Where Worship Is Hindered
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Where Worship Is Hindered
The progression beyond exaltation is frequently stalled by the misconception of the God of the universe being too big, or not large enough to be interested in the minutia of the elements of our moment-to-moment lives. For some with this conception, they are relieved by the absolution from choosing between guided or misguided choices; and for others this perspective can be a stimulus to the malaise of insignificance. Neither perspective is allowing for a God that is large enough to be and complete both at the same time; i.e. Controller of the Universal and loving every individual in a singular relationship.
This caricature issue usually results from our definition of God as an extension of our understanding of human responses in our own experiences. Modeling God on our own finite experiences limits His vast character to our own understanding. He is not just a commander and chief. Our interpretation of His persona is largely based on our recognition of His personal intervention, or interpretation of His lack of intervention – His providence and judgments. But the scope of our understanding is so minimally limited, the consignment of character to God is prejudice or biased at best by the limits of our own imagination. To see God at work we must become invested specifically to enlarging our awareness of His interest in, His workings in, and His affection for the world. ()
As this fictional caricature of God is developed, disappointment will abound, and in the effort to thwart these feelings a distancing begins to insulate the supplicant from the God they cannot reconcile to their own expectations. He fails to toe the line in their situational expectations. The problem is obvious in this scenario – you cannot worship a Disappointment.
At this point it becomes necessary to spare our self the ungracious discord of failure from the God we wish to worship, and we simply leave our relationship at a base level of exaltation only. No interaction beyond this can be trusted, and so application and pursuit of a real relationship is dynamically limited to praise in His magnificence, and not for relating to Him as a pursuing encourager and a loving dissuader. In essence no personal life-choice changing influence.
As we create a God image that mirrors our own sensibilities of justice, mercy, forgiveness and limited love, we cannot worship the True Unlimited God. When scripture speaks of us as being made in His image, in our own distortion, we tend to borrow the sinful quality of needing to be worshipped, derived from His deserving to be worshipped. Unless our image of God is not more than a greater, even if magnified, projection of our own limited qualities, ”our service and worship will be no more and no less than service and worship of ourselves.” Such a god may become a prop to our self-esteem, but will set up a gross disappointment in his inability to respond to our immediate morale, or moral needs, leaving us empty. () It has been sighted many times that we have a vacuum in our lives and we seek admiration as a poor substitute for acceptance. This substitution requires continual maintenance to be retained, so the struggle is forever present. As a result, we will always be looking for THE something to fulfill our need for worship until we find the ONE TRUE GOD to satisfy that emptiness in Christ Jesus.
If in our battles of life, we cannot be victorious, His claims on us are thusly defamed and impertinent, and irrelevant; we are left with a deficit in our life, and an isolation in our commitment. This god cannot lead to or arouse a true level of worship and service. Only by strenuous effort can even a low level loyalty be maintained to the very narrow caricature of such a god. Our emotions become the lead in our efforts to find a worshipful experience. We become dependant not on the True Character of God, but on our own ability to make the worship experience meaningful; we must by manipulation of our conditions and circumstances charge ourselves up to be able to withstand. This is planning for failure and loss, as it has no longevity.
We succeed only when we move beyond our pretense of projecting ourselves into our god, and condition our understanding of who God is, and to the actualizing in our life by choice to accept and believe Him for who HE SAYS HE IS. ()