I have had very little time to get back to my blog in the past week, and truthfully have only a few moments right now, but I wanted to share a thought or question that has just captured my spirit and I cannot get away from now for over a week.
That is, “Is our sacrifice, (our worship) acceptable to the Lord?”
It is one thing to participate in the act of praise and worship, but I have been made keenly aware that God is not always pleased with what we offer him.
It is possible that he is not accepting what we offer him!
I don’t know about you, but that is an awesome and terrifying fact that has just gripped my heart for the past week.
Is what I offer the Lord pleasing and acceptable in his sight?
In examining myself over the past many days, I have begun asking myself some questions.
* Am I coming to the Lord with a clean heart?
* Do I have the proper motive in my worship?
* Am I really giving God my best?
* Is this what God demands of me, or is it created to meet my needs?
There are many others, but this is enough for now. I truly wish I had more time to develop this, and I will come back to add more later, but I wanted to get this out there and see if some discussion will develop.
I cannot explain it, but there has been a burning within me to dig deeper into this and to share this with others.
I want my worship to be pleasing and acceptable to the Lord, and I desire to see the same thing in others.
I have been giving much thought to this, and I realize that from studying the Old Testament worship and sacrifice, when man did as God had commanded in bringing the sacrifice (worship), God always showed up. He always moved.
And this is what I want to see in my life, my church and my ministry!
2 comments:
There are a couple of scriptures from the OT that come to mind immediately- Isaiah 1:10-15, Isaiah 58 (the whole chapter) and Malachi the first chapter.
I think it is very easy to get comfortable with God and begin to think that He's pleased with us when really all we are doing is going through some motions. My former pastor (who has gone on to be with the Lord now) said one morning he felt the presence of the Holy Spirit come into his bedroom and told him "you make me sick." This is someone I have/had the utmost confidence in so I don't think it was bologna he was telling me. He said he had gotten so caught up with going through the motions of "church as usual" that he had become dull and numb spiritually.
While I agree with the intent here, I do have a few questions...
What scriptural references are you adhering to in order to answer the questions you propose? ie: according to the Bible... how are the questions you pose related to "acceptable worship" answered in the pages of scripture?
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