A MOUTH OPENED UP WIDE TO GOD
Let there be no strange god among you; nor shall you worship any foreign god. I, the LORD, am your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt; open your mouth wide and I will fill it.
~Psalm 81:9-10
I can remember several weeks where an observing bystander would have characterized me as busy and active for the Lord. I found myself locked in such a period not too long ago, where my body and mind were engaged in the things of God. As a Christian – and more specifically as a pastor – I do wholly admit to being sold out for the purposes of God. I don’t say this out of pride, but rather out of personal conviction and commitment. There were specific weeks when I found myself extremely busy doing the work of the Lord. One moment, I’m intensely preparing a sermon – exegeting Greek and Hebrew verses, while laboring to form the outline. The next moment, I’m sitting across a younger man locked in an intense discipleship meeting. One hour, I’m analyzing the church excel files trying to figure out the best way to structure the ministries under my belt. The next hour, I’m pouring my heart out on the pulpit – trying to encourage a group of believers in front of me to love the Lord. One minute, I’m in a leadership meeting. The next minute, I’m leading praise music. While I’m externally engaged in the work of God, I’m internally contemplating the will of God. In everything from what to say in the next sermon to what to eat for lunch, my mind is actively considering what it is that the Lord would want. Thus, with a body running around and a mind in intense thought, it appears as if I may be spiritually flourishing. If there was such a thing as the most-active-church-member award, I would be in the running.
Yet, experience has revealed to me that it’s also during these weeks that I’m most prone to spiritually famine. I’ve realized that it’s during the periods when my life is so busy with the Lord’s things that I’m in most danger of having a malnourished soul by the end. And no, it’s not the work of the Lord that drains my soul. During these periods, it’s not my activity that drains me, but rather my lack of activity. It’s because during these times, I become so occupied with thinking about the work of God and the will of God, that I forget to consider God Himself. My mind and body end up being so occupied with the things of God, while my spirit ends up neglecting knowing God Himself. Thus, I end up having done a lot more things, without having grown in intimacy with the One Himself whom my soul was designed to be in a relationship with. Like the husband who worked hours and hours to earn money to provide for his wife and labored for hours to fix things around the house and yet completely neglected spending time with her, so my soul realized that it has a craving not only for God’s approval, but for God’s person Himself.
I realized that, more often than not, it’s easier for me to obey God when He reveals to me what He wants than to adore Him when He reveals to me who He is. Often times, in my relationship with Christ, I’m more consumed with imitation of Him than intimacy with Him. Yet, when the Scriptures juxtapose worship and idolatry – particularly in Psalm 81 – the juxtaposing picture to idolatry is the portrait of one who opens his mouth towards God and longs for Him to fill it. It’s a picture of a man who recognizes that his soul is – apart from knowing God intimately – nothing but famished. He starves not for God’s blessings, but for God Himself. He is one who desires not only to do things for God, but to be with God and to know Him. From this same hunger, another psalmist cries in Psalm 42, “As the deer pants for the water brook, so my soul longs after You.” A worshipper is one who wants nothing less than God Himself. He finds his hope and joy not in his own obedience and faithfulness, nor does he find it ultimately in God’s people. Rather, though his life is multi-faceted externally in all the different things that He is involved in, his passion is absolutely singular.
But if God calls this man to worship Him by opening his mouth wide for Him, then it follows that the idolater is one who seeks fulfillment from anyone or anything else but God Himself. How scary it is to think, then, that idolatry can take place even when one is invested in the things of God. Though service flows out of worship, service doesn’t necessarily equate to worship. It is a sobering thought to think that the person who is busy doing God’s work can be, at that very moment, void of worshipping God. It’s easy to think that when one is busy with church work, one is worshipping God. Yet, the person who finds His fulfillment in his own work and in his own realization that he is obedient or faithful is the person who is worshipping himself, and not God. The person who finds more happiness in God’s people than in God Himself is one who worships people and not God. The heart of a true worshipper is one that is – in the midst of the busyness of his labor – completely still and in awe of God’s grandeur and majesty and beauty at all times. He is the one who can honestly say from his inner core that the one longing in his heart that he seeks is to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord in full-fledged intimacy with Him.
Understanding worship from this angle has humbled me, and only made realize further how void my heart is of true worship at times. It sobers me in realizing just how much I’ve failed to love God as I should. It’s humbling to see how many idols I still have in my heart – even as a pastor who has invested his life fully into God’s work. It’s saddening to know that sometimes, I’m still prone to making idols out of God’s people and God’s ministry rather than truly worship God’s Son. But it only helps me understand His perfect patience towards a child who, though imperfect, He loves and has promised to grow to the image of His Son. So let us put away these strange and foreign gods among and inside of us. May we open up the mouths of our souls to the Almighty and Everlasting God Himself, and let Him fill it.
