The Air I Breathe

July, 2007 — Chapters 5 & 6

Anyone else identify with this sentence from Chapter 5?  “Or maybe you’re a passionate lover of God, but frustrated by the presence of little idols you’ve kept around far too long.”  Truth hurts, huh?  Welcome back to our study.  Louie continues in his discourse on the type of worship God looks for in his kids.  Fortunately, there’s grace for our failures and biblical instruction for our growth.  I love that list of verbs for worship listed in Psalms, by the way. 

Ultimately, we will worship insipidly, in whatever form, if we fail to first see God for who He is.  “True worship is simply catching sight of the greatness, majesty, glory, and grace of an infinite God… When we offer God little-bitty sacrifices, it’s because we’ve somehow reduced Him in our hearts to a little-bitty God,” as Louie puts it.

And then I love this truism.  He says as a result of living with this lesser view of an all-powerful and loving God, “our lives shrivel into insignificance and meaninglessness.” Here we catch fresh perspective of what we discovered earlier in the book. God wired us all to worship something in hopes we would “seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27). So what does God do from His end to enable us to live lives of significance and meaningfulness?  He gives us His Word and His Spirit.  And in both examples, we hopefully see how infinitely awesome and intimately approachable He is.

And if that’s enough, Chapter 6 closes with the additional thought of worship being our response to God for who He is and what He’s done (or is doing.)  With the Spirit of Truth living in each of us, it’s hard to imagine how we can ever get off track with our lives of worship, huh?  It seems God’s plan is to change us into “true worshippers” over time, using the community of Believers as a major tool.