Wednesday, 12 June 2013

Irreverence and our warped view of God. Part 1

Irreverence and our warped view of God. 

Over emphasizing an attribute of God at the expense of His other attributes does not make God better. The bible never uses a comparative word on God’s attributes. They are absolute and definite. For example, singing about God’s goodness and confessing that He is love cannot make God good or better. It cannot make God to love more. He is good and He is love essentially. We cannot add anything to God neither can we subtract from who He is. When we make confessions and sing certain songs, we help and edify ourselves and not God, no matter what we do. He rejoices in our fellowship not because He has a need; not because we have made the fellowship meeting sweet or decorated the place to look nice but solely because He has chosen to dwell in the praises of His people. Fellowship is very important to God. The gathering of His people is a special convocation. This is because it is in such a fellowship that God dwells.


Having said that, it is good for us to note that there is nothing we do in this life that is doing God a favour. Many of us live as if we and God are in a game of chess. Doing what we ought to do is seen as if we are only being kind to Him, as if without us He cannot be God. We live and talk as if God is God only at our mercy; as if we and God come with our bargaining chips and trade on what happens in our lives and the lives of others; that is, God places His cards on the table while we come with our own too. In fact, we even behave as the side that has the upper hand. God must bow to our pressure and do what we want Him to do for Him to remain God.


It shows in our prayers. Do we really pray? What is prayer? When we pray to God, what do we tell Him? Do we speak like children in the presence of their Father and King or do we speak like kings on our thrones who demands God to do whatever we want Him to do? Do we show reverence in our hearts, bringing our helplessness, hopelessness, limitations, needs, challenges, uncertainties, fallibility and incompleteness to Him who is enough for us and without whom we are nothing? What is prayer and how do we pray? Do we just come and throw words at Him, exercise ourselves and sweat and come out with the feeling that we have prayed? Is that really prayer? A brother once was coordinating a prayer session and asked the people to repeat after him, “my father, my fire…”. I later asked him, “why are you saying ‘my father my fire’? Where did you learn that from? What do you really mean?” He couldn’t proffer any answer. I discovered that because he shouts and encourages the people to shout in their prayers under an emotionally charged atmosphere, he feels good and satisfied that he has led a very hot prayer session. We feel good but do not care how God feels. What we easily forget is that our declarations in prayers are never towards God but towards Satan and his cohorts, our lives, circumstances.


You know, the environment many of us come from is still affecting us. We view God the same way a native doctor views his god, because of our idolatrous backgrounds. A native doctor can use his god or ask him to do good or to do bad depending on his mood and what he wants. Oftentimes, that is our approach to God when we come to the place of prayer. We have a God we use and not a God we fear and worship. We have a God we send on errands, who serves our interests and not a God we serve and who is sovereign. We come to Him with our shoulders raised high instead of bowing in humility. 


He has promised to answer our prayers not at the expense of anything. He answers our prayers because He has promised to do so and delights in our fellowship. We cannot even explain that but He has chosen to relate to us that way because He loves us. There are no specific words that impress God. There are no holy places anymore, where you must go or face for Him to answer. There are no postures that give you an express ticket to His presence. That is why it is not in our eloquence or crafty use of words that make Him answer.  I have seen God answer prayers even though the person praying used bad English. Our motives, intentions, hidden agendas and life follow our prayers, hence God looks beyond our good and nice and correct English words.


Now, are we really praying when we ask God to kill people? This high hand with which some of us come to God only shows our pride, ego, bitterness and unforgiveness. We curse in prayer and send out arrows to harm people in prayers and still think that we are fellowshipping with God. We see ourselves as very special to the extent that we can use God to achieve whatever we want to achieve. We think that we can move God to show one of His attributes over the others just because of us. Unfortunately for us, that is impossible. It is having an incorrect view of God. For example, God cannot, because of His children, be unjust to the unbelievers.  Furthermore, some people we see today as unbelievers are tomorrow’s saints...

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