Jesus, not me

Giving God our best

Jun 15

servantGod Thoughts giving thanks, holiness, obedience, praise, prayer, relationship, worship 1 Comment

“‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom, Thanksgiving and honor and power and might, Be to our God forever and ever. Amen.’” (Rev 6:12, NKJV)

“Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures, and the elders; and the number of them ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice: ‘Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom, and strength and honor and glory and blessing!’ 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 sites on the throne, and to the Lamb forever and ever!’” (Rev 5:12, NKJV)

Can you imagine the glory, the praise, the continual worship, the adoration and love and gratitude and blessing poured upon Almighty God and His Son Jesus Christ, in heaven? I can’t. This world is such a shadow, such a dim thing compared to what eternity will be like. And even here on earth, with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the absolute abandonment and joy we can receive when we worship our Lord Jesus in spirit and truth, that anointing and blessing that comes from God the Father… I honestly believe it pales in comparison to what heaven will be like, despite how absolutely beautiful and fantastic it is.

Last night at church, as we were worshipping, I felt such an impression of “worthy, worthy, worthy”… it was so heavy, like it had weight, an importance behind it. It bubbled out of me like a desperate cry… God, You are so infinitely worthy! Worthy of my love, my time, my attention, my energy, my hopes, my dreams. You are worth more than I could possibly ever offer You!

And after such a wonderful encounter with God, and an awesome message, the reality hit me.

If He is so worthy (and He is) why aren’t we giving Him our best?

I mean, we sing songs about how worthy He is, how He sent His Son to die for us, how we owe Him everything. We sing songs about living lives pure and holy before Him, about inviting Him in, about becoming living sacrifices. And yeah, singing those songs are great and there can be a real heartfelt passion there, but… if He is so worthy, why aren’t we giving Him our best. I mean our absolute best?

So many times in the last few months I have been absolutely humbled by the overwhelming realization of who Jesus is and what He did for me. The absolute brutality of the cross — the suffering in body, in soul, and in spirit. Jesus took on the sin of every man, woman, and child as they pierced His flesh and hung Him on a tree. He felt the hatred of men towards Him as they cried out “crucify Him! Crucify Him!”. In the spirit, He felt the judgement and wrath of a holy and righteous God, poured out upon Him because He took all of our sin as the sacrificial Lamb of God. A wrath and hatred for all things evil, all sin, all the awful things that you and I and every human being from Adam until Jesus comes again — that burning anger was poured out on Jesus who took that on Himself because He loved us, He loved me, enough to suffer that in order to bridge the divide that sin created between God and man. And the really amazing thing is that I know that if there were only one person on the planet, He would have done the same thing anyways.

Humbled yet? I know I am. I keep thinking about Isaiah and the vision he had of God sitting in heaven:

“And one cried to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!’ And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. 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 6:3-5, NKJV)

This is how I feel! I am a man of unclean lips! What I felt yesterday was that God is so worthy of our best and we’re giving Him leftovers. God demands the best of all we are, and we’re giving Him scraps fit for dogs! God forgive us — compared to what God has given us, we’re giving Him so very little of what we can, and should, offer Him! I am giving Him less than He deserves, so much less than what He deserves but God knows I am desperately trying to give Him more. Lord, take me, use me, help me to live a life of no compromise.. to be a living sacrifice, to be a witness and example of Your love and Your life in me!

If God is our King, and He is our Lord, then we need to start treating Him like it! We need to give Him the best of our attention — when we’re in church we should be there to adore Him, eager to consume the bread of His word for the Life it is! We should be taking notes, following along in our Bibles, lifting our hands and our feet and singing our hearts out! Not holding back, not texting on our phones, not leaving our Bible at home because we can’t be bothered to take it with us.

We need to give Him the best of our time — if the church God has placed us in has more than just Sunday-morning service, we need to go! This wasn’t an easy thing for me because I like my “down time”, but I’ve since realized that with God, He is my down time! Today work was getting crazy and busy and overwhelming and I was getting frustrated and tired. Then I felt such an impression to worship that I just turned up the worship songs, stood up, and lifted my hands before my God and worshipped Him as hard as I could for 15 minutes. It was brief, but it was powerful! And after tha,t there was peace, relaxation, an energy that I didn’t have before (I honestly felt like I had just woken up, refreshed, and having just downed an espresso or two!). What an amazing thing God gives us when we turn to Him! I could have easily gone and had a coffee, grumbled, muttered, whatever… but nothing would have given me the peace and vitality that just worshipping my Lord and Saviour gave me. Thank You, Lord, for that! But there is a very real key here: God honors the time we give Him. I have experienced this over and over again. Give God time and He will give you back whatever you sacrificed for Him. Did you give up sleep? The sleep you do get will be sounder, better, and you’ll wake even more refreshed. Did you give Him time that belonged to family or work? You’ll get that “time” back in increased productivity, a deeper quality to your family life (honestly though, your family should be in church with you! That is family time!).

