I remember when I went to
I will be the first to admit that at times my level of praise and worship is not where it should be. There are times when I get consumed with life and things that I am dealing with and I don’t give God what He deserves. King David and the Ethiopians are such great examples for us though. David was on the run from Saul, he feared for his own life, but he worshipped God with all that was in him. The Ethiopians lack so much materially: They don’t always know when their next meal will be. Some don’t posses transportation and have to walk hours to get to church. Others are so poor that they wear the same thing daily. Yet they know God. They worship Him, they praise Him, and they offer Him their everything.
How much more should we? None of us wonders where our next meal will come from. None of us sleeps on dirt floors. None of us has to walk hours to get to church. None of us has only one outfit in our closet. None of us walks barefoot because we can’t afford shoes. The poorest person in
Today in prayer I told God I just wanted to worship Him, I just wanted to praise Him and do nothing else. As I already mentioned, there have been times this year when I was so overwhelmed with being unhappy in the PhD program that my prayers were consumed with ‘God I don’t know what I am doing, but I know I don’t want to do this.’ And while we do need to give God our burdens, today in prayer I told God that if all I do when I pray is worship and praise Him and never get around to presenting my needs, that is what I want to do. From here on out, I told God I want to be like the Ethiopians. Like the Ethiopians, we should always come to God first and foremost with our praise and worship. There are times though when we rush through our praise and worship so that we can present our needs. We spend five minutes praising God and 45 presenting our needs. (I am not talking about intercession, because I think it is different when we spend time praying for others, I am talking about when we spend the majority of the time praying for our own circumstances). It should not be like that. Again I am not saying that we should not present our needs to God. I think He is the first who we should give our needs to. But I think we should be like the Ethiopians whose praise and worship is so genuine and so sincere. And if we don’t get around to presenting our needs because we are consumed with worship, that that is okay.
Earlier this week I was reading the Psalms and a verse struck me. In Psalms 73, David is overwhelmed it seems, by circumstances that surround him. Yet in verse 17 he says, ‘Until I went into the sanctuary of God, then I understood.” In other words, David was letting what he was going through overwhelm his thoughts, and it was not until he began to praise and worship God that his perspective changed. The situation did not change; his enemies were still plotting against him, but his perspective changed. I truly believe that when we come to God first and foremost with our worship and praise our circumstances, they might not change, but our perspective does. You still might not have a job, your loved one might still not be serving God the way they should, that sickness might still be there, etc., but your perspective on who God is changes. When we come to God with genuine worship and praise, we realize how big and great of a God it is that we serve, and our understanding increases.A few weeks ago I got to the point where I was overwhelmed. I knew in my heart, there was absolutely no way I could continue in the PhD program. I knew it was not what I wanted and that I would be miserable if I had to take one more step in the program. I will admit, rather than coming to God with worship and praise, I came to God telling Him that I could not do it, and letting Him know how overwhelmed I was. I went to sleep one night having no peace about the situation. The next morning when I went to prayer though, my mentality changed. I told God I was not going to spend my time presenting my need, but I was going to spend time worshipping Him. Whether He gave me direction or not, He is still God and He still deserves worship and praise. And so that morning, I just praised and worshipped God. Nothing else. I will say I left wtih my perspective changed. I left prayer with peace. I left prayer with understanding. My situation had become bigger than God. In other words, I had become overwhelmed with trying to figure out what I was going to do academically. But by me just worshipping and praising God, and telling God that I was not going to worry about my situation, but I just was going to consume myself with God’s presence, my situation shrunk and my understanding of God increased.
When we come before God consumed with worship and praise, not worrying about our situation or our circumstance, God meets us. Our life needs to be consumed with worship and praise given to God. We need to stop looking at our circumstances and our situation and start looking at God and who God is. I challenge you for the rest of July to not pray about your circumstance; if you are looking for a job, don’t mention it in prayer, if you a loved one is not serving God; don’t mention it in prayer, if you don’t know what you are doing in your life; don’t mention in prayer, if you are looking for a place to live; don’t mention it in prayer, whatever the situation concerning your life is don’t mention it in prayer. I am not telling you to ignore the situation, I am not telling you to deny that the need is there, but I am saying rather than presenting to God a list of your personal needs, spend the time worshipping and praising God. I truly believe if you do this your perspective will change. God will grow bigger and your situation will grow smaller.
