Before the Altar part 5

Do I treat the altar where I worship as though a sanctuary? Is it His sanctuary? Am I doing His will in His sanctuary, or am I doing something to elevate me, although at the time it may not seem so. Do I treat it as precious? (Leviticus 19:30) Do I treat Him as though His way is what I wish to follow and that He truly is a great God? (Psalms 77:13) How do I think of His house? (Psalms 84:4) Because if I think of the church as just church and put God as an afterthought, without considering if He is there or praying to Him about His service, then church is just wood and nails with a roof on top, support beam,s on top of walls sitting on a slab or a raised level floor. Nothing holy, nothing happy. It becomes a tool to make me feel good about completing a check list, that I do this or go there or sing here or associate with this group or that group instead of jogging or going to the ball games like some do on Sunday mornings. Unless my sole purpose exists for praying and honoring Him (Isaiah 56:7) and sharing Him with everyone (Hebrews 10:25), church means nothing. Unless I am lifting others up and demonstrating His life and love to everyone I come in contact with, and unless the whole meaning behind going before is altar is so that I can be like Him and that He can teach me how to walk and talk in His light then all I do is meaningless. I am no longer the living sacrifice that Paul tells me to be in Romans 12:1. I am merely going through the motions of what it means to be a Christian. I am not a sacrifice to Him, but a shadow of His created, a display of His handiwork like a block of wood. I do things not Christ's way but my way. If I do not understand that regardless of what I do, if my heart is not to serve Him rather than what I get out of service, then I am totally selfish. I need Job's attitude in Job 10:2,9,15, to tell God not to condemn me but to see me as I am and show me His mercy. Oh, how I long for His steady hand that Job longed for in Job 13:21. How I long to have a relationship with Him that is pure, yet one in which I can kneel at His feet and He lifts me up as His daughter! How I pray for that! How I pray to rely on Him and not care about what my friends and family think. (Job 16:20) It doesn't matter to me what my enemies think, or really what people I don't know think of me. What matters are my friends and family and their opinions. And it is that which I must fight to realize that God is the only one I should fear, the only one I should care about whether I hurt or not, realizing that if I do harm to my fellow man I am indeed hurting God. God will same me from those that hurt me. (Psalms 3:1,2,7) and He will hear my call. (Psalms 4:1) He knows when I am suffering, either from illness or physical hurt, or from pain caused by others or my own selfishness. He will give me wisdom. (Psalms 5:8, Psalms 7:1,2,6,7) He considers me always when I come before the altar with my requests, when I am on my knees desiring His infinite compassion (Psalms 9:13,14) and when I am angry at what appears to be His slowness of response. (Psalms 10:1,12,15). He is listening, and considering His response in a timely fashion and He knows when I come to the altar with a pure heart that trusts and obeys Him (Psalms 16:1, Psalms 17:1, 2, 6-9,13,14). He knows my pleas and what kind of heart they are coming from.

Before the Altar part 4

Adam is my ultimate progenitor, for it is through him I see all the ways I might escape if I use my head. But instead, I lay blame on someone else,as Adam did Eve and then ultimately I lay blame on God. (Genesis 2 and 3) The war ensues between myself and God, though I don't want to admit it, and until I acknowledge this war as foolishness on my part I will never see my sin. I will never understand that sin is never and will never be hid from Him, no matter how small. I must acknowledge this uncleanness before I can heal. (Isaiah 6:5; Isaiah 59:12) Until I realize that I have not changed from my progenitor in that he sinned and that my immediate ancestors were in the same state as I am, because they were and are self-absorbed as I am. I forget that God is the one in control and I cannot tell Him what to do and when to do. I don't understand why He does what He does or why He wants certain things of me. When I humble myself before God and come to the altar, meaning offering myself as the living sacrifice Paul spoke of in Romans 12:1, then and only then am I ready for Him and His forgiveness. (Psalms 119:176; Psalms 130:3) When I am honest with Him (Jeremiah 3:13,25) only then can He mold my heart like a potter with clay. But if I am not honest with Him and I do not come to Him out of the depths of a humble heart, the devestation to my well-being and well-seeking is torrential. (Jeremiah 14:7,20; Lamentations 1:18; Lamentations 3:42) I cannot hope to gain His hope with sin. It will not happen and when I bring that to worship, when I bring my will, my worship is in vain and He cannot and will not bless me. That includes what I believe He will accept as improvements in worship, rather than actually doing His will and bringing myself to the altar as and only me. What I can do does not matter to God. How I do what I do does not matter to God. Who I am internally, that is the key to being pure, and I truly want to praise Him. But is that really what He wants? Doesn't He want my abilities or does He just want me? When Jesus sat at the Last Supper with His apostles it was an intimate meal between friends and some strong conversation between friends. Is that not what God wants, time to be with all of us collectively? Praising Him, yes, but being united with Him in the purpose of corporate communication. What a wonderful blissful day it will be when all of the saints will be singing their hearts out, to and with the Almighty in one accord.

This is where confession comes in. When I have God's Spirit and it is working or rather I am allowing it to work within me, my heart is soft as molten lead and God can refine me. Then I have real power and really move mountains. When I deny the Spirit, my heart hearkens and I cannot move a speck of dirt. But when I am accepting of my guilt and I confess it before God (Nehemiah 1:6,7) then I go before the throne, God's Spirit descends upon me even further (Leviticus 5:5) and it extends to an acknowledment that I and my ancestors are unclean and need Him. (Leviticus 6:10) I am consumed with repentance that I so desperately need. (Psalms 31:10) I also come to understand the consequences (Numbers 5:5-7) and my delivery from them, the sin that I hid, and future sinful behaviour. (Judges 10:1-5, I Samuel 12:10) God gives me ample opportunity to repent. He wants my whole heart. (I Kings 8:47) and a humble heart. (Ezra 9:6; Nehemiah 9:2, 33-35; Job 7:20; Job 40:4,5) He knows the depression I go through when I keep inside that I have sinned. (Psalms 28:13). Psalms 31 and 32 show me how much confession is a relief to me and binds me to God because I come to realize who I am and what the power of God is. By confessiong in front of His throne, I am dealng with and remembering that I dealt with the fact that 1) He made me, as He did the rest of the universe, 2) I am not the one in control of nature but He is. I am so blemished I cannot count the times I should have had the stripes that Jesus took for my sins. And then I realize the ultimate nature of sin, the separation from God and my allowing the crack in my relationship with Him. (Psalm 51:3,4)

Before the Altar part IV

Where am I when I accept Christ as my Lord and Savior? What kind of faith do I have? Enough to believe as the centurion did in John 4:50, 51, that my son is already risen from the dead, or that Tabitha is actually sitting up and staring at Peter (Acts 9:40)? What kind of faith do I truly have? Do I have so much faith that I just know whatever physical ailments may try to take me, God is still greater? He is listening to me and only me. And that happens even when I cry out for Him to save me, "Save me, Lord, You are my only Hope!" If I do that then I am finlly and foremost His that very minute. No guarantees for the futher and don't even say that I couldn't have really accepted Christ to begin with if I, years later, abandoned Him. No one knows my heart, no one can read my mind, nor can I read anyone else. How can anyone judge the quality of my worship, except God, which He does through His Word. He uses that as His standard rahter than using man's standards, as should I, for no man is my God, except for the Almighty Himself.