“He who forms the mountains, who creates the wind, and who reveals his thoughts to mankind, who turns dawn to darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth—
the LORD God Almighty is his name.”
Today’s Text: Amos 4:1-13 (Living Life Daily Devotional)
At some point in our Christian spiritual formation, we need to stop looking for God in ecstatic moments of “spiritual” performance. When we do that, we are actually trying to conjure up God’s presence with our rituals—sort of like conjuring up a genie from a magic lamp by rubbing it. But that is how many people “worship” God.
The reality is that God is omnipresent—that is, God is all around. He is everywhere at every moment. And so when we worship, we must conscientiously align our thinking to that reality.
Worship has so much less to do with how we are experiencing or feeling. Worship has everything to do with what we are conscientiously acknowledging—that as an offering of praise, we approach the omnipresent presence of the LORD God Almighty and His throne of grace.
Worship definitely has absolutely nothing to do with conjuring up the presence of God with our religious performance. But that is how many people are taught to “worship” God. Who and what is that religious performance for anyway? Many people would say it is “for God,” but is it really, though?
And not only do many people try to conjure up God’s presence with their religious performance, they also try to conjure up God’s grace and mercy through their moral performance. But everyone has a different standard for what kind of moral performance and how much of that moral performance is sufficient for purchasing God’s grace and mercy.
I saw a movie recently about a Catholic assassin who was rightly concerned about not being allowed into heaven because of all the people he had murdered. The way that the movie played out, he must have come to the conclusion that killing “bad” people was OK and not a barrier for entry into heaven, at all. In the end, there was no repentance on his part.
Our religious performance does not conjure up His presence, and our moral performance does not purchase God’s grace.
What does the Spirit of God tell us in the word of God?
… “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the message concerning faith that we proclaim: If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.
— Romans 10:8-10
God is everywhere, and His grace is near.
Father, You are everywhere and in everything. And by Your grace, You manifest Your presence in my life. But You have already manifested Your presence in the moon and stars, every black hole and galaxy, in the mountains and the wind, and especially Your word. You have saved me according to Your word, by Your grace and through faith. Help me to not just know that You are ever present and that Your grace is ever present but to feel it, especially in my worship to You. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
