Tag: in awe of God

How do you show up?

Old Testament Reading: Exodus 9 & 10
Psalms Reading: Psalm 33
New Testament Reading: Romans 3

I was struck by verses 3-5 of today’s reading in Psalm 33.

3 Sing to Him a new song;

Play skillfully with a shout of joy.

4 For the word of the Lord is upright,

And all His work is done in faithfulness.

5 He loves righteousness and justice;

The earth is full of the lovingkindness of the Lord. (NASB 1995)

Are we singing the same old song of praise to God? The thoughts that stirred in me when I read this passage were that we are on a journey of getting to know God and His word is His love letter to us. If we are open to it, He is gradually revealing the beauty of His character to us. His word is truly “alive and active” (Hebrews 4:12, NIV). 

Furthermore, verse 8 reminds us that we should fear Him and be standing in awe of Him!

8 Let all the earth fear the Lord;

Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. (NASB 1995)

If we think about everything God has done and who He is, can we even help but do that? Well, I do think about Moses though from the reading earlier in the week. He seemed to lose sight pretty quickly of the majesty of God and that was evident in the way he communicated with God. He was showing up on holy ground with filthy sandals. However, some self-reflection compels me that I sometimes show up with filthy sandals on and don’t always remember to render the reverence God is due.

The contrast between David and Moses keeps revisiting my mind and heart, so maybe that’s a message God really needs me to hear and maybe you do, too. How are you showing up before God? Are we signing a new song of praise that can only be fueled by an intentional quest of getting to know Him more intimately. Otherwise, we will keep singing the same old song in those same old dirty sandals.

-Kristy Cisneros

Reflection Questions:

  1. What are some new areas you can praise God in? 
  2. What new things have you learned about God’s character in this year’s reading so far that you could praise Him for?
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Keeping the Awe

Exodus 14

February 12

It always amazes me that the Israelites respond this way after seeing the great works and power of God:

10 As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. 11 They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? 12 Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”

If we aren’t careful though, I think we all can easily lose the awe and reverence for God that He so richly deserves. We all have been witness to the great and mighty things God has done, but we can quickly forget all of it if we don’t take the proper precautions. The Bible is an amazing tool to continually remind us of just how worthy God is of our praise, reverence and adoration and just how fallible our hearts are. As noted in, Hebrews 4:12:

12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

His word keeps our hearts in check. If we are missing that frequent interaction with it, our hearts can wander astray. We read in Matthew 13:15: “For this people’s heart has grown callous; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them.”

Romans 1:21 also speaks to the dark turn that our hearts can take, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and darkened in their foolish hearts.”

A number of years ago, I was introduced to an acronym that helps us with prioritizing our prayer and approaching God in a manner that is worthy of Him: A.C.T.S. I don’t quite remember the source of this acronym, but it has always stuck with me. The “A” is for adoration and reminds us first and foremost to adore God. “C” is for confession and reminds us to confess our sins before God and repent. “T” is for Thanksgiving and reminds us to give thanks to God. The “S” is for Supplication and reminds us to ask God about whatever is on our hearts (praying for a need for others or ourselves). Oftentimes our prayers can get very out of balance and are simply reduced to an act of supplication. The God of the universe deserves so much more from us. We are reminded from this week’s readings that God hears our cries and cares about us; however, that should not be the sole focus of our prayers. 

-Kristy Cisneros

Questions for Reflection and Discussion

  1. Do you consistently give God the praise, glory, adoration and thanksgiving that He so richly deserves? If not, what are some steps you could take today to change that?
  2. How is your prayer life? Do you find that you sometimes bypass the important part of prayer where you get a chance to adore God and just go straight to the asking? Why not create a challenge for a week to see if you can start out each day with a praise to God when you wake up?

Next up – Exodus 20

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He Designed That

Psalms 65-67 and 69-70

psalm 65 8 NIV sgl

I wrote this devotion with Ps. 65 in mind but specifically v.5-13. Go ahead and read it now if you haven’t already.

