My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
[T]here is a sense in which we are always in God's presence, always meeting with him. On various occasions, however, God seems to draw nearer. What the New Testament teaches is that when God's people meet together in the name of Jesus God actually does draw nearer. That is true, whether we feel God's nearness or not. It is his promise, and we should rely on it.
What does "draw near" mean in this context? I have said that it is hard to define, but let me try to clarify the idea somewhat. When God draws near, he has special business with us. As in Isaiah's case [in Isaiah 6], he wants to remind us of his greatness and holiness. He wants us to acknowledge that greatness in our praises. He wants to convict us of sin, and he wants us to confess that sin and receive forgiveness. He wants us to hear his word and obey it. He wants to hear our baptismal and membership vows, and to preside at the discipline of the church. He wants to fellowship with us in the Lord's Supper. He wants to receive our gifts. He wants to acknowledge our unity and love for one another as his body. For such purposes, God draws near. And from such fellowship with God in the name of Christ, we arise, empowered by his Spirit, to do his bidding.
-- John M. Frame, Worship in Spirit and Truth, p. 34
If you worship Christ as the Creator of everything, every cosmic speck across billions of light years of trackless space, the Creator of the textures and shapes and colors that dazzle our eyes; if you worship Christ as the Sustainer of all creation, who by his word holds the atoms of your body and this universe together; if you worship him as the Goal of everything, that all creation is for him; if you further worship Christ as the Reconciler of your soul - then you worship the God of the Bible. Anything less than this is reductionist and idolatrous.
- R. Kent Hughes, in Worship by the Book (D.A. Carson, ed.)
Heavenly Father, Giver of Life, we thank and praise You for the safe and healthy birth of Brenna Paige. We praise You also for Your kindness in seeing Melissa safely through the last weeks of her pregnancy. We read in Your word, O Father, that Brenna, though so recently born, is nevertheless in need of a second birth. We pray that by Your Spirit You would cause her before long to be born again unto a living hope, that through faith in Jesus Christ she would receive forgiveness of sins and eternal life. For Your Name's sake, O Lord, please grant to Aaron and Melissa great wisdom, and faith, and purity of life as they seek to raise Brenna to fear Your name and love the gospel of Your Son. Please use this little life to bring Yourself great glory, O Lord, for You alone are worthy of all glory, honor, and power. Amen.
At the heart of the Fall is the self-love that destroys our God-centeredness. Implicitly, of course, all failure to worship God is neither more nor less than idolatry. Because we are finite, we will inevitably worship something or someone. In The Brothers Karamzaov, Dostoyevsky was not wrong to write, "So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship." Yet because we are fallen, we gravitate to false gods: a god that is domesticated and manageable, perhaps a material god, perhaps an abstract god like power or pleasure, or a philosophical god like Marxism or democracy or postmodernism. But worship we will.
- D.A. Carson, Worship by the Book, p. 35
