Are You Real With God? {Thinking Theology}

Sometimes it's difficult to be real with God. 

We want to hide. To clean ourselves up first. To put our best face forward.

But is that how God want's us to come to Him? I'd say the answer is no. All you have to do is take a look at most of the Psalms to see how real they are. They get to the heart of things. There is no mincing of words, just raw, honest emotion.

The other day I took time to look through just the first verse of various different Psalms. No, I don't recommend this as a technique to reading the Psalms - but I did see some very interesting things...

O Lord, how my adversaries have increased! 

 Psalm 3:1

Why do You stand afar off, O Lord? Why do You hide Yourself in times of trouble?  

Psalm 10:1

Help Lord, for the godly man ceases to be, for the faithful disappear from among the sons of men.  Psalm 12:1

May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble! May the name of the God of Jacob set you securely on high! 

Psalm 20:1

My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Far from my deliverance re the words of my groaning. Psalm 22:1

As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God.

 Psalm 42:1

Vindicate me, O God, and plead my case against an ungodly nation; O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man!

 Psalm 43:1

Save me, O God, by Your name, and vindicate me by Your power. 

Psalm 54:1

Give ear to my prayer, O God; and do not hide Yourself from my supplication.

 Psalm 55:1

Be gracious to me, O God, for man has trampled upon me; fighting all day long he oppresses me. Psalm 56:1

We give thanks to You, O GOd, we give thanks for Your name is near; men declare Your wondrous works.

 Psalm 75:1 

My heart is steadfast, O God; I will sing, I will sing  praises, even with my soul. 

Psalm 108:1

Praise the Lord!  

Psalm 111, Psalm 112, Psalm 113, Psalm 117

Out of the depths I have cried to You, O Lord.

Psalm 130:1

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His lovingkindness is everlasting.

 Psalm 136

I know, it's a lot and they are from all over the Psalms, but take a look at all of them - they range in emotion from anger, to frustration, to pleading, to praise, to understanding as well as any other type of emotion you could think of (and this is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak).

A lot of these are said to have been written by King David - you know, that one guy who was called "The man after God's own heart". Yeah, you remember him. He was the guy who killed Goliath and then later in life ended up sleeping with a married woman, getting her pregnant, basically having her husband killed, and then being the cause for the death of that child as well. I don't know about you, but looking at David's life (among many others in the Bible) brings things into perspective.

David was a passionate man. You can see it by the way he pleads with God and the way he blesses Him. In Psalm 51, when he's faced with his sin with Bathsheba, he says, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit."

Wow.

He just messed up - big time - and here he is, coming to the Lord and boldly asking Him to fix the problem - his heart. How often do we sin and the first thing we do is turn to ourselves. We mistakenly think we can do better or that we have to atone for what we did. The thing is - we can't fix it. There is no way we can clean ourselves up. It's actually pointless for us to turn to ourselves first (or at all).

Romans 8:1-4 says:

Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeliness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who did not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (emphasis mine)

Basically, all our striving and working to be "good enough" isn't worth it. We fake it, hoping we'll make it, but we're just not fooling God. Christ came to die for our sins not so we could keep trying to save ourselves, but so that we could accept His perfect sacrifice and "cease striving" (Psalm 46:10).

Are you hiding from God? 

Are you depending on yourself to "get better" before you come to Him? Or are you just trying to do it all on your own?

stop being cheap with God

"I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God which cost me nothing."  David (2 Samuel 24:24b)

How often does our worship, does our dedication, does out commitment to the Lord cost us anything?  Maybe it's cost us a little sleep...maybe a few friends here and there over the years...maybe its even cost us a job or a grade...but has it truly cost us anything?  David, in the above statement, was explaining to those around him that he would pay for the threshing floor he would use to offer a sacrifice to the Lord on, because he didn't want to take the easy route and be given the floor.  In his mind, if he got the space for free, it wasn't a sacrifice of praise at all but just a praise of convenience.

So I asked myself: What's my threshing floor?

The answer to that isn't quite as cut-and-dry as I'd like it to be, but that seems to be the nature of most things.  I think my sacrifice will look differently at different times and situations in my life.  On Sunday morning at church, if I'm standing in the congregation and really don't feel like singing that morning, my sacrifice is to take myself out of the equation and sing.  I don't sing because I'm always in the mood to sing (which is generally the case) but I sing to encourage others around me [check out this blog by Greg Gilbert on this subject].  Then, maybe I'm at the grocery store and the woman next to me in line wants to strike up a conversation and I'm just not feeling it.  At that time, though we wouldn't initially say that's a 'worship moment' the Lord asks us to love others and to share Him with them - this would be a perfect opportunity for me to do that if I would, once again, take myself out of the equation and talk to her. The examples of this are endless.

