TerryLema

So wouldn’t you know that the second half of yesterday’s devotion came up this morning in my memories from 2018. It aroused my thinking and I decided to send this one out again also! ….

I woke up Labor Day morning [2018] at 3 AM with a series of questions flowing through my mind about our Majestic and Powerful LORD. I listed all but one of those questions in yesterday’s devotion. The one I omitted, “When was the last time you went to a church service that left you uncomfortable, shaken or maybe even afraid?”

Suddenly, as I thought about that question, a host of others began to form. When was the last time church was anything more than routine or ordinary?

When was the last time we allowed God to move in ways unexplainable?

When was the last time we gave permission for the Spirit of God to deluge us with Rivers of Living Water?

When was the last time a church service made us want to both draw nearer and at the same time run away with all our might?

I yearn to see an exuberance in the people of God. I yearn to hear of preachers so over-powered by the presence of God that they cannot continue but fall under the glory of God beside their pulpits. I yearn to see worship leaders and musicians so consumed with the wonder of God that they abandon their planned program and begin to join with heavenly choirs in worship of God.

Are we really satisfied with the same-old, same-old? Or are we just comfortable keeping God inside our own expectations?

I want to see the fullness of God’s glory – even knowing that I will be undone by it. I want God to move in power among us, even if that power unnerves me and causes me to tremble in fear. I want all of God in our midst, not some handicapped, impotent, deity that neither challenges me nor changes me. That is what I pray for.

This devotion came up in my memories from 2018. The questions that were swirling in my mind that day five years ago started their merry dance again. I decided to send it out again! ….

I woke up Labor Day morning (2018) at 3 AM with questions swirling in my mind. Those thoughts centered around our Holy, Untamable, All-Powerful God.

When was the last time you faced the God of Moses and came away from that experience with your face reflecting His Glory?

When did you meet the God of Elijah who first brought an earthquake, fire, and wind to command your attention for His still small voice?

When was the last time you entered the presence of the God of Isaiah and found such holiness that you were unraveled in your humanity?

When was the last time you fell as dead before the God of Daniel and had to be revived before you could hear God’s answer to prayer?

Now lest you are thinking, that’s the Old Testament God and we now serve the New Testament gentle Christ Jesus who allowed children to climb on His lap. Let me remind you of the gentle Christ Jesus who calmed the raging storm and sea with a word and left His disciples more “terrified” of Him than of the storm. [Mark 4:35-41]

And remember John the Beloved, the one who reclined beside Jesus during the Last Supper? Remember his response when He saw the glorified Jesus holding the keys of death and Hades in Revelation 1, “I fell at his feet as though dead.”

We serve a holy, untamable, unexplainable, mighty LORD. He is majestic, powerful, and dangerous. We should be breathless in His Presence, awestruck by His Majesty, undone when faced with His Holiness. If we are not?

The great promises we hold to will only be as great as the God in whom we believe.

 Paul tells us in his first letter to the Corinthians that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.

He adds that while no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God, God has given us His Spirit to indwell us so that we may understand what God has freely given us. [1 Corinthians 2]

People make promises all the time … we’re in the middle of a political run for the presidency.  Promises abound.  Everyone has a promise … few of which will be kept.  By their very nature promises are based on the power and character of those making them.  Circumstances intervene. Situations evolve.  People change their minds.  And just like that the promises we’ve trusted are set aside by the very people who gave them to us.

Unfortunately, we can become a bit jaded because of so many un-kept promises.  We trust no one.  We believe nothing we read, and little of what we see and hear.  We might even carry that attitude into our relationship with God.  We apply the same doubt to the promises of God that we apply to the promises of man.

But God is not man that He should lie.  In fact, God cannot lie. And there are no circumstances, or situations that are powerful enough to overcome or tilt the slightest bit what God has promised.  God will not change His mind, He changes not.  The great promises that we hold to are every bit as great as the God in whom we believe!

Peter begins his second letter telling us that God has given us “everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.” [2 Peter 1:2]

That word for godliness is EUSEBEIA (yoo-seb’-i-ah); which simply means godliness or holiness. God has provided everything we need to live a holy life, a godly life.  Everything.  It’s all there.  Waiting … waiting for us to appropriate it.

I remember a story about John D. Rockefeller.  He saw a painting in a catalog that he really liked and wanted. He sent his assistants scouring the world to see who possessed it so that he could acquire it.  They found it in his own collection.  He possessed it all along and didn’t even know it.

Are we like that with the things of God?  Are we scouring around trying to find things we already possess?  God has given us everything.  That means He has held back nothing.  Do we need peace, comfort, strength, joy?  It’s already ours.  Do we need forgiveness, wisdom, provision, grace?  We have it.

 Peter ends his letter with one important admonition that we are to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”  [2 Peter 3:18]

Why the reminder to GROW in knowledge?  Because everything we need for life and godliness is given us THROUGH the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The more we know of Jesus, the more we realize just what is in our storehouse.  We won’t be scurrying around trying to find something we already possess.  We’ll know what we have, and we’ll know how to appropriate and appreciate it!

The phrase, “what joy shall fill my heart” was running through my mind this morning and then I recognized where it comes from.  It is found in the final verse in a beloved old hymn, How Great Thou Art.

 When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation, and take me home, what joy shall fill my heart.  Then I shall bow in humble adoration, and proclaim, my God, how great thou art!

Have we lost some of our admiration of the greatness of our God?  Do we fail to see our God displayed in the universe, in the stars or rolling thunder as the song says?  Do we not hear Him any longer in the song of the birds or the rushing brooks or feel Him on the breezes? Have we become so jaded that we are no longer rendered breathless when we think about the cross?

There is another verse to that song that should leave us speechless with awe, overpowered by God’s abundant mercy and grace.

 And when I think that God, his Son not sparing, sent him to die, I scarce can take it in, that on the cross, my burden gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sin.

We must return to the greatness of God. We must come back to the cross where God’s Son was not spared.  We must be struck again by God’s majesty.  We must see ourselves in the light of God’s holiness.  We can no longer see our God the way the world sees Him, we must see Him as He is.

 Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee: How great thou art! How great thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee: How great thou art! How great thou art!