Unite my heart to fear Your name, O God of undeserved Love.
Here are some A. W. Tozer quotes I read today, followed by some of my own thoughts.
"It is a strange and beautiful ecentricity of the free God that He has allowed His heart to be emotionally identified with men. Self-sufficient as He is, He wants our love and will not be satisfied till He gets it. Free as He is, He has let His heart be bound to us forever."
"No man with a trace of humility would first think that he is a friend of God; but the idea did not originate with men. Abraham would never have said, "I am God's friend," but God Himself said that Abraham was His friend."
It is a wondrous thing that God would stoop down and choose to love us. What do we have that He lacks? What could attract Him to us? We are dust, and He is the Almighty, Transcendent, Infinite, Living God. Yet He not only chose to save us, He also loves us and delights in those who are His. What a magnificent truth!
Too many people, myself included, fail to realize how incredible this is. We come to God so casually. We easily call Him our friend and assume He is on our side. We make Him our equal, if not smaller. To many people, He is no more than a means to an end (to look spiritual, to prosper, etc.). To many, He is not a Living Being, but only a philosophical theory. A friend of mine wrote, "God is ONLY a thought to us." Oh, how I fear for his soul.
Many who call themselves Christians today worship a small God, one who is good and loving and many other things, but he is just a part of life. A god who fits in our pockets and whom we can take out and put away as we please. We worship him at our convenience and leave him out of our personal agendas. So many people are just presuming on His grace, that God is too loving to do anything bad to "pretty good people" like themselves. But they are storing up wrath for themselves. (Romans 2:4-5)
Where is the fear of God? Where is our reverence?
Even for me, a person who has for a long time honestly desired to please God and find all my joy in Him, I have so often lacked reverence and so often forgotten how Holy He is compared to me. This week I was struck in 1 Timothy with the words "the living God." When I pray, do I really realize that I am talking to a living Being? Do I live life every day acknowledging His presence? So often I fail to do so.
This is my earnest prayer, as I think about these things: "Unite my heart to fear your name." Psalm 86:11. In its deepest place, my heart does fear the Lord. I know He is high and exalted. His love is deeper than I could ever comprehend, and the fact that He even cares to know my name is incredible, even breathtaking. Yet my heart also has hard places that doubt Him, doubt His word, want what I want rather than what He wants, and often believe the lie that something else is of more worth than God.
My heart has been regenerated by the Holy Spirit, but He is still at work in it. I am divided, inconsistent, and unfaithful. But He remains faithful to me always, for He cannot deny Himself. We have a sacred covenant that He will never break. He is my Husband, and though I am not as faithful as I would like to be, He delights in a humble, broken heart. He loves me and sings over me.
There are no more words for this post. I don't have words beautiful enough to convey the magnificence of the kindness He has shown in Christ Jesus. Brothers and sisters, Praise Him in humility, reverence, and great joy.
posted by Alyssa Dawn @ 2:03 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I'm reading Jeremiah Burroughs book "Gospel Fear" In it he distinguished godly fear from the fear of demons and wicked men. He also points out that God honors His word above His name. With that he then moves on to say true believers tremble at God's word Isaiah 66:2). It is an amazing book that preaches a word that you will not hear in most churches today. May God unite my heart and the hearts of all his people to fear His name.
oh yes and amen!! this verse has been in my heart for days and this is what i have been feeling!
Thank you for this Aylssa. I am reading your blog in 2012 and agreeing with every word written from 4 years ago! Was looking online for the exact verse for "unite my hear to fear your name" and that's how I came across your blog.
That verse has been my prayer for a long time knowing how my heart wavers dangerously (and many times, too easily) from knowing to unknowing, from longing to down right resistance to Him (after so long being a Christian, I thought that was supposed to just disappear!). Yet, He loves us the same and never gives up on us.
I love your reminder to us about He never breaking the convenant made with us. He indeed remains faithful even when we don't and I, for one, I'm terribly grateful for that truth and reality, through all the times when I could have easily been chucked aside because of my stubborness and hardness of heart but He still takes me back.
So I continue to pray, "unite my heart to fear your name", praying, that I stop wavering and being divided between two opinions and many gods! and stick with 'my husband', 'my lover' and 'friend', who loves me like nothing and no one else ever can and He never lets me go.
In His greatness is His gentleness. May we never take those two things for granted (Reading Psalm 104 recently and that helps to put the greatness of God in perspective! ).
I love these two songs which for me I think highlights our points: "Greatness of our God" by Hillsong or Natalie Grant (beautiful lyrics to it) and "Never been unloved" by Michael W.Smith. (Both are on you tube if songs not heard before).
Bless you Aylssa and hope you're still blogging your inspirational encouragements. Sola, UK
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