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Wouldn’t you love the opportunity to learn how to rest in God’s presence and draw closer to Him in worship? – Here is a powerful reflection by Derek Prince to enable you to listen to God’s voice this summer.
Commenting on Psalm 95:6-11, Derek says: ‘Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker.’
Now I don’t think there’s any need for noise. As I see it, this is the suggestion. It’s quietness. So that’s worship. We are given two reasons why we should worship the Lord in verse 7: ‘For he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.’
The first reason to worship God is because He is God and He’s our God. The one thing that’s uniquely appropriate to God and no one else in the universe is worship. We can praise men and women but we must never worship men and women. Worship is the most distinctive way we have to relate to God as God.
 I am convinced that whatever we worship gains control of us. The more we worship it the more like it we become. That is why it’s so tremendously important that you never worship the wrong thing because whatever you worship gains power over you.
The second reason given that we should worship Him is that we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His care. I believe that worship is the appropriate response to God’s care for us. It’s the way we recognize Him as our God, it’s the way we respond to His care for us.
Now, I think it’s significant that the psalm doesn’t end there. It ends with what I would call a solemn warning. This is the last section. “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah.’ Then God goes on about that generation. “For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray and they have not known my ways.’ So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall not enter [into] my rest.”
I believe that sets before us two alternatives. The first is the right one. In worship we hear God’s voice. Hearing God’s voice and obeying it, we enter into rest. One of the things that I cannot escape from— The importance of hearing God’s voice. Jeremiah 7:23, God says to His people: “This is what I ask of you, ‘Obey my voice and I will be your God.’”
That’s the simplest statement I know anywhere of what God requires. “Obey My voice and I will be your God.”
Deuteronomy 28 lists all the blessings of obedience, all the curses of disobedience. The blessings begin, “If you will diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD your God, all these blessings will come upon you.” The curses begin, “If you will not hearken to the voice of your God, all these curses will come upon you.” The watershed is listening or not listening to the voice of the Lord. I believe worship brings us to the place where we can hear God’s voice.
I don’t want to shock you but it isn’t enough to read your Bibles. You say, “That was Old Testament.” Let me quote you John 10:27. “My sheep . . .” what? Read the Bible? “My sheep hear my voice, and hearing my voice they follow me.” You cannot follow Jesus if you don’t hear His voice. It’s a good thing to read the Bible. I want to say, I read it every day more than once. But, you can read the Bible without hearing the voice of the Lord. I believe worship is the appointed way to come into that attitude and relationship where we really hear God’s voice.
And hearing God’s voice, we enter into His rest. This is where Israel failed. They took the wrong course. Let me show you what they did. They didn’t worship, they didn’t hear God’s voice, their hearts were hardened, they provoked God’s anger and they didn’t enter into rest. I’ll give you those statements once more. It’s clear from this passage this is where Israel failed.
 They didn’t enter into worship.
They didn’t hear God’s voice.
Their hearts were hardened.
They provoked God’s anger.
And they didn’t enter into their rest.
That’s why I’m talking about worship and rest because I believe worship is the way to rest. Only those who really know how to worship really can enjoy rest. Rest is very rare amongst contemporary Christians.
 Let me read you a passage in Hebrews 4:9: ‘There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God;’
That’s a very good translation. The King James says ‘a rest’ but the Greek word is Sabbatismos, which is directly formed from the word for Sabbath.
There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience.
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Dave Potter, 29/07/2011 |
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