Let us be like the Ethiopians who recognize that an intimate relationship with God should be our top priority. Let us spend time worshipping God and praising Him and giving Him thanksgiving and adoration. Let us not look at our circumstance, but look at God.
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This past week I went on a hike and that is where the inspiration for my blog comes from.
I hiked to a top of a waterfall. From the bottom of the hill the waterfall looked so pretty. At first the hike was not so bad. The first few minutes, although it was tiring, I had the vision of the waterfall in my head and I knew I wanted to see the top of it. In the spiritual sense I believe a lot of us are like that as well. We have the vision of what God wants us to do and He clearly shows us the purpose and the plan that He has for us. And so we set out walking, set out to climb the mountain, to see the ‘waterfall.’ At first, the hike is not bad; although it is a new experience because we have that vision of the end result, even when it gets a little difficult we continue to climb.
After awhile though, after we have been walking for some time and the vision does not seem any closer to reality, we begin to lose our focus. This is what happened on my hike. After walking for some time and feeling as though I was never going to reach this waterfall, in my head I began telling myself that I should just turn around, that it would take to long before I got to the top. In the spiritual sense we do that a lot. We have the vision in our head, we know what God wants us to do, but after we have been walking for some time we begin to lose our focus. We forget how pretty the ‘waterfall’ looked from the bottom and all we can think about is the pain and the long road ahead of us.
I have been saying that I wanted to go on a hike for a long time. Sometimes we say things like that. We say we want to be used by God. We say we want to do great things for Him. We say that we just want to be a vessel. But we don’t realize the pain that those things involve. It is so easy to say I want to be used by God and not to realize the cost that that entails. When I said I wanted to go on a hike, I did not realize how long the journey was going to be, and how hard it was. And so as I was walking, I began to think in my head, do I really want to be on this hike? And sometimes we do that in the spiritual sense, we say we want to be used by God, we say we want His will to be done in our life, but then once we set out walking and the trials come we second guess our desires.
But there is encouragement along the way. As we were hiking there were people who were coming down from this mountain. And we would ask them how much longer do we have? They all would say “you are almost there.” This was not in fact true, because we kept on walking and walking. We were not almost there. But I think these people were able to say we were almost there because they had a different perspective. They had reached the top of the mountain, they had seen the waterfall and so they knew no matter how hard the climb the end result was worth it. I think this is so true in the spiritual sense as well. God might have you climbing an incredibly difficult mountain right now. There might be this plan and purpose He has for your life. It seems as though you have been climbing it for some time and the end is nowhere in sight. Take encouragement from the words of those who have already climbed the mountain. While it might be some time before your vision becomes a reality, the climb is worth it. The hard work, the sacrifices, it is all worth it.
As I mentioned before there were many times along the way that I wanted to quit. Many times that I forgot how pretty the ‘waterfall’ looked. I know for myself I don’t handle pressure very well. When life gets too stressful I often result to settling. I lose focus of the ‘waterfall’ and all I see is the journey I am going to have to climb.