I was intrigued by the idea of sacrifice to God so I looked around and came upon Malachi 1:6-14 which is basically Malachi pointing out the sins of the priests in the way they were offering sacrifices to God.  What they were offering on the alter to God they wouldn't even have offered to their own governor.  He wouldn't have accepted it!  The type of sacrifice they deemed 'worthy' of God were lame or blind animals and defiled food.  I was incensed when I read that thinking, "How dare they offer the least of their things to Him!  Don't they know who God is and what He deserves."

But, as my righteous indignation waned, I realized I'm guilty of the same indiscretions.  There are days when I crave sleep and then force my Bible study into a fifteen minute period where I'm also in the middle of at least three other things.  I sit down to pray and suddenly, a half an hour later, I realize I've been making a To-Do list in my head for at least twenty of those minutes.  I show up to church and allow the stress of my week or personal life to seep into my thoughts so, instead of being encouraged or focusing on areas in which to grow, I come away looking more at myself then at Christ.

How dare I offer myself to God in that way.  Don't I know who He is and what He deserves?

Ah, the painful irony.  But, in the pain is an understanding; an awareness.  These times of selfish interest should propel me to seriously evaluate my heart and where it's at in everything I do.  I desire to "Honor the Lord from [my] wealth and from the first of all my produce"(Prov.3:9) and to offer up to him a "broken spirit...(and) contrite heart"(Psalm 51:17) and ultimately to "continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name" (Heb. 13:15).  I want my worship of Him (really, my life) to show sacrifices for His glory - made potentially at the expense of what's easy.  It's all right there in those verses.  The sacrifice, the author of Hebrews explains, is the fruit (the result) of lips that give thanks to Him.  To sacrifice to God is to give Him the first fruits (the best) of what you have or receive.  To have a broken heart and contrite spirit is to be humble before the Lord.

I pray that these things will define my praise and worship to Him.  That, when tempted to take the easy route and offer up things that cost me nothing, I will resist and instead ask of the Lord what He desires as my sacrifice of praise and then give it gladly, in spite of the cost, and through His grace.

blood on his hands, cleanness in his heart

"He also brought me forth into a broad place; He rescued me, because He delighted in me.  The Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands He has recompensed me.  For I have kept the ways of the Lord, and have not acted wickedly against my God.  For all His ordinances were before me, and as for His statues, I did not depart from them.  I was also blameless toward Him, and I kept myself from my iniquity.  Therefore the Lord has recompensed me according to my righteousness, according to my cleanness before His eyes." 2 Samuel 22:20-25

Can you believe that King David wrote this? The fact that he was able to say the he had "cleanness" before God's eyes is amazing to me considering the blood that was on his hands.  If nothing else, this should be a huge encouragement to us - especially those who feel like God could never forgive them for their sins.  Need I recount David's sins?  Including (but not limited to) lust, adultery, and murder.  That hits a lot of the 'major' sins we think God could never forgive us from.

As I read this passage I was amazed at David's understanding of God's forgiveness and His grace and mercy.  I mean he was a guy who understood it!  He realized that his standing with God was not based on his sinlessness, but rather on his acceptance of God's grace and an attempt on his part to 'keep himself from his iniquity' (v24b).  David seemed to have mastered the art of repentance.  Just through reading many of the Psalms he wrote, you can hear a cry to God from a deep place in his heart asking God to pull him through and to "create in [him] a clean heart"(Psalm 51:10).  Psalm 51 is full of these pleas that show an understanding which reaches far ahead of David's own circumstances.  He rightly says that, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit" and that  God will not despise "a broken and contrite heart" (51:17).  That small statement speaks volumes!  In that day and age, the way in which you came to God was through sacrifices, and here David was saying that God looks on those as a way to Him but beyond that He requires true repentance.  Repentance of the heart and the spirit.

David's view of God creates a deep desire in my heart to know and understand God in the same way.  As I read through the Psalms and through 1 & 2 Samuel and see David's life unfold before my eyes, I see a man who knew God and who loved Him.  He valued His relationship with the Lord above all else.  Sure, David messed up big time (several times) but yet to the very end his relationship with the Lord was held intact because of his view of God.

