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How Great is Our God
By Marc | October 28, 2007
I will exalt you, my God the King;
I will praise your name for ever and ever.
Every day I will praise you
and extol your name for ever and ever.
Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise;
his greatness no one can fathom. – Psalm 145:1-3
This morning (I’m writing this Sunday night) in church, one of the songs we sang was Chris Tomlin’s How Great is Our God. I had heard and sung the song many times, and I often get chills from the lyrics. Not the creepy chills, but a really, really good kind. It’s hard to explain unless you’ve felt them. Thinking about and singing about a being of power who is just so entirely awesome and who has a nature that I can’t (in my limited human brain) fully comprehend.
But in listening to the lyrics this time, it hit me: this song is ONLY about God and His greatness. It’s not about me and what He means to me, what He has done for me, how He makes me feel, or anything about me (or anyone else). It’s all about Him.
And that’s just so darn cool.
Really, it IS all about Him. Everything is. It’s not about what I can get out of the deal. It’s not about a better afterlife for myself. It’s not about any of that stuff. It’s all about Him. I don’t mean in my life or in what I’m thinking right now. I mean EVERYTHING is. It’s why we’re here. We’re not here for ourselves or what we can accomplish. We’re here on this earth to praise Him and be a living example of His power.
If you’re not a believer, you might be thinking (or have thought before), "That God guy is pretty egotistical, so why would anyone want to serve Him?" I had struggled with that a lot. Before I even believed he existed, I questioned why someone would willingly bow down to someone at all. How arrogant would this being have to be to demand complete subservience for just existing? In the United States, we have never had a monarchy and there is nobody alive who could even remember when this land was governed by British rule (unless you are over 230 or so years old). So bowing down to anyone is completely foreign to me, being a white middle class male from a small town in Nebraska.
Even when I turned myself over to Christ, I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. Finally, after lots of reading and listening and praying, I learned out one very important lesson: I am a man, not God. Why should I bother trying to figure out why God does what He does, why He demands obedience, why he allows me to even question Him? It doesn’t matter why. God keeps His own counsel. God is the creator of me. My brain is human. If I had a brain like God’s, there would be no need for anything. I would have everything figured out.
There are those who think they have God all figured out. God is some sort of mean, vengeful, petty spoiled brat. God is just some "force" that inhabits everything. God is a God who will just wave everyone through to heaven to matter what they’ve done. Since God is loving, He wouldn’t possibly send someone to Hell, because it would just break His heart to do that. (God doesn’t send us there; we choose to go there by sinning and rejecting His love and His Son.) Jesus was some hippie who only talked up the love and living on a commune. Since he hung out with the sinners, he thought what they were doing was okay in his book. All of these people are trying to make God out to be someone they can relate to, someone who is human.
There are those who will also use the Bible to figure out a way to use God for their own gain, like there is some sort of formula to follow. If I do this and this and read this passage out loud, then God HAS to do this. If I do this, then God will bless me with riches. It doesn’t work that way, but there are preachers who will tell you otherwise.
I have even read the lame excuse that God doesn’t exist (or the person is angry at Him) because more than two people have asked Him for an end to the war in Iraq, because of Matthew 18:19-20, and the war is still going on. (That passage had to do with people who argue and come up with a solution to their quarrel, so that doesn’t even apply.)
God is not a genie that you can rub the lamp and get what you ask for. The Bible is not a spell or recipe book that you can make the Lord bow to your will.
God is God. God is far more than we can even conceive of. He is not of our making, but we are of His.
But God does deserve our praise. Not for ourselves and what we can get out of it (like God will add Brownie points for every time we shout, "God Rocks!"), but for His glory. It shouldn’t be a selfish thing, but completely without concern for our own agenda, humble.
In the book of Daniel, chapter 3, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were about to be thrown into the fiery furnace for refusing to worship Nebuchadnezzar’s idol, they said:
"If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up." – Daniel 3:17-18
They knew God was able to save them, but EVEN IF HE DIDN’T, they wouldn’t change their minds. They knew what was right and they were willing to give their lives because they knew God deserved nothing less. If they caved, they would be cheapening God by worshipping only for their own benefit. They didn’t say, "Oh, yeah, God’s gonna come riding in at the last minute to save the day ‘cause we’re so awesome. We got a plan. We’re like totally devoted so life’s gonna be easy and without worries. Yep, all figured out."
If worshipping God was a quick and easy plan for an easy life, everyone would be doing it. It doesn’t happen like that. It was never promised. Everyone in the Bible had troubles.
Is the fact that there’s so much pain in the world a reason not to believe in God? Some would think so, and I used to, but that’s just putting God in human terms. If God is good, then how can He allow suffering? Suffering is a part of life. There’s no avoiding it. How we handle that suffering, now that’s where God shines.
You can say that’s a cop-out. If God doesn’t do anything, then I’m worshipping nothing (and a lot of other mean things that you can relate to your own understanding). God does offer blessings and does have a real great sense of humor sometimes, but if I’m wanting him to make my life easy simply because I follow Christ, then I haven’t read the book very well. Does Christ want me to follow him just for my own well-being? No, he wants me to follow him for glory of the Father.
It’s something that I think is very hard for a skeptic to understand.
God is God. I can’t understand Him or figure out his Nature. You know something? It doesn’t bother me one bit anymore. I will try to be the best person I can be and try to submit myself to His will. I know I have failed Him in the past. I know I will fail Him in the future. But in the end, I want him to say, "Well done, good and faithful servant." Not for my own ego or my placement (heaven or hell), but for His greatness. An example of His followers and His dominion.
He deserves nothing less, but so much more than I could possibly give Him.
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