Who is God? All hail the power... (part 9)

Just like Christ was allowed to be bruised for humanity’s iniquities (Isaiah 53:10-12), God doesn’t promise me a rose garden, either. He does promise He will provide me with wisdom (Is 30:20) and that He will lift me up when I am humbled before Him. (Is 44:3-5). At that point, I will have grown in Him and my attitude will be as in Isaiah 59:19-21: “From the west, men will fear the name of the LORD, and from the rising of the sun, they will revere His glory. For He will come like a pent-up flood that the breath of the LORD drives along. The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins, declares the LORD.” The humble and penitent heart, that is what Jesus wants, that is what God wants. And Christ and God provide me with a way to come to Him, as He does all peoples. That is via Jerusalem, not a physical one, but one which God set up prior to the first one, the one God rules from in His mercy seat. The Jerusalem that is Heaven. God has chose Jerusalem to be the central holy point, (Jer 3:17) as He did physically so He now does spiritually with the formation of His church on the day of Pentacost. Isn’t God a wonderful God who has my future, my parents’ futures, my friends’ futures all in the palm of His hands, and Who knows what each and everyone of us need to live on? It is hard for me to know what to accept word for word and what to understand as a parable. Does Christ, when he tells Peter that upon this rock he shall build his church mean a literal rock, which would mean the physical seat of the church? Or does he mean upon the rock of faith, the Rock of Salvation that David refers to in Psalms? Is it a spiritual kingdom or one here on earth? Does the writer of Revelation mean Babylon in actual terms or a figurative one? Is Jerusalem figurative in the above case? So many times Christ spoke in real terms, and then at others figurative. And that is where communication comes in. How well do I connect with my Savior so I can understand his meanings? Not that I’ll understand them always, but I will love him and serve him by faith because of what I do know of him and his Father, who is also my Father.

 

Jesus is the final word in prayer, the Amen (Rev 3:14). If I find myself trying to improve God’s Word or worship in a way more suitable to what meets my needs, I am not worshipping God. I am worshipping my image of God. I am not in worship, then, with the sole purpose of bending my knee or bowing in reverence and I am doing something wrong and unnatural.