What is your view of God?  Is He just some dictator who sits in the sky judging and manipulating people?  Or is He only a being of love without justice, loving everyone without judgement which isn't really love at all?  Or maybe, in your mind, He doesn't care.  There are so many interpretations of who "God" really is, but if they aren't founded and shaped by who the Bible says God is, they're wrong.

David knew God because he spent time with Him.  He sought out His presence.  He took refuge in the Lord.  He trusted the Lord.  He listened to His voice.  David's outlook on life was changed because of the time he spent with God and, the amazing thing is, we can do the same thing.

"O love the Lord, all you His godly ones!  The Lord preserves the faithful and fully recompenses the proud doer.  Be strong and let your heat take courage, all you who hope in the Lord."
Psalm 31:23-24 A Psalm of David

learning from a broken man

Have you ever messed up really badly?  I mean, really, really badly?  You get to that point where your heart sinks to the bottom of your stomach and you just know that you've ruined everything?  David was definitely at that point.  There he was: a King, a warrior, a husband (a few times...), even a man after God's own heart, and he'd blown it.  Completely.  He had just been minding his own business when suddenly he was over come with lust for another mans wife and, rather than flee that temptation, he enabled it.  He used his power as King and called her to him, slept with her, then sent her back to her husbands household like nothing had ever happened.  On top of all of that, when he found out that she was pregnant, he tried to get out of it by sending her husband to her so it would look like the child was his.  When that didn't work out, things went from bad to worse as he sent her husband into battle, purposefully, to be killed (2 Samuel 11).

I read that story recently and was again struck by how utterly selfish David's actions were.  But, thankfully, I'm not the only one who noticed that.  In the next chapter (13) Nathan, a profit at that time, was instructed by the Lord to talk with David.  He told him a story, painting the picture of a poor man who could only afford to have one sheep.  This man loved the sheep and treated it almost like it was part of the family.  Then, one day, a rich man entertained guests and, rather than kill one of his many sheep, he took the poor mans lamb and killed it to feed them.  David burned with anger against the rich man in the story and claimed that he should be put to death.  Nathan simply pointed out that David was this man.  

Talk about a revelatory moment.  There David was, thinking he had gotten away with his sin - the woman's husband was dead, she was now his wife, they were having a child - all was well.  But no, the Lord brought David's sin to his attention through Nathan.  But the part that gets me is David's response.  He simply says, "I have sinned against the Lord."  It's short and too the point but I'm sure those words held a lot of weight.  In that moment he was recognizing that he hadn't just sinned against Uriah (the husband) and he hadn't just sinned against Bathsheba (the woman) but that he had sinned against God.  

Unfortunately, as is always the case with sin, there were consequences that came with David's actions.  The child Bathsheba bore became ill.  And what did David do?  He didn't walk away and say, "Oh well, that's what I get for messing up",  thinking his sin still held him captive.  Instead, he inquired of the Lord on the child's behalf and fasted, laying on the ground all night.  When the child eventually died and David found out, he got up, took a shower, changed his clothes, and asked for something to eat.  Those who had wondered at his sanity only a few hours before were amazed at this change.  He replied to their questions by saying, "While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, 'Who knows, the Lord may be gracious to me, that the child may live.'  But now he has died; why should I fast?  Can I bring him back again?  I will go to him, but he will not return to me." (2 Samuel 12:22-23).

In the midst of David's sin and grief, he held fast to the Lord.  He understood that he had sinned against God, and he also remembered that the Lord is in control of all things - his child's health as much as his own eternity (v23).  I feel as if I can look to David and learn so much just from these two chapters.  At Hume Lake this year the theme was centered on David and a week studying that has forever affected my view of this King and "man after God's own heart".  It's not so much that David was perfect and worthy of being in the position he held, but the fact that he understood who he was in perspective to who God is.  David messed up.  Big time.  Yet, in each of those situations he took rebuke and owned up to his sin only to fall on his face before the Holy God in true repentance.  

I want to respond like David when faced with my own sin.  I want to recognize that it is a sin against God and, in turn, repent and move on.  It's much too easy to get weighted down by past sins, allowing them to change the direction of your future, but if we understand true forgiveness and what Christ did on the cross for us, I think we'd think less about ourselves and more about Him.  The beauty of Christ's sacrifice is the fact that it doesn't take anything from us to accept Him.  Not a clean slate or a good work.  All it takes is an understanding of our own sin and an acceptance of His sacrifice on our behalf.

A final word from David:

The Lord is gracious and merciful;

Slow to anger and great in lovingkindness.

The Lord is good to all,

and His mercies are over all His works.

Psalm 145:8-9