At times it seems hopeless that I will ever find this isatiable desire in me fulfilled for genuine intimacy. The heart is lonely and yearning for connection. And at times, I can't help but think of the Beatles song Lonely People. Read these lyrics:
I look at all the lonely people.
I look at all the lonely people.
Elanor Rigby
Picks up the rice in the church where her wedding has been;
Lives in a dream.
Waits at the window,
Wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door.
Who is it for?
All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?
Father MacKenzie
Writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear;
No one comes near.
Look at him working,
Nodding his socks in the night when there's nobody there.
What does he care?
All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?
I look at all the lonely people.
I look at all the lonely people.
Elanor Rigby
Died in the church and was buried alone with her name.
Nobody came.
Father MacKenzie
Wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from her grave.
No one was saved.
All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?
It's a sad song, but I think most of us have felt this more often then we care to admit. Inside our souls is a yearning for connection and intimacy that seems to go unfulfilled. As we grow older and interact more with the world around us it becomes increasingly clear that the hope of our raging desire for love may never be satisfied. Loneliness is not an isolated experience that only an unfortunate few experience. It is the norm across any culture, any social strata, any religous group. This song was written by what many term as the most successful rock band in history. If you know their story, you know that success didn't help them fill the thirst for intimacy and connection.
Another extremely successful rock star is John Cougar Meloncamp - and he wrote a song called Void in My Heart:
There's a void in my heart
I can't seem to fill.
Been a parent, had three children
And a big house on the hill.
Hundred dollar in my pocket
And it didn't buy a thing.
Now there's a void in my heart
And a hole in my dreams.
Well I poured miles of concrete
And strung wire for telephones,
Dug ditches when I was a young boy
When I first left my parents' home.
Sang my songs for millions of people,
Sang good and bad news,
Now there's a void in my heart
And a fire at my fuse.
Well I did everything just like they said
So I could find happiness.
Went to school and got a college degree
And at my job I did my best.
As I sit here alone tonight
I see a billion just like me
With a void in their hearts and running from eternity.
There's a void in my heart I can't seem to fill.
I do charity work when I believe in the cause
But in my soul it bothers me still.
Hey, Lord, well you made me like I am.
Can You heal this restlessness?
Will there be a void in my heart
When they carry me out to rest?
There is a lot in this song many of us can relate to. How many of us walk around with a void in our hearts, but an artificial smile on our faces wrapped in some pretense of luxury or success? I find it interesting at the end of the song that he turns to the Lord and says 'you made me like I am...' That is profound because He did indeed make us like we are. He designed us, hard-wired us and then breathed the life into us for genuine intimacy and connection. And yet, so many of us fear what we have read in the lyrics above - that one day our lives will end and that desire will never be fulfilled.
So far we have talked about the importance of trust to intimacy, and that led us to the great need for mercy. And that, without mercy, we will never experience genuine intimacy. Those are two fundamental components needed for connection. But there is one more thing we will need to understand and embrace - vulnerability. What images does that word vulnerability bring to your mind? Probably not good ones! It reminds me of the time we were learning about the Renasaince period when I was a 14 year old boy and I was chosen to dress in a set of tights and a long shirt with a belt. Talk about vulnerable! Tights on a 14 year old boy in front of all his peers. Or the moment I was on a first date and the woman I was with 'just so happen' to run into her roomate and boyfriend at the restaurant we were at. One glance from him and I got the picture if there was one wrong move on my part it may not go good for me. I couldn't wait for that night to be over. Or the time I was five years old and went to my first day of Kindergarten, was so nervous that I wet my pants! I missed an hour of class waiting for my mom to bring a change of clothes. Yeah, even telling those stories makes me feel vulnerable.
Perhaps one of those most on the forefront of explaining vulnerability is Brene Brown. She has some amazing presentations at the TED conferences you can Google, and she has written a book on the subject from her own research titled Daring Greatly. She makes the following statement in that book, “Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experiences.” I couldn't agree more. My experience has taught me that it is a crucial missing component to experiencing true and fulfilling intimacy. Remember how we discussed that intimacy means being known and knowing another? That is not possible without vulnerability. Why? Because vulnerability is the product of us doing that. Brown described vulnerability in this way 'uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure'. There is that word risk again! Intimacy is very risky stuff. We all want it, but we don't want the risk. And of all the ways we incur risk in our pursuit of intimacy, vulnerability is the most risky because it might mean rejection and shame. Of all the things we fear the most, rejection and shame are often at the top of the list.
Brown goes on and says '“When we spend our lives waiting until we’re perfect or bulletproof before we walk into the arena, we ultimately sacrifice relationships and opportunities that may not be recoverable, we squander our precious time, and we turn our backs on our gifts, those unique contributions that only we can make,” says Brown. “Perfect and bulletproof are seductive, but they don’t exist in the human experience.”
