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September 5, 2008

In reading yesterdays devotion by one Mr. Chambers whom many have come to rely on for solid guidance, I saw a very clear application of his comments to ideas being recently on my mind as well as this blog. http://www.studylight.org/devos/utm/

"If you have become bitter or sour, it is because when God gave you a blessing you clutched it for yourself; whereas if you had poured it out unto the Lord, you would have been the sweetest person out of heaven. If you are always taking blessings to yourself and never learn to pour out anything unto the Lord, other people do not get their horizon enlarged through you."

It is insightfully true to realize this, for all too often I find myself simply content if I am able to recoginize and truly thank God for the blessings He gives me. But does it occur to us to think that God is purposeful in His gifts, and would not simply have us realize this but also continue on to return this gift to Him by whatever means possible. And as this quotation and the text itself end here, I am brought to think of the impact my blessings can have on my fellow man.

So I begin to think, "How can I use my blessings to bless others?"

But that is so short sighted of me.

So we take a step back in the text to "the sweetest person out of heaven." When thinking about the glory of God in all things and my desire to worship Him as He worships God, it becomes obvious that broadening other men's horizons is a simple bi-product of our worshipping God in all blessings. It really shouldn't even be a main focus, although it should be prevelant.
The design is a recycling system. God gives us blessings. We are attentive to these blessings and purposeful in all circumstances to bring them back to him in simple thankfulness. And as an aside, the lifestyle just happens to be revolutionary. So becoming "the sweetest person out of heaven" is being as close as possible to living in right relation to God as one perfected after life.

This makes me think of the times again and again when I have prayed what I consider still a good prayer, but one easily surpassed every time. "God, help me to reflect You to others clearly without allowing myself to blur the image." Doesn't this work better? "God, please allow me to be a direct reflection of You back to You. I pray that You would see Yourself more clearly through me."

It seems appropriate that God be referenced so many times in such a short prayer.

September 3, 2008

So I really wanted to encourage you guys with somethings God has been showing me.
Hebrews 1 and Psalm 45 have a couple verses of overlapping text. They're both awesome, check them out. But these verses, they talk about how God anoints God because of how great He is. So God is worshipping God.
Which really makes alot of good sense, even though it seems really foreign. I mean think about it. Sure we know that God is ultimately trying successfully to gain for Himself as much glory as possible. But this includes first and foremost, actually actively worshipping Himself in everything He does. So the greatest Glory God ever gets is in when the only perfect one, God, is constantly Glorifying Him. Kind of a confusing circle.
Or we can think about it this way. We are created for the highest purpose, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. We are also created in God's image, to look like Him. So naturally, the greatest and ultimate reason for our creation is going to be a direct reflection of what God does. Now that we're fallen we don't glorify Him in all we do, like we should, but we ultimately try to glorify ourselves in all we do. God does the same thing. But ours is illigitimate.
I would say we can probably only know like 1% of who God. I think anymore would make our heads explode. I think it could kill us. John in Revelation and Isaiah both come to mind as people scared of death because of how much they know about God. We aren't designed to comprehend Him. Never were. Eve didn't, that's why she was able to question Him in the first place, when she was still flawless.
But I think we should always seek to know more. We should always be trying in everything we do to gain the very thing which could kill us if we get too much of it.
So even the wisest of men probably only know less than 1% of who God is and why He's so glorious. When we worship, we should be thinking about the fact that most of our good reasons to worship Him continue to ellude us, and always will. Be we should be begging for just another hint, another drop of knowledge on what makes up the character of this God.
My prayer is this, that we would worship God in this knowledge in everything we do, knowing that we don't really know anything about who He is, but desiring only to know Him more fully.