Everybody has their hobbies and one of mine is woodworking. It’s super tactile and when I am woodworking, I have a kind of solitude. In a crazy technology driven era it is just really nice to do something physical and focused. It allows me to focus completely on one thing. No distractions, just wood and my hands and tools. My tools aren’t seeking my attention and neither is the wood. One of the other parts of woodworking that I love is the design element. Taking different materials and being able to think about how to put them together to get something that is designed well for its purpose but also holds a beauty. One of my favorite things that I have designed is a coffee table for my girlfriend. I made it as a Christmas present and definitely spent a ton of time (read: too much time) making it. Haha. I had a great time doing it though. I originally was just going to make it out of a wormy pine but I realized I didn’t have enough materials to make it the dimensions I wanted to. Through a little bit of problem solving and some design though I decided to make it out of two different types of wood. I had some beautiful red oak that I thought would work perfectly. I laid the oak and pine in an alternating pattern to make the table the size that I wanted. At the end of the process I was really happy with what I had made for her and in my opinion, it is really beautiful.

coffeetable

This new hobby has also allowed me to grow a deeper appreciation for how things are designed. This includes many types of design from something like how businesses are structured to the architecture in homes. People have designed some really awesome things. I think about how they designed the pyramids with no modern construction equipment to the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty. There have been a couple failures, too, like the sinking city of Venice and the leaning tower of Pisa. Maybe Italians aren’t the best architects. Haha. Too much passion and not enough structural integrity.

Some of the designs I have seen in the world made by humans are really impressive but the designs of God are truly mind boggling to me. The more I think about how God designed things in creation the more amazed I am. There are a ton of different things to consider too. All too often we can simply consider the earth and how beautiful it is. However, God’s design goes so far beyond that. God in 6 days did some pretty incredible things. Some of the things that really put me in awe are how he designed the water cycle, which allows the earth to receive water all over the land. If you think about water without the process of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation it would just stay in the lowest place it could run to. God designed that. He designed it so that all the earth would be watered as in Psalm 65.10.

He also designed the concept of gravity and set its force in just the right way. It is perfectly tared so that we are neither crushed to death by its pull or float around with nothing to tether us to the ground. God designed that. This gravity is also the same force which draws the water to flow in beautiful streams and rivers to a lower point in the earth.

He also happened to design the earth in such a way that it is self-sustaining. The earth requires absolutely nothing from humans except not to harm it. Haha. It has been around thousands of years without us doing anything to maintain it. It has been and will be. God designed it that way.

He designed the process of photosynthesis. Through photosynthesis plants take the energy from the Sun and convert it into food which the plant then uses to grow and sustain itself. God designed that.

Oh yeah, and it just so happens that we take that plant and eat, or preferably take that plant and feed it to another animal and eat that animal. Haha. God designed that

Oh yeah and the Sun, we missed that one. God designed it so that the earth was the perfect distance from the Sun. Too far away and we would be a block of ice and too close and we would be a ball of fire. God designed that.

He designed the seasons by making the earth rotate around the sun in such a way that the hemispheres received longer and shorter periods of sunlight. Thereby, allowing us to have beautiful white snow on the ground in February for most people, or if you are in New York, in May, and also get to experience the warm summer days and plants growing all around. God designed that.

You may be saying, I get it – God designed it all. For me it all screams of his glory, might, and his love for us that we would get to experience something that he designed so beautifully. This all leads me to a point of awe. An awe of all creation. My heart’s desire is to always have something to praise God for and something to keep me in awe of Him. Sometimes when I am looking for something I go to God’s creation and I can admire the beauty of his design and the deep level of care that He put into all of it. He did so for his glory. I am so thankful that I get to experience all of it, that he allows me to use his beautiful creation and that it provides for me.

Hope you guys have a great day back to work and really enjoy the day that God has given you to rejoice in.

Daniel Wall
Today’s Bible reading can be read or listened to at https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+65-67%2C+69-70&version=NIV

Tomorrow’s reading will be 2 Samuel 11-12 and 1 Chronicles 20 as we continue on the 2020 Chronological Bible Reading Plan