Here is the revelation that is shaping my life today – the seduction to worship is all around us. My brokenness looks for healing in false promises so often, and bends my knee to their promises. When God offers to bring me into fullness of life and healing.
Matthew 4:8-10 TPT
[8] And the third time the accuser lifted Jesus up into a very high mountain range and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and all the splendor that goes with it. [9] “All of these kingdoms I will give to you,” the accuser said, “if only you will kneel down before me and worship me.” [10] But Jesus said, “Go away, enemy! For the Scriptures say: Kneel before the Lord your God and worship only him.”
Observation
How many promises do I bend my knee before? The promise of wealth, fame, security, personal value, ‘happiness’? Things make promises to us, they say give your life to me and I will give this to you. Many of them are hollow promises that have no capacity to deliver, but they seduce our brokenness to come and find its needs met. Kneeling is a committed response to follow, to find life in the one before who we kneel. So to who am I kneeling is a key question to assess and become aware of in my life. God calls anything I kneel before other than himself an idol. When we try and have the needs that God seeks to satisfy in our lives met by another, then we have built idols and are kneeling in worship.
Here Jesus is tempted to find his needs met by “all of these kingdoms I will give to you.” What promise, false or real, is looking to seduce me? I think at times I am seduced to invest myself in the pleasures of the world, and find my ‘joy, satisfaction,’ in their offerings. They are not bad things unless I kneel before them and give them the place of God. The seduction is to elevate them to a place that is beyond their capacity, a place reserved by God for himself in my life. Ultimately my joy and satisfaction is found in Gods intimate presence. It’s his love, the embrace of his smile, the sweetness that reaches deep into my consciousness, that is the joy and satisfaction of my life. I will enjoy other things but not elevate to them where I kneel to find in them what God desires to be for me. There is only disappointment ahead when I kneel before idols, for they make big promises and big demands with little return, and no satisfaction.
Application
I will live aware of where I bend my knee. This investment is huge and has massive ramifications over my life. A bended knee is no insignificant matter, it is a life shaping posture.
Response
Thank you that you invite me to bend my knee to you and find life in your presence. It’s not commanded worship but an invitation to live in the intimacy of your presence and have my needs met in you. I will live this posture for life.
JOURNEY DEEPER
