Psalm 50:14-15 “Sacrifice thank offerings to God,
    fulfill your vows to the Most High,
and call on me in the day of trouble;
    I will deliver you, and you will honor me.”

God has just made it very clear that He doesn’t need anything we could give Him, because it all belongs to Him in the first place, but here He says to give offerings. That makes it very clear that we give to God not because of His need but because of ours. We have a fundamental need to recognize that He is God and we are His creation, not the other way around. To be honest, the vast majority of the gods of all the cultures of history have indeed been human creations, dreamed up by human imaginations. We are born with the impulse to seek God, but for the most part we have failed to do that in honest humility. Of course, the devil has greatly encouraged human misconceptions, because he covets the worship and adoration that only our Creator deserves, so he basks in all worship that is given to less-than-God. That’s why calling on God in our days of trouble is appropriate worship: we are acknowledging that only He can help us, because He alone is God. The first of the 10 Commandments is hardly incidental. If we place anything beside Him, much less ahead of Him, we aren’t recognizing who He is at all. We have the expression “Thank your lucky stars,” but that is actually blasphemy, because we weren’t created by the stars, but by the One who created the stars. Some have said we are “stardust,” because the atoms in us are identical to atoms found in stars, but that is an effort to take God out of the picture, to say we are the result of “natural processes.” We try to wriggle out of accountability any way we can, but it doesn’t change the facts. The 4^th verse of When I Survey the Wondrous Cross gets it right: “Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.” Isaac Watts knew how to worship!

I was raised in a family that knew God and worshiped Him in spirit and in truth. I couldn’t be more grateful for the huge store of songs of adoration and praise that are in my heart and mind. The one I just quoted has come up just recently, causing me to sing it silently as I have gone about whatever I was doing. I want my life to be one of continuous worship, continuous awareness of the One who not only created me, He loved me enough to send His Son to die in my place, and incredibly, He speaks to and through me and uses me for His glory. People around me respond in various ways, with some just thinking I’m strange, some actively opposing me, and some joining me in worship. It is those who join me that encourage me to keep going, to keep pressing in for more of my gracious Lord. I want my life to be so attractive that others will have the courage to believe that God loves them as much as He does me, and so open their hearts to Him in repentance and faith.

Father, thank You for Your truly amazing grace. May I never take it for granted but respond fully, just as Isaac Watts said, for Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!