EXPRESSING PRAISE

Our entire being is fashioned as an instrument of praise. Just as a master violin maker designs an instrument to produce maximum aesthetic results, so God tailor-made our bodies, souls and spirits to work together in consonance to produce pleasing expressions of praise and worship. When we use body language to express praise, that which is internal becomes visible.

-- Lamar Boschman in A Heart for Worship

 
#2940

HOLY OBEDIENCE

As worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends in holy obedience. Holy obedience saves worship from becoming an opiate, an escape from the pressing needs of modern life.
-- Richard Foster


#2939

A PLACE OF REPENTANCE

"They set out from Kadesh, and the Israelites, the whole congregation, came to Mount Hor. ... Moses stripped Aaron of his vestments, and put them on his son Eleazar; and Aaron died there on top of the mountain." (Numbers 20: 22, 28)

Aaron died on [Mount] Hor and was gathered to his ancestors. God takes us up our own Mount Hor, not to end our lives but to let us see what we are missing and to give us the chance to change. In this place of repentance, we are shown the kingdom of God and how far we are from being ready for it. Confronted with our sin, we have the opportunity to strip ourselves of self-interest, self-will, and self-importance. We have the chance to repent and to take up the work of building the kingdom of God in the world by doing the will of God.

-- Mary Anna Vidakovich in Meeting God on the Mountain


 
#2938

WAIT FOR HIS WORKING

It's safe to give ourselves up to God's love. He created us out of love and His love is never wearied or worn out by our sins. He is relentless in His pursuit of us and in His determination that one day we will be pure love, at whatever cost to us or to Himself.

"Good and upright is the Lord," the psalmist reminds us, "therefore He instructs sinners in His ways. He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them His way" (Psalm 25:8-9, italics added). The only requirement is humility and the patience to wait for His working. God is not known for haste, but He does mean business.

-- David Roper in Growing Slowly Wise

 
#2937

FORGETTING GOD

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, the many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God.

We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to God that made us!

-- Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation of 1863

 
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