Page 37 - Reading Job to Know God

Guide, the Deliverer, the Prayer Answerer, and the One who sustains and
keeps all things. All by Himself. Everything He continues to be apart from
our experience.
Real worship praises God for Himself. Isn’t that the nature of the enemy’s
original accusation? Satan was saying, “God, You are not wonderful
enough, by Yourself, for anybody to serve You. You have to be giving
gifts all the time or they would never come to You. They would never
trust in You because You do not have what it takes. Just You by Yourself.
You are not lovely enough”.
You see even the best Christians in the world, those who have hungered
the most after the Lord, know only a tiny bit about God. You cannot even
begin to understand how minuscule your experience has been. Because
God is infinite! We can only touch an infinitesimal portion of Him. We
can only scratch the surface. And most people’s worship is based, not on
the revelation of God, but on their experience of God. And what a flimsy
worship it is because we have experienced so little. Our praise is sad and
pitiful, if it is only limited to what we rely on our senses to show us.
Unfortunately this is what is happening among Christians today. They are
praising the God of their experience, and since they have not
experienced much, their worship is more shallow than deep.
I have never experienced God as the joy giver for dying martyrs.
Anybody know why? Simply because I am not a dying martyr. So I have
never experienced God that way. I have never known God as the healer of
broken hearts. As far as I know, I have never had a truly broken heart.
Maybe I did and didn’t know it. Can I praise Him that He is the healer of
broken hearts even though my heart has never been broken? You see, that
is real worship. Praising God for what He is apart from my own
experience.
I have never experienced Him as the orphan’s friend. You see, I am not an
orphan. I have never experienced Him as the One who is close by in the
“valley of the shadow of death”. As far as I know I have never been
that close to death. God can preserve your life and you do not even know
about it. But as far as I know, I have never been in the “valley of the
shadow of death”. I have never lingered on a death bed. I have never
been in a serious accident. Can I still praise Him for the One who walks
with me in the valley? Surely I can.
Do you see what I’m saying? I have never been diseased. I have never
been surrounded by ten thousand men. I have never been in a raging
storm. I have never been demon possessed. I have never been raised from
the dead. And yet, this book presents Him as the One who does all of that.
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