[Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Friday, April 25, 2014

[Paul]

Hello and good day to you on this Friday for most of us, and a good Saturday morning for those in Australia and New Zealand.  I hope that, by God's matchless grace and His providential care, that you are all doing well today.

We continue the spiritual maxims of Brother Lawrence, today considering what is entitled here as "How We Must Worship God In Spirit and Truth," rendered as follows:

There are three points to be answered in this question:

1.  To worship God in spirit and in truth means to render to Him that worship which is His due; God is a spirit--therefore He must be worshipped in spirit and in truth, by a lowly and genuine worship in the depth of our soul which God alone can see.  It is possible to give Him this worship so often that it becomes almost natural, as though God were one with our soul and our soul one with God.  Practice only will explain this.

2.  To worship God in truth is to acknowledge Him to be what He is, and ourselves to be what we are.  To worship God in truth is to recognize clearly, certainly, and with all our faculties, that God is that which He is, infinitely perfect, immeasurably removed from evil, and therefore full of all divine attributes.  Is not the man unreasonable who does not use all his powers in reverence for, and worship of, this mighty God?

3.  To worship God in truth is to admit that we separate ourselves from Him, although He would make us like to Himself if only we wished it.  Is it not foolish to withhold from Him, even for a minute, the reverence, the love, the service and the ceaseless worship that we owe to Him?

And there you have Brother Lawrence speaking to us across the years and several centuries.  I pray that you took away something that he wrote and/or said so long ago.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in these last days in which we live.  Lord willing, tomorrow we will continue with a bit longer item in Brother Lawrence's list of spiritual maxims.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul