Worship
I wrote the following comment over on the "Pure Church" blog:
We are tokens of what God can do through the most unlikely material. Sometimes He brings glory to Himself when we hunger and thirst for Christ in a way that will be satisfied with nothing less. And sometimes He receives glory when our hunger and thirst are gone, and we are spent, broken and defeated.
Ultimately it all centers around Christ. Not our relationship with Christ, but centering on Christ Himself - for we preach the Gospel of the Glory of Christ (2 Cor 4:4) and not merely the Gospel of the Salvation of Man (though thankfully the Gospel of Glory also contains the Gospel of Salvation).
This focus on Christ as All became obvious as I was leading a Sunday School class through Ephesians. I fear I failed to help them grasp this, but I shouldn't be too distressed that they didn't see something that has taken me 20 years to start to understand.
Where do the Father and the Spirit come into this? It is the Father's pleasure that we acknowledge the virtues and perfections of the Son. It is the Spirit's pleasure to be the enabler for true worship.
Thankfully God created us in such a way as to appreciate this. For example, I take some pleasure when I receive a compliment, but if you really want to see me happy spend some time telling me about how fine a child my son is (or my daughters for that matter). So it is with the Triune God. We acknowledge the person and work of the Father, but if you really want to touch the Father's heart, tell Him what He already knows about His Son.
We are tokens of what God can do through the most unlikely material. Sometimes He brings glory to Himself when we hunger and thirst for Christ in a way that will be satisfied with nothing less. And sometimes He receives glory when our hunger and thirst are gone, and we are spent, broken and defeated.
Ultimately it all centers around Christ. Not our relationship with Christ, but centering on Christ Himself - for we preach the Gospel of the Glory of Christ (2 Cor 4:4) and not merely the Gospel of the Salvation of Man (though thankfully the Gospel of Glory also contains the Gospel of Salvation).
This focus on Christ as All became obvious as I was leading a Sunday School class through Ephesians. I fear I failed to help them grasp this, but I shouldn't be too distressed that they didn't see something that has taken me 20 years to start to understand.
Where do the Father and the Spirit come into this? It is the Father's pleasure that we acknowledge the virtues and perfections of the Son. It is the Spirit's pleasure to be the enabler for true worship.
Thankfully God created us in such a way as to appreciate this. For example, I take some pleasure when I receive a compliment, but if you really want to see me happy spend some time telling me about how fine a child my son is (or my daughters for that matter). So it is with the Triune God. We acknowledge the person and work of the Father, but if you really want to touch the Father's heart, tell Him what He already knows about His Son.
posted by Shawn Abigail at 11:05 p.m.
1 Comments:
I take some pleasure when I receive a compliment, but if you really want to see me happy spend some time telling me about how fine a child my son is (or my daughters for that matter). So it is with the Triune God. We acknowledge the person and work of the Father, but if you really want to touch the Father's heart, tell Him what He already knows about His Son.
This? Is awesome. Thank you, Shawn, I've never seen it put quite that way before and it really helped me.
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