Who Do You Worship?

The words of Allen P. Ross hit me over the head today: “People are more interested in their own personal success than in service to others and more desirous of receiving a blessing than being a blessing; they want some experience but show little interest in spiritual growth; they gravitate to entertainment and leisure and are indifferent to the needs of people; and they are excited about being healed but do not comprehend what it means to count it joy that they suffer so that they can minister to others who are suffering. They worship themselves, not God."

Be Still and Know - He Will Be Exalted

Be still and know that I’m God, I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” (Psalm 46:10)

There is no doubt that our God is all that He says He is, and He accomplishes everything He says that He will do. “Our God is in the heavens; He does all that He pleases” (Psalm 115:3). Matt Redman reminds us of this truth when he says in one of the songs on his latest album “We Shall Not Be Shaken”: “He never changes, He never fails, He never fades. He is the God of unbroken promises”. But then we may ask what does God say in His Word about the times when we are afflicted? What is His ultimate purpose behind His promises?

“Be still and know that I am God...”

His Word says He will provide for our needs, so I believe He will. But he doesn’t say He will provide for everything we want. Our prayers must be according to His will. “And this is the confidence that we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His will He hears us” (1 John 5:14). The Bible also tells us why we don’t receive what we’re asking sometimes: “You ask and do no receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your own pleasures” (James 4:3).

What, when, and how? Those are things that we normally don’t know, because they belong to God. Now, those things are always the ones that make us become anxious and sometimes can lead us to question God’s plans. Then we try to fix our little world ourselves. We start making plans, thinking about logical and rational solutions to our problems. We forget that God not always works by logical and rational means. Most times He provides by unusual means, so that would be clear that His sovereign hand was there.

However, our sinful nature likes control, we want all the answers. We love to feel we did something, and that somehow we have some kind of credit for what “we earned”. But we sin against God with our unbelief, self-sufficient attitude, and deceitful heart and actions, telling Him that we do nor need Him. We do not trust in Him, therefore we sin."For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin" (Romans 14:23). We are forgetting this is how we honor Him - with our faith. By trusting Him in all He does; trusting that all His plans for us are so much better than anything else we could ever desire. Or we should say that we trust that He is so much better than anything else we could desire. Faith is not just something we needed to believe in Christ once; it is also something we must exercise every day. That is the difference between “saving faith” and “ fruit of the Spirit faith”. C.S. Lewis said:“Relying on God has to begin all over again every day, as if nothing had yet been done”. So, let us be still and know that He is God. But, for what purpose does God call us to “be still and know”, and trust Him?

"I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!"

God has been teaching me, sometimes the hard way, how much I need to learn how to trust and wait on Him, instead of trying to do something to fix my own problems or to take care of my needs (as if I could). The times I’ve been in situations when I can’t do anything else but trust and wait for Him to rescue me, I have grown in faith and I have seen the way He provides for my needs, sometimes in ways I couldn't even think. He makes me exercise my faith. I have also realized there is something those situations have had in common; the thing that have happened only He could have done, so He has taken away any possibility of boasting; and after them, my response to Him in worship changes and grows as I trust Him more, because I see Him greater than ever before. My attention and thanksgiving are drawn to Him alone. Which is exactly what God wants. “I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!"; and Oh! how often we ignore this part of the verse. If we are still and know that He is God, we might not get exactly what we were looking for, but one thing we must be sure of - God will be exalted among the nations, He will be exalted in the earth. This should be what we yearn for; that God would be exalted and glorified in our lives, through every situation.

He takes all the glory; He is the only One who deserves it. We have nothing else to boast in, but in the only One who’s worthy. In every situation we must point to Christ and make Him famous. We must draw all attention, dependance, affections, and gratitude to Him who is faithful in every season; and then we will able to see His abounding grace and steadfast love every day.

So, instead of being afraid of adversity and affliction, we should ask God to bring situations to our lives that would help us to feel our need for Him and wait on Him, so that when we overcome it would be plain to us that He alone sustains us. Then our worship response will be genuine and glorious. God will be honored with our faith, and we will be free from our fears, doubts, anxieties, and unbelief. We will learn to treasure Christ above all earthly things (education, economic security, jobs, status, houses, cars, clothes, etc), and God will be exalted.

Father, help us to be still and know that You are God, and treasure Christ in such a way that You would be exalted among the nations, in all the earth, and in our own lives.

Trusting God to His glory,

Jonathan

Saints & Sinners

The Apostle Paul constantly refers to those who believe in Christ as “saints” (Ephesians 1:1; Phillipians 1:1), this is what we are before God then, saints. At the same time Paul calls us “sinners” (Romans 5:8; Galatians 2:19), indeed he calls himself a sinner (1 Timothy 1:15-16). We know that even though we are new creatures in Christ now, we still sin every day, many times a day. So we know this what we are also, sinners. Isn't that amazing? The way these two words basically define who we are and yet they are so different words; “holiness” and “sinfulness”, they are completely opposed, and yet that is how the Bible calls us, both saints and sinners. How is it possible?

The Bible says that we all "fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23), because of our sinful and wicked nature. Therefore we all deserve death and condemnation, we all deserve to be separated from God for all eternity. Nevertheless, the Bible also says that "we are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith" (Romans 3:24-25). Something incredibly amazing happened to believing sinners the day Christ gave His life on that cross; we were reconciled with God and a new name was granted to us by grace, we are called saints. So, we are called saints not because of the good works we do now as believers, nor because of our own improvements regarding our own behavior, nor because of our search for integrity, holiness and for knowledge of God, when such search most of the times comes from sinful self-righteousness and our prideful hearts that still wants to do things to get God on our side. Our righteousness and holiness before God come only from Christ's work of grace. Because of His perfect and matchless sacrifice on our behalf we are hundred percent accepted before the Father. It has nothing to do with us, it is a miracle! It is something we cannot produce or accomplish. "For our sake God made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Christ's righteousness and holiness were imputed to us by grace.

We must always view ourselves both in terms of what we are in Christ (saints) and what we are in ourselves (sinners). That is what it means to say we need the Gospel every day of our lives. Even after being called saints, we cannot stand before God on the basis of our own works or our own lives, but only on the basis of Christ's work of grace on the cross for us.