Tag: Think

Practical Worship

Situations such as heavy traffic are designed to test and strengthen your godly character.

You wake up in the morning get dressed, feeling good, looking like heavy bling and then you get out of the house only to discover that traffic has built up outside your house and you can’t get out of your road let alone into town to catch your train. You try to walk and catch up with the bus in front, but the driver refuses to open the door, mouthing something like he is in the middle of the road and not at the bus stop. Then he turns the other way, brings out his sandwich and takes a hearty bit.

When you prayed this morning, you were not given the update about traffic making you late for work. Maybe if you had been informed you would have set out much earlier and arrived ontime. Maybe even a little earlier to impress your manager. But you’re not impressed. In your head the verse of the day is ringing, “This is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoce and be glad in it”. So you force yourself to smile and not join in with the building crowed that is murmuring and complaining about the situation.

It’s hard, but you know you have to give thanks in all things. So, you internalize a prayer of thanks. You think about it and role over it in your mind until you are able to verbalize it and formulate it into words. Slowly but surely you realize it isn’t such a big deal and you find yourself thanking God you were not in the car crash that caused the traffic in the first place. Your thanksgiving some how made you see the bigger picture. That maybe your safty is more important than being on time to work. That your punctuality was given in exchange for your perfect peace and protection. That providence wasn’t sleeping when it heard your prayers sending the presence of God ahead to make rough paths plain.

Sometimes something as trivial as traffic can be big enough to cause an obstacle to your worship, but “I will enter his gates with thanksgiving in my heart, I will enter his courts with praise”.

This is worship in Practice.

Reflection: Walking the Straight and Narrow

 

The thing that held me back in my journey with Christ, without me even realising at first, was a compulsive need, an overwhelming desire to fit transformation and everything that comes with change in one day. Where the pressure to be an over-night perfect-holy-being came from I can’t exactly tell. But it was there. I was completely consumed by a false belief I had convinced myself was true: that Christianity was for the righteous. Only those that could keep their heads above water could wear the name ‘Christian’ with pride. So I strove to be an ideal instead of accepting the proposal of a life transforming relationship. The beauty of this revelatory truth that so eluded me was that the transformation comes as a natural addition. The first liberation was realising that surrendering need not be and would not be in a single day. In fact, every day was another day to lay down something else. There are also times where I needed to lay down something that I thought I had already dealt with.

The greatest journeys aren’t exactly easy. In complete contrast, they test your strengths expose your weaknesses, build your character in the most uncomfortable ways. You loose familiar things of sentimental value to gain great assets. The fact is, great journeys, the Christian journey, takes you through a process that demands one hundred percent disclosure and full acceptance of grace.