Our human tendency vs our greatest need – it’s an everyday battle, right? Try convincing a 2-year-old to eat a healthy lunch, and you’ll see the difference between what we feel like doing and what we really need. (Ok, change that to any age!)
Or we can all relate to the struggle to stick with important spiritual disciplines like reading our Bibles instead of letting it slide one more time.
I’m sure you could help me make a pretty long list of battles that literally cover every area of our lives between what we want to do and what is really best – or even vital. And this applies to our worship lives, too.
There are many great biblical examples of people worshiping God in response to all kinds of situations as opposed to giving into the tendency to leave Him out completely.
David not only filled the Psalms with his words of worship during difficult times, but he verbalized his battle to get to that place of pouring out his heart before God! What a great idea! (See Psalm 86.)
And one of my favorite accounts is of Paul and Silas in Acts 16:16-33. After a severe beating, they rejected the overwhelming human tendency just wallow in their pain and agony, and embraced their greatest need to seek their God and lift their voices in response to Him instead.
Even though they had no idea what He might do, it didn’t matter. They had an unwavering faith in the God they obviously knew so well – so they sought Him and worshiped Him in that horrendous place. And I believe that choice brought a freedom way beyond the dropping of the chains around their ankles. Their pain-riddled moment was redeemed in incredible ways!
The flip side of the coin? Sometimes things are going really well, and we need to fight the human tendency to be apathetic, take all of the credit ourselves, or subconsciously think, I must deserve this! Instead, we need to acknowledge God and His incredible faithfulness, power, lovingkindness, and mercy that He just poured out on us.
In Luke 17: 12-19, we have a good example of one who chose to stop to glorify Jesus, and others who chose not to. I can’t personally imagine a blessing any greater than that of being healed of something as horrible as leprosy. It’s even harder to imagine that out of ten men who saw Jesus face to face and knew that He Himself had healed them, only one stopped to give glory to his Healer.
Yet, I’d hate to read a list of blessings, big or small, for which I’ve failed to thank and glorify God. Especially since we see here that Jesus didn’t just recognize the one that returned, but grieved the nine that didn’t.
Can I grasp that my greatest need in any moment is to see God? And to worship Him regardless of where life finds me? Can I comprehend the freedom that brings and the purpose it fulfills?
It’s vitally important that we strive to understand this. Our human tendency and culture will tell us much differently. And the enemy will go to great lengths to convince us otherwise.
But there’s a reason Jesus taught obedience in the worship of our heavenly Father. He knew worship is a place of tremendous battle. And He knew worship is our greatest need. It’s our calling – God’s purpose for seeking and saving us! (Philippians 2:9-11)
But most of all, because He is worthy.
Pray for the discipline to seek Him – to stop in those moments when our tendency might be to send us down a less God-honoring or redemptive road – and acknowledge He alone is God.
“My soul will make its boast in the Lord!” (Psalm 34:2).
Where do you find your greatest tendency is to not seek and worship God?
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