This hike taught me many things. I am going to be transparent because I believe transparency helps other people. Often when people comment on me going for my PhD, as encouraging as it is to know that people believe in me, at times the pressure is too much to handle. I hear people tell me that God is going to use me in a certain capacity, and I hear people tell me that my PhD will enable God to do so much through me. Rather than seeing the end result, rather than seeing the ‘waterfall’ I just see the long journey that this is going to be. Not only do I see the long journey ahead I see the isolated journey. Many times God has you climbing a mountain all by yourself. He has you do things that not many have done. He has you on a journey where when you look around there is no one else in sight. And because of this, the mountain seems so much higher. I know for myself, the last few months, the pressure at times has been too hard to bear. I think of the journey that God wants me to take and at times, my actions, have pretty much been telling God that I refuse to take this journey. I have cried to God, I have told Him I don’t want to go for my PhD. I have told Him that it is too hard, it is too long…
But then I think of King David. He was out tending the sheep when God called him and anointed him the next king. This was not something he sought; this was not something he was looking for. But it was something that God wanted him to do. I bet David never imagined the road that He would have to travel on before becoming king. I am sure there were many times that he told God, this is not what I asked for. But he persevered. He never gave up. I know for myself, there are many times when the road gets so difficult, I tell God, “I never wanted to get my PhD.” Someone once told me not to limit myself and that I needed to realize that God had this plan for my life that might take me away from my home church. The last few months I have been refusing to believe that. The pressure of going for my PhD has caused me to want to settle. In fact I told a friend from school the other day that I just wanted to get a job at McDonalds because I could not handle the pressure. I had been the opposite of King David. He preserved despite the difficulty, and I was ready to quit because the journey seemed too long.
Sometimes though we are right around the corner from God’s promises, but because the climb has been difficult and the road seems lonely we turn back, we settle, we give up. We forget how beautiful the ‘waterfall’ looked from the bottom. As we were hiking there was a great deal of time when we could not see the waterfall any more. We were walking towards it but it was no longer in our sight. We were pretty much walking by faith believing that when we reached the top, the waterfall would be there. That is how it is in the spiritual sense as well. When we start the journey we know the purpose and plan God has for us, but as we walk some distance that vision gets lost. We can no longer see it and so we walk by faith. Sometimes we forget the words that God has given us concerning the vision. We just think about how difficult the journey has been and how difficult it will be. But we need to remember the words of those who have been on the mountain. We are right around the corner. And the end result is worth it.
There is a verse in Isaiah that simply says: “Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” God knows that the journey at times is difficult. He knows that at times the road might seem too hard to traverse. But He will give us the strength that we need. Whether it be a word from someone at the right time, whether it be a verse that you read in your devotional, whether it be another glimpse of what He has in store for you, He will give you the strength you need to make it to the top. I know for myself this hike is what I needed to refocus. It is what I needed to see the purpose and plan that God has for my life. It is like every word that any one has ever given me, and every word that God has given me came flooding back to me. Sometimes when you climb for so long, you forget the words that have been given to you. You forget the promises, you forget the plans, and you forget the purpose. And that is what had been happening to me. I have been going to school forever and I have been climbing this mountain forever, and I was just getting so tired from doing it. I looked around and I saw others who had reached the top of their mountain and I wondered why God still had me climbing. I wondered why God wanted me to go for my PhD. I would tell Him, I am not capable, you called the wrong person. I looked at how much I had climbed and I looked at how much I still had to climb, and I was as the verse in Isaiah says, ‘weary and tired.’
I know if I had given up on the hike, if I had said I don’t want to climb any more, I would have regretted it and I would have missed out on viewing the waterfall. In life it is like that as well. I don’t know what God has in store for me. I don’t know the plans He has for my life. I don’t know the things He wants to do through me. But I have to be willing to do them. I have to be willing to climb the mountain, no matter how difficult it may seem, no matter how long the journey. Because if I don’t I will live a life of regret. Sometimes we try to climb the mountain by ourselves. Or I can just personalize it and sometimes I try to climb the mountain by myself. I try to take things into my own hands. I try to control the situation and I try to figure things out myself. But it is when I try to do it on my own, that I lose focus, that I lose the vision, that I lose the purpose. God does not have us on this mountain by ourselves. He is right there besides us. He wants to guide us. He wants to help us. And when we get tired He wants to give us the strength we need. But He does not want us to give up. He does not want us to lose focus. He does not want us to forget the purpose and plan. So as I end this I encourage you to continue climbing that mountain God has you on, even when the road seems difficult and even when it seems like there is no end in sight, don’t give up, because when you reach the top you will be so glad that you made it.