(Note - This week's devotional is an excerpt of my e-book "Worship: The Surrender Before the Song")
There is a
potential danger that we must be aware of when we talk about our worship of God,
and that is the danger of taking the presence of God for granted. Both the
Bible and church history are filled with examples of people believing that the
favor of God was upon them, only to sadly realize just how mistaken they were.
A prime example of this is found in the story of Samson. Samson was conceived
after the angel of the Lord appeared to his parents, who told them that their
son was to be a Nazarite (devoted to God) from the womb. In this story, we see
the supernatural power of God in Samson’s life, but unfortunately, we also see
in Samson’s demeanor an overall disregard for the presence of God. He
consistently followed his own heart’s desires, which caused him to repeatedly
have to use his God-given power to deliver himself from the messes his own poor
judgment had created. These poor decisions eventually led him to Delilah. I’m
sure most of you are familiar with the story: she continually badgered him for
the secret to his strength so that she could turn him over to the Philistines.
Samson kept getting closer and closer to telling her the truth about his
strength, until one day because of her constant complaining he finally told her
everything. We then read what I believe is one of the saddest passages of
Scripture in the Bible:
“When Delilah saw that
he had told her all his heart, she sent and called for the lords of the
Philistines, saying, “Come up once more, for he has told me all his heart.” So
the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their
hand. Then she lulled him to sleep on her knees,
and called for a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. Then
she began to torment him, and his strength left him. And she
said, “The Philistines are upon
you, Samson!” So he awoke from his sleep, and said, “I will go out as before,
at other times, and shake myself free!” But
he did not know that the Lord had departed from him.” Judges 16:18-20 (Emphasis mine.)
“He did not know
that the Lord had departed from him.” That sentence should cause a shudder to
go through all of us. I believe that it’s easy to fall into the trap of taking
for granted that since we call ourselves “Christian,” go to church, put our
tithe in the basket, and do all the “religious” stuff that church people do that
the presence of God is automatically with us. We must understand that nothing
could be further from the truth. We are talking about becoming
true worshippers of God “in spirit and truth” as Jesus described in the fourth chapter of the gospel of John. We must understand, however, that
true worship doesn’t take place in the lives of half-hearted believers who
choose to go their own way and assume that God is still with them. If we are not willing to worship the Lord with our whole hearts and lives, we really aren't worshipping Him at all. True worship is marked not by the songs we sing or the church services we attend, it's marked by radical obedience to the word of God and the leading of the Holy Ghost. True worship is so committed to Jesus Christ that there is no one for anything else to have preeminence in our lives. True worshippers don't compromise their faith; they hold on to it tightly with a firm resolve that our lives belong to Jesus, and there is no going back to the old life. I’ll say it
this way:
True
worshippers of God don’t lay their heads in Delilah’s lap.
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