(I need to quickly qualify the family time because there is a point of extremes. Yes, you should be in church as much as you can, and your family with you. But if you’re running around all the time, going to this church or that, or to that event, and not taking some time with your family, then you need to rethink what you’re doing. Good family time is so important, and we think it’s all rush rush rush, going here or there, when we need to take time to grow in our family units. That isn’t to say family time is sitting in front of the TV; if that’s your idea of family time you might as well be in church. I mean good engaging family time: playing board games, reading stories or the Bible, spending time talking and, more importantly, teaching your children about God is absolutely vital to maintaining a good strong family unit. As well, praying together, as a family, is more vital than you can imagine!)

So instead of skipping church to “minister” to a friend, you need to go to church (with or without them) — that will minister to them even more. They’ll know where your priorities are! Instead of spending time watching TV or playing video games, we should be spending our time at church or in His Word, or praying, or worshipping Him. I’m not saying don’t watch TV or play games or enjoy recreation, but what I’m saying is that the best of your time should be given to God and after you have honored Him and been obedient, then watch TV or whatever. Make all of that secondary, because God should be primary!

We need to give Him the best of our money — tithes and offerings. This is something God demands from us. 10% belongs to Him. We need to be faithful here; I believe it so deeply because I’ve experienced it. Tithing is so critical to receiving the full blessing of God. Offerings and alms are like lending money to God and He pays back with interest! But most importantly, because He asks us, we should do it. He’s worthy, right? Right!

We need to give Him the best of our talent — we need to be using our gifts and talents and skills for the increase of God’s kingdom! Whether this is serving in the church, whether this is ministering to people on the streets — whatever it is that God called you to do we should be doing it cheerfully and without grumbling. At our work, at our church, at our homes… everything we do should be done as if we were doing it for God. He deserves the best we have, and that includes the best work ethic! People should be scrambling to hire Christians, not wanting to get rid of them because we’re no different than the world in our work ethic! We need to be working hard because God gave us talents to improve and increase, and because He gives us the strength we need if we ask Him. We’ve got a huge advantage over worldly workers if we would only see it!

We need to give Him the best of our adoration — God deserves it. In heaven we will be crying out “worthy, worthy, worthy” for all eternity, so we might as well start practicing it now! We need to give God our reverence, we need to worship and pour out our love on Him because He is so very much worth it! We need to bless Him, crave His Presence, do whatever He asks of us because we love Him so much, because of what He has done for us and just because He loves us! He is called our heavenly Father for a reason! Now, I know that’s hard for those of us who don’t have fathers that pour out affection on us or make time for us, but realize that our Father is not like our earthly fathers. I mean, I love my daughter… I love her a lot. I would spend all of my time with her if I could. She’s beautiful, she’s smart, she’s kind, she’s generous, she has everything that makes her attractive to be around. I love her with all my heart. And yet, my love for her pales in comparison to God’s love for her. Jesus died for her too! God loves her with such an abundant love that I couldn’t even know it to describe it.

But what is amazing to me is that she loves me without question, without reservation. My daughter loves me to the point where it makes my heart ache because I am the recipient of that love. And I think God designed the family unit in this way so that we as parents can actually feel how God feels when kids love their parents unconditionally. And so that we as parents can feel how He feels when our kids misbehave or are not obedient, because that’s what we do to Him.

I also think that the way we feel pride in our kids when they excel and put their heart into something and give something their all (a test, a sport, whatever) is similar to the pride God feels in us when we give our tasks our best. And similarly, how we feel when our kids don’t try, lack ambition to succeed, when they’re not listening to us, when they don’t talk to us, when they don’t want to hang out with us… that disappointment we feel is small compared to the disappointment God feels when His children (us!) don’t listen (obey), don’t want to talk (pray), don’t want to hang out (go to church), don’t want to try, don’t want to persevere, don’t want to care, and so on.

The bottom line is that if we profess to love God, we need to bear witness to that. God sees the heart, He is not fooled by our silly justifications. He isn’t fooled when we want to watch a talk show rather than read His Word and justify it by saying we’ll do it later. You can’t trick God by saying that you’ll skip a service because you got to that really good part in a game, or a book, or you’re having a good time with friends, or the big game is on TV. God sees all, and He sees where our priorities lie by how we act, what we say, and what we do.

The Old Testament is full of examples of the sacrifices and offerings God ordained for His people. They were commanded to give the best of their flock, the best of their crops, the first fruits. I think that we’ve forgotten this, or haven’t read our Bibles enough to know it. We were bought with the most awful price, our lives are no longer our own. Yes, we are slaves to Christ because of the currency He used to pay for our redemption, His own blood. We can’t possibly pay Him back for what He gave us, but the very least we can do is live our lives obedient to His Word and express our love for Him in the most obvious way possible — by giving Him our absolute best, because He is worthy, worthy, worthy!