Devotional - The Keys To His Power and Glory
Psalm 63:2 I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.
To behold the power and glory of God! Those of us who are blessed enough to attend a Holy Ghost filled church can attest to the many Sundays spent literally basking in the presence of God. Perhaps the choir sang that song that God finally broke through your heart on. I remember for me it was “My Help.” As a born and bred catholic I swore I would never do all the hand raising and feet stomping in church! Don’t you know that God just loves our “nevers?” Sure enough, several months later there I was flat on my face before God and from that point on; worship took on a whole new meaning for me.
Or maybe it was a particular sermon you heard one Sunday morning. You know the one. The one where you feel it is God Himself speaking directly to, and only to you. Conviction after conviction, confirmation after confirmation, connection after connection. Suddenly it is just you and God and He is doing some serious business with you. Maybe the pastor has an altar call and you can almost feel God bringing you up to the front Himself!
Or maybe it was a powerful prayer being offered up in service. Possibly brought with the gift of tongues or a prophetic word that you knew was meant for you. Perhaps just in your private prayer moment within church God spoke to your heart. Or maybe it was a concert, or a play, or a special holiday service. Maybe it is once a month, every week, or too infrequently for your liking. Somewhere, we all have those goose-bump raising experiences where we can shout like David, “Lord, I have seen You in Your sanctuary and beheld Your power and glory! Hallelujah! But here is the sobering question for you today…
How do you feel on Wednesday?
Living the victorious Christian life has to transcend the formality of Sunday service. The church is not a building, the church is all believers. Here is what Christ came to bring you:
“…I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. – John 10:10
Jesus did not say the abundant life was reserved for Sundays! In light of this scripture though, how many of us truly live life to the fullest, as Christ came to bring us? How many of us find ourselves circling the same mountain over and over again? A congregant of a popular television Pastor was asked about being a member of that church and the response was, “Pastor gives me just what I need to get back to him next week!” What a lousy way to live a life! Is that God’s design? No!
So how do we behold the glory and power of God that we see in His sanctuary during our day-to-day lives? By applying the very same principles to our daily lives that we experience in church on Sundays. That experience starts with worship. God wants our worship:
Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. – John 4:23
Sometimes overlooked, worship is a critical portion of our relationship with God. It is also the critical portion of any church service. Why? Because worship ushers in the presence of God. The Bible says that God inhabits the praises of His people. Praise and worship prepares your heart to receive the Word of God. It strips away the stresses and distractions of this world and gets you focused on the author and finisher of your faith! You want to behold the power and glory of God in your life? Check out your personal worship habits. Do you spend time each day to usher His presence in? Do you do more than just listen to praise music during the day, at work, at play? Do you meditate on the words and do you cry out to Him? Or is praise and worship something you reserve for your time in church? If so, that may be why you only experience the power and glory of God on Sundays. It might explain why you struggle through the week, desperately straining to get back to His presence on Sunday.
The experience of God on a daily basis continues with the Word of God. Once praise and worship is over in church we often will then hear the word brought by the preacher. With God’s palpable presence and our hearts ready to receive the seed of the Word of God, the preaching can often touch our lives in a grand way and we can again experience the power and glory of God. Those breakthroughs are not meant to be held only once per week! Daily reading of the Word of God allows Him to speak to you directly each and every day. Timothy summarizes for us:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. – 2Timothy 3:16-17
Yet how many times do we find ourselves at the end of a long day without time for the Word of God? Does your Bible sit on your coffee table until it is time to go to church again? If so, that may be why you only experience His glory and power on Sundays. If so, it may explain why you struggle during the week, looking forward to getting back to His presence on Sunday.
The experience of God on a daily basis also hinges upon prayer. Prayer is a constant during a Sunday service and as such it should be a constant in our daily lives as well. In a service there is an opening prayer, a prayer after worship, a prayer for the offering, a prayer before the Word is brought and a prayer after the Word has been sown. Perhaps there are also special prayers, corporate prayers, healing prayers, or other prayers during the service. The Sunday church experience is literally bathed in prayer. That is how our daily lives are to be as well. With the presence of God surrounding us and the Word being planted in our hearts, prayer allows us the intimate relationship with God that we need and He desires. It is not meant to be ritualistic. It should be a continual conversation that we have with God. Paul reminds us about developing the power and glory in our lives through a prayer relationship:
Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. – 1Thesselonains 5: 16-18
Yet is our conversation continuous? Or do we go to God only when our back is up against the wall? Do we relegate God to a closet, praying in the morning, before bed, and when we eat? Are our prayers more of a wish list than a relationship? If so, that might be why we do not walk in the power and glory that we might experience on Sundays. If so, it might be why we cannot seem to experience God during the week, as we look ahead to His glorious presence and power on Sunday.
Praise and worship. Reading God’s Word. A prayer life that is continuous. These are the ingredients of a powerful Sunday church service. These are the fundamental portions that lead to those wondrous experiences we often have on Sunday. It is what leads us to feel like David did when he exclaimed that he has seen Him in the sanctuary and beheld His power and glory! But this verse speaks beyond that to us today. It speaks to the sanctuary being us. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit. God lives in us now! The power and glory that David speaks about is available to all of us, every single day. What does it take my friends? Close the door and shut off the cell phone. Listen to a couple of worship songs and concentrate on Him. Ten minutes. Read a chapter of the Bible per day and reflect on what God is speaking to you. Ten minutes. Pray to God continually. Twenty minutes per day and a change in how you approach your relationship with God. That is all it takes to bring the power and glory you feel on Sunday, to your daily grind during the week. What it comes down to is you make time for God and His presence on Sundays. That same commitment needs to be made every day. Then you will see Him in your sanctuary every day, and you will behold His power and glory in your daily life.
