january 6 2010

My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers:

Worship:

"And [he] pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west and Hai on the east: and there he builded an alter."

Genesis 12:8

Worship is giving God the best that He has given you. Be careful what you do with the best you have. Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love gift. Take time to meditate before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship. If you hoard a thing for yourself, it will turn into a spiritual dry rot, as the manna did when it was hoarded. God will never let you hold a spiritual thing for yourself, it has to be given back to Him that He may make it a blessing to others.

Bethel is the symbol of communion with God; Ai is the symbol of the world. Abraham pitched his tent between the two. The measure of the worth of our public activity for God is the private profound communion we have with Him. Rush is wrong every time, there is always plenty of time to worship God. Quiet days with God may be a share. We have to pitch our tents where we shall always have quiet times with God, however noisy our times with the world may be.* There are not three stages in spiritual life - worship, waiting and work. Some of us go in jumps like spiritual frogs, we jump from worship to waiting, and from waiting to work. God's idea is that the three should go together. They were always together in the life of Our Lord. He was unhasting and unresting. It is a discipline, we cannot get into it all at once.

*every one of us communicates with Our Lord differently, in different places and different ways. God has created us uniquely and given us gifts and talents. He has placed talent in us (each different) and that talent is part of Him. He places a piece of Himself within us (a little More than the other parts and allows us to be "gifted" in that area).... doesn't it just make more sense that we can communicate better with the Lord when we are working and breathing and taking steps in that area that He has put more of Himself into... that area that He has given us bits of Him that we may be talented in it......?

think about it.

for now, sionara.