“’O Israel,’ Says the Lord, ‘if you wanted to return to Me, you could. You could throw away your detestable idols and stray away no more. Then when you swear by My name, saying, “As surely as the Lord lives,” you could do so with truth, justice, and righteousness. Then you would be a blessing to the nations of the world, and all people would come and praise My name.’’” (Jeremiah 4:1-2 NLT)
As James outlines in James 1, sin begins in our mind. We rarely, if ever, engage in an activity about which we’ve given no thought. Typically, our senses are alerted – we see or hear something that gets our attention, entices us to investigate further, then hooks our mind and heart and we’re dragged away by our lustful desires to sin in ways we never imagined we would.
Though God will never tempt us, He understands fully the process and stands ready to help, heal, and forgive, but He will not force us to repent and be forgiven, that choice is ours alone. We drift from God because we decide to allow it to happen. But then guilt and shame do their part, and we begin to doubt our ability to accept God’s forgiveness.
It’s one thing to believe God is able and willing to forgive us, it’s a whole new level of faith to believe we can ever forgive ourselves. There have been ways I’ve violated God’s commands and hurt people I loved in ways I still wrestle to believe I’m forgiven, not by God, but by myself. The incessant question: “How could I EVER have done that?” echoes in my heart and mind and haunts me in inescapable ways.
Perhaps you can relate as you relive moments or seasons in your life that you disappointed yourself in unbelievable ways. You’ve sought the Lord for forgiveness, but your hesitancy to forgive yourself has created a distance, a space between you and the Lord. You’ve allowed yourself to drift from the Lord, not because He’s moved, but because you have.
Having wrestled with these relentless hauntings, I’ve discovered the only way to bridge that gap is worship. A. W. Tozer wrote: “Without worship we go about miserable.” There’s no greater misery than being separated from the Lord, but that’s what sin does, it separates. It divides our allegiance to the Lord and shares them with fantasies, dreams, and lustful considerations, that draw us away from the Lord and into a world of make believe where we think we can eat of the forbidden fruit and not pay a price.
Worship opens to us an avenue of opportunity to lay our burdens at the Lord’s feet, acknowledge our disobedience and sin, and find forgiveness, healing, and wholeness we can’t find anyplace else. But worship isn’t simply what we do at church on Sundays, it’s a moment-by-moment privilege we have as God’s children.
To me worship is like breathing because when I think of God, He’s like the air, He’s everywhere, ever-present. As a rule, I don’t think about taking a breath, it just happens. I’ve grown so accustomed to breathing I do it without conscious thought. In some ways, that’s how I view worship of the Lord. I want Him to be on my mind every second regardless of what else I may be doing. Why is that so important?
Because our mind can only focus on one thing at time, but it can be consciously aware of other things even as we focus on something else. I want that “something else” to be Jesus. I desire His presence to so captivate my mind that regardless of what else I’m doing, He’s right at the edge of my thoughts. It will be something, why not discipline ourselves to let it be Him. When we do it will prevent us from drifting from Him.
Food for thought.
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 