May each of you have the heart to conceive, the understanding to direct, and the hand to execute works that will leave the world a little better for your having been here. -- Ronald Reagan

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Sunday is Our Day for Worship, Plus...

Worship is giving God the best that He has given you. Be careful what you do with the best you have. Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love-gift. Take time to meditate before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship. If you hoard it for yourself, it will turn into spiritual dry rot, as the manna did when it was hoarded (Exodus 16:20). God will never allow you to keep a spiritual blessing completely for yourself. It must be given back to Him so that He can make it a blessing to others.

Bethel is the symbol of fellowship with God; Ai is the symbol of the world. ("He moved from there to the mountain east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, there he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord." Genesis 12:8) Abram "pitched his tent" between the two. The lasting value of our public service for God is measured by the depth of the intimacy of our private time of fellowship and oneness with Him. Rushing in and out of worship is wrong every time-there is always plenty of time to worship God. Days set apart for quiet can be a trap, detracting from the need to have daily quiet time with God. That is why we must "pitch our tents" where we will always have quiet times with Him, however noisy our time with the world may be. There are not three levels of spiritual life-worship, waiting, and work. Yet some of us seem to jump like spiritual frogs from worship to waiting, and from waiting to work. God's idea is that the three should go together as one. They were always together in the life of our Lord and in perfect harmony. It is a discipline that must be developed: it will not happen overnight.

Oswald Chambers- My Utmost for His Hightest

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