Anthony Wade – November 7, 2007
For the kind comments. Just wanted to mention that I also loved the Brother Lawrence materials and have crafted a specific prayer from the works of Lawrence, if anyone is interested.
Thanks.
In the early 1980s, we did a self-study in our old congregation in Illinois. It was and still is a liberal congregation in a very conservative Episcopal diocese -- just like the one I'm in now in NY.
So when we assessed the importance to us of the various parts of our ministry, I fully expected the general area of working for social justice to be #1 on the list of priorities.
After quite a detailed process of self-examination of what we were actually doing and valuing, we surprised ourselves by coming to the awareness that worship was the motivator for everything else, the engine for outreach, healing, and refreshment. Worship played much more than a supporting role. At the beginning of the process, I never would have thought that I, too, would come to that same conclusion. But I did.
A very powerful study that some of us did after that was to read and put into practice, as best we could, Brother Lawrence's "The Practice of the Presence of God", a short little book of letters and conversations from the 17th century. There's an online site where you can read the book and print it out, along with other related materials: www.practicegodspresence.com.
I recommend it. It helped us go inward, upward, and outward.
This too, was the little book that changed my life as I had known it.
I obtained a very old copy in the library of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in 1997.
The forward was by Dorothy Day:
‘Peace, peace, peace. God’s peace be upon you. But living today in a time of war, crying out peace, peace, peace, where there is no peace. Fearing age and death, pain and darkness, destitution and loneliness, people need to get back to the simplicity of Brother Lawrence.’ [Dorothy Day]
Being an Irish American story teller, I spin Brother Lawrence for you this way:
Brother L. was a monk in the 17th century, who lived in a monastery and was consigned to the kitchen.
He spent his life baking bread, chopping onions, scrubbing pots and floors.
He also ran all the errands, did all the shopping, and always brought back the finest of wine.
He loved his brothers deeply, but they merely tolerated his many eccentricities, or he was totally ignored.
Truly, I tell you, if ever a saint was born to bring hope to the addicted and those afflicted with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, he is the one.
For Brother L. learned that by continually re-remembering the Lord, no matter what the activity, or where one might be, the Lord was ever-present and a holy habit was born, just re-remembering that.
copyright 2006, eileen fleming
Eileen Fleming,
Reporter and Editor of
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
Producer of "30 Minutes with Vanunu"
Thank you for this inspirational post Anthony. It was full of love and good intentions.
When Jesus said he came that we would have life to the full; abundant life, he wasn't talking material wealth; he was speaking of spiritual depth,
Spiritual depth doesn't just happen-but if one is willing and open to wrestle, struggle with God and persist in daily meditation [which is thinking in Christian lingo] upon The Word of God; the next crucial step is also is what is most needed in any conversation:
After one speaks they should shut up and listen attentively to the other.
By cultivating a daily discipline of meditating upon daily scripture readings-and silence- The Other: AKA God, who is beyond our concepts for The Other is The Ultimate Mystery, we will be lead in The Way we should go.
By cultivating a daily spiritual discipline of meditation/thinking upon God's word, LISTENING in silence, God will be faithful upon a willing soul and provide the GRACE in his Time frame to dismantle our ego protective mechanism's such as the need for power, control, security, affirmation which are the stumbling blocks to a full and abundant life.
As our ego drives are released, life to the full and a FEARLESS faith and bold witness will result in God's Time;
We cannot rush God's work, but when we make friends with SILENCE, we are opening up to allow God to do his work in transforming us in heart and mind.
"With humility comes wisdom"-Proverbs 11:2
Humility is knowing oneself-the good and the bad for both cut through every human heart and a fruit of silence is that we will in God's time discern our true motivations and desires and then we will be lead to the Biblical understanding of humility and humility will lead to wisdom.
e
Eileen Fleming,
Reporter and Editor of
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
Producer of "30 Minutes with Vanunu"
This is a nice devotional Anthony. I especially like this quote on prayer:
"With the presence of God surrounding us and the Word being planted in our hearts, prayer allows us the intimate relationship with God that we need and He desires. It is not meant to be ritualistic. It should be a continual conversation that we have with God. Paul reminds us about developing the power and glory in our lives through a prayer relationship:
Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. – 1Thesselonains 5: 16-18"
I struggle with my own prayer life, so it's nice to read this passage. My parents daily pray, and I know they're praying for my wife and I and the family.
Prayer is a conversation with God and worshipful prayer will begin with thanksgiving and loving adoration; and that requires silence.
Silence allows God to work on us.
Silent adoration is all about LOVING God and asking nothing in return, just to 'sit at his foot' as Mary, the sister of Martha did, and she did it because she LOVED Jesus.
Many tend to view God as an errand boy; they will ask for things but neglect the fact that God already knows our hearts desires and does not need us to pray like the Pharisees with many words for
"We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the SPIRIT intercedes for us with groans and sighs that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints accordance with Gods will."-Romans 8:26-28
Jesus said his sisters, brothers and mother were those that did the will of the Father.
"What does God require? He has told you o'man!
Be just, be merciful, and walk humbly with your Lord." -Micah 6:8
Eileen Fleming,
Reporter and Editor of
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
Producer of "30 Minutes with Vanunu"