Do You Know the God You Worship? - part 3

So now what?

This week we looked at John's description of the throne room of God, and at Isaiah's experience to standing in that same holy Presence. I'm no Bible scholar, and I certainly can't describe God to you or make you realize how great He truly is. But I still hope you caught a fleeting glimpse of His hugeness and holiness.

So what?

(I'm borrowing this phrase from a friend. She uses it a lot. It's a good one.)

So maybe you just received some insight into this God you worship.

What are you going to do with it?

Don't let this become another "oh, that was nice" lesson, only to turn your back and walk away. Do something with it.

This is the LORD we're talking about.

Thoughts of this post were coming together for me as I was getting ready for church on Sunday. I was thinking about the things I just wrote above when suddenly that same question came back to hit me between the eyes.

What am I going to do with it? How is everything I just learned about the greatness of God going to change the way I do church in a couple of hours?

Church is a routine. Show up, sing a few songs, pass the plate, listen to a sermon, sing a closing hymn, shake some hands, go find some lunch. It's nice. Friendly. Comfortable.

But we forget why we're even there in the first place.

Church isn't for doing our weekly Christian duty. Church is about a relationship. Worshipping God corporately.

I imagine the throne room of God. Huge. Scary by human terms (flying six-winged creatures...massive earthquakes...oh my!). But the very heart of Holiness. The Reason we exist. The elders and creatures bowing down at the feet of this LORD day and night.

Then I imagine our church service being held in that very room. What would that look like?

If we were aware of where we were, would we do things the same? Would we smile and shake hands with each other, swap stories about the week? Would we methodically stand to sing the songs, politely sit while the pastor speaks? Would we ritualistically bow our heads to listen to the pastor pray?

I doubt it. In fact, I will say with 100% certainty that we would not be doing any of those things at all.

No, we would fall flat on our faces at the feet of Him Who sits on the throne. We would wail and mourn our sinfulness exposed by perfect holiness. We would cry tears of joy and dance before Him. We would sing and shout His praises.

Unorganized, unhindered, unashamed.

We would see that He is all that matters.

Do You Know the God You Worship? - part 2

(If you're just now joining, going back to part 1 will help things make a little more sense.)

Man number two: Isaiah. Here's his firsthand account of standing before the LORD's throne:

I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. . . . At the sound of [the seraphs'] voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. -Isaiah 6:1,4

Notice Isaiah doesn't provide us with as much detail as John in regards to what he saw. But what he does record sounds quite parallel to John's description.

The train of his robe filled the temple.

Does this start to tell you how huge our God is? Imagine an earthly king sitting on his royal chair inside of his huge royal palace. He's got his fancy robe on that drags behind him when he walks. Now imagine the dragging train of his robe taking all available floor space inside of his palace. Seems pretty absurd, this man wearing enough fabric to clothe his entire country. He'd drown in that much robing.

Now let's bring this image up to God-scale (we're pretending we're able to do this, remember?). How huge God's temple must be! I mean, seriously, this is the same God Who created not just the moon and stars, but our entire galaxy, and billions of other galaxies to boot. There's a mighty big universe out there. And our God is bigger than that. How could a temple possibly hold Him?

Isaiah says the train of his robe filled the temple. I can't imagine God choosing to wear an oversized robe just for the fun of it. He's going to wear one that fits, and just the draggy part of His robe is big enough to fill His massive temple. How much greater and bigger is the One Who wears it!

As if that's not enough to comprehend, suddenly the very foundations around Isaiah begin to shake. Smoke (or something similar) rolls in. Isaiah must have felt like Jack did after climbing the beanstalk up to the giant's house. In the presence of a huge God, surely everything surrounding Isaiah was massive. And then an earthquake hits. Not just your average California 8.0 earthquake. This is an earthquake of God-sized proportions.

What a terrible and awesome sight to behold! I can't even imagine what my response would be, so I am in no place to judge Isaiah's reaction. Yet I can't help but wonder why he said the words he did:

Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty. -Isaiah 6:5

This declaration stumped me. In the very presence of the LORD, why would Isaiah be immediately concerned about his unclean lips? Personally, I can think of a few other things that would seem a little more devastating.

I still don't know the answer for sure. Isaiah was a prophet. His life was devoted to speaking the words of God to the lost people of the day. Maybe in the presence of God, Isaiah realized how unworthy and unacceptable was his tool used for God's purposes.

Standing before a perfectly holy God will do that. His holiness and purity shines the spotlight on the deepest sin hiding in our hearts. His eternal perfection brings us to ruin. We cannot expect to stand before the LORD and not be brought to our knees.

Praise be to God our Father for sending Jesus! Because of Him, our "guilt is taken away and our sin atoned for" (Isaiah 6:7). Jesus stands in front of that spotlight, and thus we are allowed to stand in the presence of God without condemnation.

