Justin Tucker, LHBC Worship Pastor
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
So here I stand
High in surrender
I need You now
Hold my heart
Now and forever
My soul cries out
Once I was broken
But You loved my whole heart through
Sin has no hold on me
‘Cause Your grace holds me now
One of my favorite Christian authors, Paul David Tripp writes: “You cannot divide human beings into those who worship and those who don’t. Everybody worships; it’s just a matter of what, or whom, we serve.” Worship is something that we have all been designed to do. In fact, it is the end all, be all of our existence: the worship of God. In our humanity though, we often find ourselves bowing our hearts to things other than God. Those things that we bow our hearts to aren’t always bad things. They aren’t always addictions or lustful desires. Most of the time they are good things that have just taken our focus off of living for the Lord. They are things like work, or leisure, even our own families. While jobs are important to provide for our families, we have to ask the question; Is this a platform for me to honor and glorify God with or is this just a way to pay the mortgage or build my own kingdom? There’s nothing wrong with going to the lake or playing golf but if we replace our time that is intended to be spent in corporate worship with those things, we are placing them in a place of higher value than we do our Creator. I’m all for investing in the future of our children but I’m not willing to forsake the assembly for a less than 1% chance that I am raising a professional athlete. I’d rather invest in their eternity than I would in the temporary. We need to stop worshiping the wrong things.
The Church today doesn’t have a money issue, or a worship issue, or serving issue…what we have is a Lordship issue. We have taken Jesus down from the thrones of our hearts and we have replaced Him with things that are good, bad, and in-between. This song is a plea to God, that He would reign in the hearts of those he is king over, the hearts that rightfully belong to him. Sin is something we will continue to struggle with until Jesus returns. We are going to constantly have to topple over idols that we build in our hearts.Nothing can compare to our King. He knows how hard life is. He isn’t surprised when we slip and fall into sin, which is why Jesus was sent to die on the cross… to save us from His wrath. In our limited thinking and processing, we so often try to “fix” or satisfy our hearts with things other than our King, which always leaves us worse off than before. We can’t outrun or escape these things on our own. So what do we do? We run to Jesus and we bow in humility before Him. We repent. We focus our gaze on Him and we worship him and him alone.
Prayer:
Heavenly Father, I pray that Jesus would be the mountain we run to. When we want to run away, may we run to you, not another relationship, or dead-end path. Jesus, help us to only chase your glory. Help us to fix our eyes on you. In Jesus’ name, amen.
MEMORY VERSE OF THE WEEK:
Psalm 40:3-
He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear,
and put their trust in the Lord.