Shaken

Part of the reason I wanted to start this blog was to use it as a journal of sorts for my spiritual walk. It is fun to write about silly stuff and trivial things but ultimately the music my heart sings is my very feeble attempts to please God with my life.

Confession time.  Again.  I have been letting the dreary weather and the natural bent of my wicked heart to dictate my moods lately as well as my time in or neglect thereof the Word of God.

Since I am pretty certain that I am not the only one who falls prey to my flesh from time to time I'll pass along what God spoke to me today.

At our church the study has focused this past few weeks on the Psalms.  For the past two weeks we have been looking at the Psalms of lament or of our crying out to God.  Seems appropriate doesn't it?

Yesterday, Charlie (our pastor) gave us five community warnings as he was preaching on Psalm 12 and Psalm 44 which are two similar yet different community laments from the children of Israel.  His points were, well, pointed I felt:

1. When our hypocrisy is louder than the Spirit's transforming voice in our hearts.
2. When sin no longer hurts your heart or distresses your soul.
3. When what is honoring to God is not honored in your surroundings.
4. When the sin that Christ died for is seen as "cool", acceptable or even tolerated.
5. Remember, you become like those you hang out with, both socially and in social networking.

We are not to live apart from the world but we are to live a lifestyle apart from sin.

I opened up my Bible today and turned to today's reading.  Leviticus.  Not my favorite book of the Bible just in that it is hard to grasp all of the reasons we need to know about the laws and rituals of the Israelites living in those days.  But I have been learning through other teachers that everything God did pre-Jesus coming to earth was for a purpose.  Foreshadowing is a new favorite word of mine.

So today's passage was on priestly purity.  Lots of laws about what the people could do or not do who were given the privilege of serving God in the temple.  Hmmmmmmmmmmm.  Doesn't God call us a royal priesthood and a holy nation if we are His children? Then I guess something about this book must apply to me.

The phrase that kept jumping out at me as it was repeated many times over was: "I am the Lord who makes them holy".  I had to admit that in our world today we tend to forget and take seriously the HOLINESS of God and I tend to approach Him far too glibly than I should.  Then.  The verses of the day:  "You must faithfully keep all my commands by obeying them, for I am the LORD.  Do not treat my holy name as common and ordinary.  I must be treated as holy by the people of Israel.  It is I, the LORD, who makes you holy.  It was I who rescued you from Egypt, that I might be your very own God. I am the LORD."  Leviticus 22: 31-33

Then as I was kind of letting those words ruminate in my head I flicked on the CD I had been listening to prior to reading.  Song number 8 was called Shaken.  Stuff about a sacrifice and a spotless lamb and what is it, Linda, that REALLY matters in this life.

Shaken
  written by Rita Baloche
  Copyright 2009 Sardache' Songs (Adm. by Integrity Worship Music)/ASCAP

Only a spotless lamb

For a sinner's soul

You gave me a heart of flesh

For a heart of stone

You brought me down to my knees

When I was full of pride

And took away all the places 

I could hide

Those You love You will chasten

Everything that can be will be shaken

Everything that can be will be shaken

And only You remain

Only You remain.

Wherever my treasure is

There my heart will be

I'm fixing my eyes on things

In the heavenlies

When everything is said and done

And swept away

I wanna be by Your side

In eternity

Those You love You will chasten

No suffering for the moment

Is pleasant but it brings forth

The peaceful fruit of righteousness

Jesus my righteousness

Only You remain

Only You remain.

So all that talk about unmarked lambs for the sacrifice and only people who were without blemish serving God in the temple was really about how I could never please God on my own.  But Jesus is the perfect spotless Lamb that I can depend on to make me right before God.  He will shake me up to show me that I am  loved and that He cares enough to chasten me.  I think that in that case, even my lamenting to Him can be a sweet sacrifice as long as I realize that when it is all said and done only He remains.

The big kicker for me was "that I might be your very own God".  This Holy Perfect incredible God wants to be my "very own God".  He makes it personal, not at all a general sense of ownership. He wants to be my very own God.  Amazing.