Enjoying God's Love (church bulletin cover)

Why is it that we can sometimes get nervous when doing something for God in a public context. Has that ever happened to you? Perhaps you've been asked to share something in front of a crowd or a group. Or perhaps you've been asked to plan or organize something that you feel needs to go well for the sake of all involved. Or perhaps you need to provide leadership in a context that feels full of potential hazards. I've felt nervous in situations that resemble all of those examples. I get nervous because I'm overly concerned about missing the mark -- flubbing things up -- or getting in the way of God. And that can really diminish the joy I'm meant to have as I serve the Lord. But King David found a great way of stating the obvious fact that such struggles are all because our focus is all wrong!

David says in Psalm 5:7 that as for him, "by Your abundant lovingkindness I will enter Your house; at Your holy temple I will bow in reverence for You." If I walk into a context of public ministry among people who simply desire to meet with God or to hear God or to enjoy God, and my gaze is on myself -- my inadequacies, my weakness, my insecurities -- my, my, my, me, me, me -- I'm obviously going to be dejected. That's because I'm worshiping my weaknesses! How depressing! Have you ever done that? But David is saying that before God, neither our adequacies nor our inadequacies matter. We're not meant to enter God's house by our competence or our capabilities. We're meant to enter by God's abundant lovingkindness. Or as Romans 5:17 puts it: the abundance of God's grace! And I'm not meant to bow to my weakness or my insecurities. I'm meant to bow in worship to God alone.

Wow. With God and His abundant lovingkindness as my focus, I can forget however I might flub things up. And since the means of my entry into His presence is His loving invitation, my feelings about a Sunday morning should be more like David's in Psalm 5:11 -- "glad", "singing for joy" and "exulting" in God! Be happy, because God loves us with an abundant love that will never run dry!

© 2009 by Ken Peters