Declaring the Glory of God

Part 1 - God is a mystery

    It has been said that to keep the romance alive in a relationship, one should always keep a little bit of mystery about themselves.  Or that one should have a touch of unpredictability.  The same could be said of God.  God compares His relationship to us on one level to the relationship between a husband and wife.  But where we can never have any mystery about ourselves to God, we can never truly say that we know all there is to know of God.  He is always a mystery and is unpredictable to us.  His ways are not our ways.  His thoughts are not our thoughts.  Isaiah 55:8-9 says, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."  We can never understand His ways, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. 

Are you a mere mortal?  I'm not.  I know, that sounds rather arrogant.  But think about it.  C.S Lewis said that you have never met a mere mortal.  Every one will live forever.  Everyone is an eternal spirit.  Once you are born, your spirit will go on for all eternity.  You will either be tormented forever in the Lake of Fire or you will be forever in God's glory. 

I was at a church recently and they sang Matt Redman's Blessed Be Your Name.  When they go to the bridge (the part that says, You give and take away) they had changed the words to, 'He blesses every day'.  I was ready to get on my soap box.  Now I realize that they probably didn't mean this, but it sounded to me like they were saying that they blessed His name if He blessed them, but not if He didn't.  The only thing I could think was, "Would they still say blessed be His name if He took away from them?"  And I kept thinking, "No". 

I was listening to an old PODcast from Holy Trinity Brampton today, and Mike Pilavachi was speaking.  He was describing how he views faith. (This is a paraphrase, but you get the idea.) Faith is standing on the diving board of a pool and realizing that there is no water in the pool.  I would stop and say to God, "God, fill the pool with water and I will dive in."  But God replies, "Dive into the pool and trust that by the time you get there, I will have filled the pool with water."  Faith is always a risky business.  I must trust that God will always do what He says He will do.  That is easy to do as long as you are only talking about it.  It becomes hard when the rubber meets the road and one must DO it.  In 1 Kings there is an account of a time of famine in Israel.  God told Elijah to go to Zarephath and there was a woman there who would sustain him throughout the famine.  So Elijah went to Zarephath.  He asks the woman to bring him a little cake that she herself has made.  Her reply was, "And she said, As the LORD thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die."  She had nothing left.  She had just enough to make 2 very small cakes, one for her and one for her son.  But Elijah told her to make him a cake first, then make one for her and her son.  He didn't say, that God had already filled her containers with meal and oil, but told her to make him something with the little that she had left.  For her, faith meant giving all that she had to take care of the man of God before she even thought of herself.  If you read the account in 1 Kings 17, she did as Elijah asked and her oil and meal never ran out for the duration of the famine.   She had to spell faith, r-i-s-k for sure.  It was really risky for her.  She had to give all that she had first.  Then trust that God would take care of her. 

There is a church on my way to work that has a sign in front that they put different little sayings on.  Right now it says, "Beware the bareness of a busy life."  So true, but I think I would take a step further.  "Beware the barrenness of a busy life."  We live in a hectic world.  If we aren't doing 3 things at once we must be lazy.  But we need to set aside time (and I am preaching to myself as much as anyone else) to spend time alone with God.  No distractions of any kind. No TV, no video games, no computer and, the biggie for me, no stereo. Just me - - Him and my heart pouring out my worship.  Father, forgive me for missing my time with You.  I want to challenge everyone to set aside some time every day....let's start small...30 minutes a day....EVERY day to be alone with God.  I used to a long time ago.  I would just sit with my guitar and no one around and just play and sing my worship to Him, and for Him alone.  I need to get back to that time.  A time when I cherished Him above all else and didn't let my life get so busy.  So I leave you with this warning.....*spooky background music and vocal effects*Beware!  Beware  the life too busy for God.

I know it has been awhile since I posted here. I have a hard time keeping up with everything going on sometimes.  Anywho, I have put a page up on Song Discovery's community site. Come check it out. Listen to my music, alot. :)  If you are unfamiliar with Song Discovery, it is a great resource for worship leaders and worshipers in general.  Check them out, and maybe even suscribe.  Thx.

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I'm going to pose some questions to think about today.  No answers - just questions. If you haven't read my previous post, please do.

1. How can I go about reflecting God's glory?

2. How should His presence change me?

3. What have I done to place myself in a position to be able to reflect His glory more perfectly?

4. If the world is what gets between God and me, keeping me from reflecting His glory, how can I keep from going into total eclipse? And how can I keep myself in a "full moon" phase?

One thing that I find very interesting is the number of times people do searches on 'the glory of God'.  The world is hungry for His glory and they are searching to find it.  They search Google, they search religions, they search us.  Do we reflect His glory into their lives?  On my websites, I have a counter that tells me where people come to my site from.  This way if someone comes from a search engine entry, I can see what the search is and check to see how far up the engine I appear.  But it has also served to show me what people are hungry for.  For more times than not, if they are coming from a search engine, the phrase they were searching was either 'the glory of God' or 'what is the glory of God'.  We as a church need to start reflecting His glory into our communities.  If we do, we will not be able to contain the people that will be coming to our churches.  I believe the world is hungry, nay starving, for the glory of God.  We are to feed the hungry are we not?  Therefore let us spend time in His presence so that we can become like Him and reflect His glory to the world.  I heard that Louie Giglio once said that the moon reflects the light of the sun and that we too should reflect the light of the Son.  We need to make sure that we are in the right position to reflect the glory of God into this world.  For if we are not in the right position we can either not reflect anything, or worse yet eclipse the glory of God from the world.  If we remain in His presence, seeking His will, and learning His ways, then we will become more like Him and always be in the correct place to be able to reflect His glory into a starving world. 

I know it has been awhile since I posted, been busy with the new job and all.  Anywho.....

In Genesis 22 we see the account of when God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.  Now we always hear sermons on how trusting Abraham was in going through with this. Even to the point of getting up early to start on his way.  But what about Isaac?  I know the Bible doesn't say anything about what he was doing or thinking but can you imagine what was going through his mind? He walks along side his dad for three days to get to the site of the sacrifice.  Then when Abraham is done preparing the wood and the altar Isaac asks, "Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" You know he had to be thinking, "Okay, now what?"  But what we see in the Word is that Abraham bound him and placed him on the altar.  Now I am sure that Abraham had taugh Isaac that he was the promised son and that through him Abraham descendants would be innumerable.  So I think it took a lot of faith not only in God but in his dad to hear God's voice to be able to allow himself to be bound and placed on the altar. I would have at least questioned my dad before allowing myself to be the sacrifice lamb. But we don't see that Isaac resisted at all. He asked one question and Abraham's answer was all he needed to trust his dad and God fully.