Do You Know the God You Worship? - part 1

We have no idea Who God is.

None whatsoever.

The more I'm learning lately, the more convinced of this I'm becoming. This isn't to say that the characters He has revealed to us while we grow in Him are wrong. More to say that who we conceive Him to be falls flat. Flatter than taking a running leap to jump across the Grand Canyon. We are more likely to make it over that great ravine in a single bound than we are to understand God.

We can't.

We just can't.

And this is the God we worship. How does that make you feel?

Let's for a moment pretend that we know more than we think we do. There are two men who actually stood before His throne (out-of-body experience or physically present - I doubt even they could say for sure) and lived to tell.

Man number one: John. Here's what he saw:

There before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it. And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne. . . . From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder. -Revelation 4:2-3, 5

You know what? I don't think even John himself knew how to describe what he was seeing. You see, God is so eternal and holy and perfect and beyond us that human words cannot describe Him. We are fallen creatures; sin clouds our view of the eternal. To see complete holiness and perfection is to see a realm in another dimension, above and beyond man.

But we're pretending here. God's appearance was that of jasper and carnelian.

What in blazes are those?

Gemstones. Take a look:

Jasper on the left (unpolished), carnelian on the right. Kinda pretty, huh? But how do you translate that into an image of God? You can't really say that God looks like a rock. Besides, He's a Being. No human or any other form. He just is. So if you can take the appearance of those physical stones and create an accurate image of the Perfect Being (the One Who created those stones, by the way), then you might have yourself an image of God. But my guess is that you're still no where even close to accurate.

A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne.

Did you know rainbows make full circles? Usually we only see half. Not the best visuals, but...

+ = surrounding the throne of God?

Do you see why John would have so much trouble finding words to describe what he saw?

From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder.

I don't even know how to touch that one, other than to point out Exodus 19. The LORD descended on a mountain before the Israelites, and there was thunder, lightning, and what sounded like a loud trumpet blast. Apparently part of the presence of God involves what we know how to describe only as a great thunderstorm (minus the rain).

This was John's experience...but only in part. I left out the 24 elders and the 4 creatures covered in eyes who continually cry out praises to the One on the throne. Check out Revelation 4 and try to picture yourself witnessing these sights. Does that change your image of the God you worship?

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Next post: Isaiah's firsthand experience of the throne room of the great I Am.

Inspiration for this post from Crazy Love by Frances Chan.

Life's Little Miracles

Monday was one of those days that makes every part of my job seem worthwhile.

About three months ago a woman came to our nursing home after having a stroke. She had absolutely no use of her left arm or leg. Despite her elderly age, she had been living at home and was very active in her community. Her favorite activity was attending the local girls' basketball games.

The stroke also affected her speech and hearing, but not her mind. Didn't touch her mind at all. She was completely aware of everything going on around her from day one.

For the past three months, this woman has been receiving physical, occupational, and speech therapies. She has been motivated from the beginning, and we've been working her as hard as we know how. But for three months, we've struggled.

Progress has been slow. She just wasn't getting any use of her arm or leg back. An occasional muscle contraction here or there, but not enough to help us help her. We've even thought about discharging her, because we weren't sure she was going to make any further improvements.

Not only was therapy slow going, but this woman has had to travel a road to recovery that I can only imagine has been most unpleasant. She has had to depend on everyone else to take care of her. Multiple people to dress, bathe, and take her to the bathroom. After several weeks of difficult transfers, the nurses switched to the bedpan instead of the toilet. Then she got a roommate who, though they were friends prior to living in the nursing home, has been rather...trying. The roommate has enough presence of mind to know what's going on, but enough dementia to be rather confused. She took it upon herself to take our patient under her wing and look after her, which included a constant presence and frequent disturbances of sleep at night.

Remember how I said her hearing was affected? She has a hard time hearing anyone speaking to her. For some reason, she especially cannot hear me, even when I am shouting inches from her ear. This is hard for her, because she either responds incorrectly or has to resort to nodding her head and pretending she heard.

But this lady never complains. Never says anything negative. Her focus is to work hard to improve. And she has a rather funny sense of humor. (After struggling to put a glove on her lifeless hand, she said to me, "Aren't you glad I'm not an octopus?")

Finally, on Monday, after months of doing the same exercises over and over again, and standing in the parallel bars day after day, her hard work paid off.

On Monday, she walked for the first time.

With the walker in front, the physical therapist assistant on one side, me on the other, and the occupational therapist assistant cheering her on, she walked all the way across the room.

When she sat down, she pointed at each one of us and said, "You girls are such an inspiration."

To which we replied, "No, pretty sure you're the inspiration."