Tag: Samaritan
Living Sacrifice Day 24 – The Desires of Your Heart
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Begin by reading Matthew 6:19-7:13
Have you ever seen a child throw a temper-tantrum when they didn’t get their way? Have you ever heard someone say, “if you love me, then you would…?” Being human beings, we often associate love with getting what we want. Good news. Jesus tells us that He wants to give us the desires of our heart.
But there’s a catch. Jesus isn’t just throwing Himself at us like some sort of Santa Claus. He wants to give us the desires of our heart, but the catch is that He wants the desires of our heart to be in line with the desires of His heart.
Yes, He does say, “ask and it shall be given to you, seek and ye shall find.” But what else ought we to be seeking? Well, in the Sermon on the Mount that served as today’s reading, before Jesus tells us that He’s going to give us what we seek, He tells us to seek first the Kingdom of God. He explains that “where our treasure is there our heart will be also.” The heart, as Jesus goes onto explain, is the source of our entire selves. All of our thoughts, desires, and actions stem from there. If our heart is in line with God, then everything will fall into place as well. But if our heart isn’t in the right place, then we’re going to treat God like a genie and feed Him our wish list.
The point our Rabbi is making is the Lord is looking to bless people that are seeking after Him. He’s not a reckless God who’s going to give us anything and everything we want just because we want it. If we’re not in line with Him, chances are we’re going to be asking for material possessions and for all the wrong reasons. No, He wants to give us what He wants. But first He wants us to want it.
God knows that we will never have second-thoughts if we follow Him. No one who has tasted the true glory and goodness of God and walked in step with the Master has ever said, “I wish I hadn’t done that.” But on the other hand, we have had plenty of occasions where we’ve gone our own way and now live with those regrets.
God is a gentleman. He doesn’t want to force His desires on our hearts, and so He is patient. He waits for us to want to follow Him, to taste and see that He and His will are good. It reminds me of a story I heard recently about a very successful businessman who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and eventually take over. The son at first had no desire, and so the father did not press the issue any further. But when the son realized how successful and wise his father was, he began to work with him, spend time with him. The more he got to see the business side of his father, the more he understood why he was so successful. The more he experienced the life his father wanted to give to him, the more he desired to live that life and take on that career.
At first, we may stand on the outside and think God’s ways are boring or not fulfilling. But walk with Him for a while, and watch your heart change. Watch yourself be transformed to the likeness of Your Father. That’s when you begin to see His will, and that is when you’ll see how good, pleasing, and perfect of a will it is.
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Living Sacrifice Day 23 – Knowing the Will of God
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Begin by reading John 4:4-26
I remember back to my senior year of high school, as I prepared to go to college. I struggled with trying to figure out where God wanted me to go to school and what major he wanted me to have. I thought it was the biggest decision of my life, and I desperately needed to hear the audible voice of the Lord.
We all want to know the will of God. Like the GPS system that sits on our dashboard, we want God to give us turn-by-turn directions. Sometimes He makes it pretty clear for us; sometimes He doesn’t. But the beginning place to knowing the will of God is actually revealed to us in today’s reading.
Once again we find ourselves looking at the story of the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. In this story, we find a woman trying to strike up conversation with Jesus about the differences between Jews and Samaritans and where they worshiped. But Jesus wasn’t interested in talking about that; He wanted to get at the heart of the matter. He wanted to examine her heart. The fact is, she was living in sin. She was a woman who had been married five times and was living with someone who wasn’t her husband. Most likely her reputation proceeded her, which is probably why she was drawing water at a time when no one else would be at the well. She wanted to avoid everyone, and they most likely didn’t want anything to do with her.
What does this story have to do with knowing the will of God? The answer is that knowing the will of God begins with obedience. We will not recognize the Lord’s voice if we are tangled up in sin. If you’re fooling around with someone who isn’t your spouse, don’t think that you’ll be able to hear the Lord giving direction on how to lead your family. Obedience is the key first step. In a sense, Jesus is saying, “Forget about where you worship. God desires people who worship in spirit and truth. Let’s begin with the problem of sin that’s paralyzing your heart.” This was a message from the Lord that we hear in Jeremiah 29:13 and Matthew 15:8, “these are people who honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; they worship Me in vain.”
The Lord is personal. Often times we forget that His relationship is, in a sense, no different than a relationship with a friend. If we want to know what our friend is saying, we need to spend time with them. If we’re hurting them in some way, we’re going to avoid getting closer in our friendship. If we’re holding a grudge against them, we’re not going to want to hear what they have to say. Likewise, our friend probably isn’t going to reveal their secrets to us because we haven’t earned their trust.
Do you want to know the will of God? Is there something in your life where you are anxious to hear from Him? Maybe it’s a big decision and you’re not sure what to do. Maybe He’s silent because He’s waiting for you to draw closer. Don’t just seek Him with your lips. Seek Him with your heart.
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Living Sacrifice Day 18 – A Lifestyle of Worship
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Begin by reading John 4:1-26
Being involved in music and worship teams and in traditional and contemporary churches, I’ve heard every possible criticism about music that you could possibly hear. I can still picture the older gentleman, wearing a suit to church, making a serious face as he bellows the words from the hymnal he holds in his hand. He praises the old hymns as great doctrines of theology, while criticizing songs like “Holy is the Lord,” because he’s repeating the same thing over, and over, and over again.
In the other corner, I see the young person, hands raised, signing out the refrain of the contemporary praise song. He criticizes those who sing about the Lord without emotion and says that the hymns of old seem to lack emotion themselves. He rolls his eyes at “We are One in the Bond of Love,” as he mocks the song by singing with a dramatic southern twang.
These are often the arguments in churches that try to appease the traditional and contemporary crowds, and for the first twenty-something years of my life, this was something I constantly heard. But to be honest, arguments about worship styles are nothing new. In the passage we just read, we saw a Samaritan woman who tried to argue with Jesus about worship styles. We even see this earlier in the Bible, as David’s wife Michal rebuked him for being so expressive in public worship.
Yesterday, we redefined the common understanding of worship by analyzing Romans 12:1. We said that “worship is a voluntary activity in response to God’s goodness, predetermined to glorify God – a personal expression of gratitude at any time, at any day that is pleasing to the Lord.”
In the case of Michal and the Samaritan woman, the worship they were referring to were moments of worship, whether they be a physical expression of praise or a sacrifice at the Temple. However, Jesus explains what true worship is – a seeking of the Father in spirit and truth. This is similar to what Paul writes in Romans 12:1 when he uses the phrase – “a spiritual act of worship.”
What Paul is saying is that if we are committed to being living sacrifices, then every moment, of every day is an opportunity for worship. It doesn’t matter what the activity is, as long as its predetermined to glorify God and is something that actually pleases Him. In other words, what Paul and Jesus are saying is that becoming a living sacrifice doesn’t mean merely having moments of worship but rather adopting a lifestyle of worship.
We’re so used to thinking of worship as those moments involving music. That’s what’s been ingrained in our heads. But it’s time to grow out of that thinking and adopt a Romans 12:1 understanding of worship. So, let me challenge you today to make your activities worshipful. What are some things you’re going to do today with an attitude of worship? And how will you begin or continue adopting a lifestyle of worship that will permeate every corner of your life? Those practical things you offer to the Lord are indeed spiritual and acts of worship.
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