Journey to The Journey

We say regularly at The Journey that we strive to do Sundays well. We want to provide our people and our guests with a genuine and faithful church gathering. We want worship, fellowship, and teaching that heralds the Gospel and honors God. Those are good things to strive after. Yet, despite all of our planning and efforts, as this weekend reminded us, God is still the one who is in control of it all. Sometimes, in the midst of our striving to do church well, we can lose sight of why we are doing it all. We are as apt to fall into this pitfall as any church. It is in these moments when our loving God sees fit to lay us bare and expose our own sinfulness.

When we neglect God's word, we cut ourselves off from its life giving power. Jesus says without his bread and his water, we will perpetually suffer from persistent hunger and thirst (John 4:13-14, John 6:35). However, spiritual malnourishment and dehydration are just the tip of a much larger iceberg. This is what we can see, but there is much more that lies hidden beneath the surface and threatens to sink us like the great vessel, Titanic.

In the midst of his desperate brokenness, David see's things clearly. Rather than attempting to fix things himself (and inevitably adding sin upon sin), he seeks God. Likewise, rather than fleeing from God, he runs to him. In both cases, David is changing direction. This is the definition of repentance. He was formerly moving away from God, but now is drawing closer to him. When we respond to God with genuine contrition, he is faithful to respond to us with grace and mercy.

One of the most indisputable truth claims in all of scripture is that of the absolute sovereignty of God. That the Lord is indeed almighty and sits enthroned at the apex of all creation is a fact worthy of affirmation, if ever indeed there were such a thing. However, while few would attempt to argue against the sovereignty of God, knowing the futility of doing so, we often are guilty of incorrectly and inaccurately applying that truth to our daily lives. Let's look at a few examples:

Worship is in our DNA, it is part of who we are and who we were created by God to be. Because we were designed to worship, yet live as sinners in a broken and fallen world, our worship often gets misdirected. We tend to, if we are being honest, worship the wrong things. Moreover, even when the object of our intended worship is correct (God), we struggle to worship rightly. These two errors are equally destructive to our spiritual vitality.

Perhaps the greatest example for us of a vibrant and effective prayer life is found in our Lord Jesus. Jesus put his prayer time - his quiet and personal time with his Father - above everything else. He would often retreat away from the crowds, and the distractions and demands of his earthly ministry, to be alone in prayer. In public, before he would teach important truths or perform miraculous signs and wonders, Jesus would take time to give thanks to God in prayer. Prayer marked the life of Jesus, and it was through prayer that he was blessed, encouraged, and strengthened by his Father.

The justice of God is not typically a popular topic. It seems as if we, as believers, seem to almost feel as if we need to in some sense apologize for God's wrath...as if the whole idea of it is somehow offensive. In many churches, the truth of scripture has been watered-down in an effort to make church more appealing to outsiders. We often seek to accentuate the gracious and merciful aspects of God while at the same time minimizing our own sinfulness, and God's necessary hatred of it.

We see in scripture, like in the example we studied from Leviticus 10, that God takes his holiness seriously, and in turn, we need to show him the respect and reverence he is due when we interact with and worship him. At the same time, we see that our Lord is a God of grace and mercy, and that he loves and cares for us in spite of our many shortcomings. Our goal as Christians is to maintain a healthy balance of fear and respect, while at the same time resting in the freedom we have in Christ as we pursue holiness in our own lives. This may sound easy enough, but in practice, we can often struggle.

Scripture regularly focuses our amazement upon the author of creation, God. Psalm 19 declares, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork." The Apostle Paul, in Romans 1:19-20, puts forth that creation itself bears witness about the very nature of God, even to the extent in which it condemns sinners, when he writes, "For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse." In other words, there is a lot to be learned about God simply by looking at the world around us.