….
If Bible Christianity is to survive the present world upheaval, we shall need to recapture the spirit of worship. We shall need to have a fresh revelation of the greatness of God and the beauty of Jesus. We shall need to put away our phobias and our prejudices against the deeper life and seek again to be filled with the Holy Spirit. He alone can raise our cold hearts to rapture and restore again the art of true worship.

 

BUSY, BUSY, BUSY

/in

“For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart—these, O God, You will not despise.” Psalm 51:16-17
There is all around us, however, a very evident and continuing substitute for worship. I speak of the compelling temptation among Christian believers to be constantly engaged, during every waking hour, in religious activity.
We cannot deny that it is definitely a churchly idea of service. Many of our sermons and much of our contemporary ecclesiastical teaching lean toward the idea that it is surely God’s plan for us to be busy, busy, busy—because it is the best cause in the world in which we are involved.
But if there is any honesty left in us, it persuades us in our quieter moments that true spiritual worship is at a discouragingly low ebb among professing Christians.
Do we dare ask how we have reached this state?…
How can our approach to worship be any more vital than it is when so many who lead us, both in the pulpit and in the pew, give little indication that the fellowship of God is delightful beyond telling?
“Oh Lord, forgive me for so often falling into the ‘busy, busy, busy’ trap. I pray indeed that the people with whom I come into contact today might see that for me ‘the fellowship of God is delightful beyond telling.’ Amen.”

WE SEE GOD TO SMALL

/in

“Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together.”—Psalm 34:3
Worship rises or falls in any church altogether depending upon the attitude we take toward God, whether we see God big or whether we see Him little. Most of us see God too small; our God is too little. David said, “O magnify the Lord with me,” and “magnify” doesn’t mean to make God big. You can’t make God big. But you can see Him big.
Worship, I say, rises or falls with our concept of God; that is why I do not believe in these half converted cowboys who call God the Man Upstairs. I do not think they worship at all because their concept of God is unworthy of God and unworthy of them. And if there is one terrible disease in the Church of Christ, it is that we do not see God as great as He is. We’re too familiar with God.
“Sovereign God, expand my vision of You today. Give me some grasp of Your majesty and declare to me Your glory. Then draw me to my knees in awe and reverential worship. Amen.”

WONDER AND AWESOME FEAR

/in

So I said, “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” —Isaiah 6:5
I have said it before and I will say it again: This low concept of God is our spiritual problem today. Mankind has succeeded quite well in reducing God to a pitiful nothing! The God of the modern context is no God at all. He is simply a glorified chairman of the board, a kind of big businessman dealing in souls. The God portrayed in much of our church life today commands very little respect. We must get back to the Bible and to the ministration of God’s Spirit to regain a high and holy concept of God. Oh, this awesome, terrible God, the dread of Isaac! This God who made Isaiah cry out, “I am undone!” This God who drove Daniel to his knees in honor and respect. To know the Creator and the God of all the universe is to revere Him. It is to bow down before Him in wonder and awesome fear.
“Lord, I’m struck this morning with a sense of awe in Your presence. I can picture Tozer flat on his face on his study floor as he contemplates the words he has just written. I bow before You myself in ‘wonder and awesome fear.’ Amen.”

GOD'S PRESENCE ON MONDAY

/in
“Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”  1 Corinthians 10:31
On Monday, as we go about our different duties and tasks, are we aware of the Presence of God? The Lord desires still to be in His holy temple, wherever we are. He wants the continuing love and delight and worship of His children, wherever we work.
Is it not a beautiful thing for a businessman to enter his office on Monday morning with an inner call to worship: “The Lord is in my office—let all the world be silent before Him.”
If you cannot worship the Lord in the midst of your responsibilities on Monday, it is not very likely that you were worshiping on Sunday!…
I guess many people have an idea that they have God in a box. He is just in the church sanctuary, and when we leave and drive toward home, we have a rather faint, homesick feeling that we are leaving God in the big box.
You know that is not true, but what are you doing about it?

 

Discharging our Obligation

/in

…Walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), finding out what is acceptable to the Lord.—Ephesians 5:8-10
I have to be faithful to what I know to be true, so I must tell you that if you will not worship God seven days a week, you do not worship Him on one day a week….
Too many of us try to discharge our obligations to God Almighty in one day—usually one trip to church. Sometimes, nobly, we make it two trips to church, but it’s all on the same day when we have nothing else to do—and that’s supposed to be worship. I grant you, sir, that it can be true worship, provided that on Monday and Tuesday and the other days you also experience the blessings of true worship.
I do not say that you must be at church all of the time—how could you be?
You can worship God at your desk, on an elevated train, or driving in traffic. You can worship God washing dishes or ironing clothes. You can worship God in school, on the basketball court. You can worship God in whatever is legitimate and right and good….
So that’s all right. We can go to church and worship. But if we go to church and worship one day, it is not true worship unless it is followed by continuing worship in the days that follow.

WORSHIP SEVEN DAYS A WEEK

/in

But the Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before Him.—Habakkuk 2:20
So I’ve got to tell you that if you do not worship God seven days a week, you do not worship Him on one day a week. There is no such thing known in heaven as Sunday worship unless it is accompanied by Monday worship and Tuesday worship and so on….
We come into God’s house and say, “The Lord is in His holy temple, let us all kneel before Him.” Very nice. I think it’s nice to start a service that way once in a while. But when any of you men enter your office Monday morning at 9 o’clock, if you can’t walk into that office and say, “The Lord is in my office, let all the world be silent before Him,” then you are not worshiping the Lord on Sunday. If you can’t worship Him on Monday you didn’t worship Him on Sunday. If you don’t worship Him on Saturday you are not in very good shape to worship Him on Sunday.
“Lord, permeate my whole life with a spirit of worship—all week long, every day. Amen.”

WHAT GOOD IS IT?

/in

And one cried to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!” —Isaiah 6:3
If you want to pray strategically, in a way which would please God, pray that God might raise up men who would see the beauty of the Lord our God and would begin to preach it and hold it out to people, instead of offering peace of mind, deliverance from cigarettes, a better job and nicer cottage….
What good is all our busy religion if God isn’t in it? What good is it if we’ve lost majesty, reverence, worship—an awareness of the divine? What good is it if we’ve lost a sense of the Presence and the ability to retreat within our own hearts and meet God in the garden? If we’ve lost that, why build another church? Why make more converts to an effete Christianity? Why bring people to follow after a Savior so far off that He doesn’t own them?
We need to improve the quality of our Christianity, and we never will until we raise our concept of God back to that held by apostle, sage, prophet, saint and reformer. When we put God back where He belongs, we will instinctively and automatically move up again; the whole spiral of our religious direction will be upward.