God (Christianity) -- Worship and love; Spirituality
Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our
unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly. We
insist upon trying to modify Him and to bring Him nearer to our own
image. The flesh whimpers against the rigor of God's inexorable sentence
and begs like Agag for a little mercy, a little indulgence of its carnal
ways. It is no use. We can get a right start only by accepting God as He
is and learning to love Him for what He is. As we go on to know Him
better we shall find it a source of unspeakable joy that God is just
what He is. Some of the most rapturous moments we know will be those we
spend in reverent admiration of the Godhead. In those holy moments the
very thought of change in Him will be too painful to endure.
So let us begin with God. Back of all, above all, before all is God;
first in sequential order, above in rank and station, exalted in dignity
and honor. As the self-existent One He gave being to all things, and all
things exist out of Him and for Him. "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to
receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things,
and for thy pleasure they are and were created."
Every soul belongs to God and exists by His pleasure. God being Who and
What He is, and we being who and what we are, the only thinkable
relation between us is one of full lordship on His part and complete
submission on ours. We owe Him every honor that it is in our power to
give Him. Our everlasting grief lies in giving Him anything less.
The pursuit of God will embrace the labor of bringing our total
personality into conformity to His. And this not judicially, but
actually. I do not here refer to the act of justification by faith in
Christ. I speak of a voluntary exalting of God to His proper station
over us and a willing surrender of our whole being to the place of
worshipful submission which the Creator-creature circumstance makes
proper.
The moment we make up our minds that we are going on with this
determination to exalt God over all we step out of the world's parade.
We shall find ourselves out of adjustment to the ways of the world, and
increasingly so as we make progress in the holy way. We shall acquire a
new viewpoint; a new and different psychology will be formed within us;
a new power will begin to surprise us by its upsurgings and its
outgoings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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