Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Lessons During Worship

In a way, I feel as if I've allowed my heart and mind to fall into a little bit of a back log in relation to things that I want to share on my blog. I sat down just a few minutes prior to writing this post and began to write down a few titles relating to things that I could share with you and in doing so, came up with 4 titles, or actually it ended up being 5. Three of them have to do with lessons I've learned from our Samoyed Dog, Shasta. One other one has to do with what I remember from a book entitled "Lessons from a Sheep Dog" and than there is this one, which is just some things that the Lord was speaking to me about during worship this Sunday. I considered submitting all of these all at once so that you can read them in the order in which I wrote them, whether than in the reverse order as the computer likes to stack them, but than as I've been reading through some of what I've already written, I've decided that maybe the order in which they are read doesn't matter so much. Perhaps I'll just submit one a day for awhile. That will be different for me.

As to the subject of this post, the Lord was speaking to me in relation to two of the songs that we sang this Sunday. The first was "Come, Now is the Time to Worship". The words of this song go like this...

Come, Now is the time to Worship.
Come, Now is the time to Give your Heart.
Come, Just as you are to Worship.
Come, Just as you are before your God. Come.


One day every tongue will confess you are God.
One day every knee will bow.
Still the greatest treasure remains for those,
who gladly choose You now.


During rehearsal, I was so greatly touched by the song, that I actually requested from my singing partner the chance to share something. What I shared was in relation to our dog, Shasta. Since he is a Samoyed, he struggles a little with the command to "Come". As his owner, I so desire him to want to come to me and basically what I shared at Church on Sunday, just prior to singing this song, is that this is how God feels about us. He wants so badly for us to "Come" to Him.

I also explained what that coming means. God wants us to come and sit at His feet. Not only does He want us to "Come" and Worship Him, as the song suggests, but He also wants us to come and spend time with Him in the form of Private Devotional Time, involving the Reading of Scripture and also Prayer. To truly "Come", we also need to be willing to listen to what He has to say.

When we "Come" to Him in Prayer, if we come only with requests, than this is more like asking Him to come to us and to do it on our terms, yet if we "Come" in order to also listen to Him, this is a form of truly "Coming" and being willing to do so on His terms, whether than on ours. Instead of just telling Him what we want, we need to "Come" and listen to what He wants and be respectful of what He desires from us in our lives.




This, by itself, probably could have been enough of a post, yet God spoke to me again during worship in relation to another one of the songs. This time it was in relation to the song entitled "More Love, More Power". This one goes like this...

(Chorus)
More Love; More Power; More of You in my Life.
More Love; More Power; More of You in my Life.
(Repeat)

(Verse)
And I will Worship You, with all of my Heart.
And I will Worship You, with all of my Mind.
And I will Worship You, with all of my Strength.
You are my Lord. You are my Lord.

(Verse)
And I will Seek Your face, with all of my Heart.
And I will Seek Your face, with all of my Mind.
And I will Seek Your face, with all of my Strength.
You are my Lord. You are my Lord.

What the Lord spoke to me about during this song was that if we want "More Love" and "More Power", than we need to do our part by "Worshiping", "Seeking His Face" and also "Coming" to Him in all the ways that I mentioned earlier.

Too often our Relationship with God is a one sided Relationship, in which we just want God to do for us, but we are not willing to also do for Him. No Relationship should be so one sided and especially not our Relationship with God.

8 comments:

The Griper said...

a very wise message, lista. but one seldom heard in the prayers of many, i'm afraid. to paraphrase President Kennedy,

Ask not what God can do for you but ask what you can do for God.

Lista said...

Thanks

Kris said...

i love that song too. it is amazing how God talks to us through music.

kw

Lista said...

There were 2 songs mentioned, so I'm not sure which one you love, but thank you.

God talks to us through life experiences too, as I will be showing in later posts about our dog.

Anonymous said...

Great blog that you have here. I enjoy reading your posts. I am looking to blog roll you if you are willing to add my link back. Let me know.

Lista said...

Hi Christopher,
Thanks for dropping by. I'm behind in updating my blog roll. I've got a whole list of new ones that I want to add. Perhaps I shouldn't have started with the descriptions because sometimes I'm not sure how to describe certain ones. Maybe I'll just have to add the new ones one day without the descriptions. I'll let you know when I get around to it.

The Griper said...

hi lista,
found a site you might be interested in. found some interesting discoveries.

http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre49t526-us-israel-archaeology/

Lista said...

Thanks for the site, Griper. One things that frustrates me is how the Israelites are expected to prove every part of their history.

Even if a person does not believe that the Bible is inspired by God, it's still an accurate record of History. Nothing in it has been in any way disproved by Archaeology. There is no other Religious Book that can stand under the type of Scrutiny that they have put the Bible through. To expect every single little detail to be proved is not a realistic expectation. I doubt if our own history books could be proved on that level. I think it's ridiculous and highly unfair to the Jews.