SELF-IMPOSED WORSHIP

(Post by: Madie Hobbs)

Earlier today, I was thinking about what to write for this post. My mom started talking about the devotion she had read in A.W. Tozer’s book called “My Daily Pursuit” and said that maybe I should write about it. I went and got the book and read the devotion she had mentioned, and it just wasn’t really speaking to me.

So for fun, I flipped to the devotion for January 23^rd (which is my birthday). I always look at that one in the day by day books since it’s the best day of the year! (Lol) Wow! It was so good. In that devotion Tozer talked about how we get so caught up in ritual and tradition, that if we were really looking at where God’s presence is, we would realize that it isn’t there.

Especially in this time with all the COVID-19 stuff, I have seen how much we value our “normal”, and how much we value our traditions. We really value our church buildings, but that’s not the only place we can experience the presence of the Lord.  The presence of the Lord is in you and me, not in the church building. We are the Church.

“The sons of the fathers may be worshiping the God of fathers, but for the most part, they are only going through the motions they saw their fathers do a thousand times before. Where is the glory? Where is the fire? Where is the brokenness before the possible presence of God?” -A.W. Tozer

When was the last time you were broken in the presence of God? As Christians we often act as though we are whole. As if we have it all together, and our lives are perfect. I’m here to tell you today, God wants your brokenness. He wants your flaws and imperfections. As you start to spend time in His presence, that brokenness, that shame, all starts to go away as we give all that to Him and start to lean on Him and not ourselves.

Psalm 139:7 says, “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Where shall I flee from your presence?”

This is such a great example, straight from God’s Word, of how the presence of God is not in any one place. It is all around us. It’s in the extraordinary and in the mundane. It’s in the joy and the sorrow. It’s in the certainty and the uncertainty. God’s presence cannot be bound. What a comforting thought that is! God’s presence is always moving, always working for our good.

In Leviticus chapter 10, the Bible tells us about the sons of Aaron whose names were, Nadab and Abihu, and how they brought unauthorized fire into the place of the LORD. They lit their torches and put incense in them and offered it to God. They were immediately enveloped with the fire of the LORD and were killed because they offered fire that was kindled in their own way; not in the way the LORD had commanded.

You see, the fire they brought was to have been gathered from the Altar of Sacrifice; sprinkled with the blood of the sacrifice. This is God’s command. We must approach Him covered by the blood of the sacrifice. Our God is a holy God, and before Jesus was sent as a perfect sacrifice, everything that was offered to the LORD was to be given the exact way that He instructed.

For a moment I want us to step back and put ourselves in the place of Nadab and Abihu. How often do we do things for God simply because they have been done for generations before us instead of seeking the true will of God for the here and now? The sin of Aaron’s sons was in acting in the things of God without seeking the mind of God.

It was self-imposed worship.

OUR sin is in acting in the things of God without seeking the mind of God. Church, do we not see what must be done in order to have thriving churches, with thriving Christians? We MUST seek His presence.

His presence is something too many of us have been living without, and it is time, now more than ever, to truly seek His presence.

Let us stop having self-imposed worship and doing the same things over and over without noticing that the presence of God is no longer there. God’s presence cannot be bound. Let’s take it wherever we go, and seek it in whatever we do!

SO WHAT’S YOUR RESPONSE?

= How have you been spending time in God’s presence lately?

= When was the last time you were broken in the presence of God?

= What are you going to do differently?