When she refers to the 'arena' I think of the arena of intimacy. For most of us it has been a gory and brutal battle where it feels those we tried to connect with turned out to be gladiators in a game where one dies and one lives. Its all or nothing so we put on our armor and go out to battle for intimacy and connection. We pretend to be tough, valiant, successful, wise and noble. The stands are filled with the people in our lives cheering and roaring. When we stumble or when we fall, when we are wounded and injured they are nothing but mere spectators with their own experiences and failures in the arena. Where is the love? Where is the safety? And we wonder why we never feel connected. Just look at all the lonely people, with a void in their hearts trying to pre-occupy themselves with something besides their own battlescars and pain. The world can indeed be a very lonely place.
The truth is, the pursuit of intimacy doesn't require armor, a competitive arena or a great battle. It requires us to be willing to be exposed if we are to experience intimacy and genuine connection. Until you are willing to do that intimacy will elude you. The truth is, God has designed you and created you with purpose, gifts and talents that are unique. Perhaps life has been a bit brutal to you, perhaps those closest to you have wounded and abandon you. If you have been married, the chances are you have come out of a broken marriage or are living in one. The places we have expected to be safe and provide us the proper environment for intimacy have often produced the opposite. How many of us have strong communication and acceptance from our parents and siblings? If you do, count yourself blessed. How many of us really feel our mate really cares about us, understands us and accepts us just as we are? If you do, count yourself doubly blessed. The reality is, most of us are still searching for intimacy and it eludes us.
Brown has an idea to combat this tendancy in us to succumb to loneliness. "“I carry a small sheet of paper in my wallet that has written on it the names of people whose opinions of me matter. To be on that list, you have to love me for my strengths and struggles. You have to know that I’m trying to be Wholehearted, but I still cuss too much, flip people off under the steering wheel, and have both Lawrence Welk and Metallica on my iPod.” I love the concept. When those moments hit, pull out the list and take a look, remind yourself that there are those out there who love you for who you are. That is the first step to intimacy. That is the yearning we all have, the void in our hearts that goes unseemingly fulfilled. But in order to have that connection with them, we have to be vulnerable and let them see who we truly are and take the risk they may not accept us, might abandon us, could reject us.
“I define vulnerability as uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. With that definition in mind, let’s think about love. Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can’t ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment’s notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow — that’s vulnerability.” says Brown. And that is the reason we default to the arena, the armor and the fight. There is no way we are going to allow anyone else to hurt us like THAT again! We make these inward promises and they cripple us from ever experiencing intimacy.
We defined that trust is the key component to intimacy, and that will not always be possible. People will fail us, so we need to understand and embrace mercy. That is crucial because an environment of mercy and acceptance between two people takes vulnerability out of the arena and into the garden. Instead of a place of ruthless conflict, bloodshed and wounding we come into a place of cultivation, growth and fruit. Don't misunderstand me, there is conflict in the garden but it is of a different kind. Its caring conflict where communication is healthy, nurturing and facilitates growth. In the arena, the conflict and battle are too loud for anyone hearing the other, growth is not possible and the deafening sound of loneliness and isolation overtake you. Defenses are up, armor on and images are more important than reality. Once you experience the intimacy that comes from being vulnerable, the garden is a resting place you want to stay in. I have a good friend who is a counselor and helped hundreds of couples in marriage therapy. We have talked often about these issues. One day, after getting past a broken marriage and the shame of it, I asked him what he thought is the most important thing I should be looking for in a potential mate. He responded, 'a growth partner, Chris'. I said, 'what does that mean to you?' And he said 'someone who will grow with you throughout your life'.
His words struck me as very profound. That was the problem in my broken relationship. We had a very special relationship for several years, but as time went on our ability to connect grew less and less. Somehow, we had entered the arena with our armor on and went to battle against each other! How did this happen, I often wondered. And in one simple sentence, Doug had answered my question. We walked out of the garden and into the arena. We stopped helping each other grow.
True intimacy always produces healthy growth in those engaging in it. That is a sign you have it! The seal of genuine intimacy is always measurable by the growth it produces. When we trust, show mercy and are vulnerable we are in healthy soil. I think of trust and mercy as the rich dirt a gardner would prize, and vulnerability as the fertilizer. Vulnerability makes us fertile and grow exponentially. We cultivate intimacy when we let the truth of who we truly are, our secrets, fears, failures, flaws and hopes, to be seen, known and exposed as they are. Vulnerability is reality. It ceasing to live in a fantasy realm where we are perfect, flawless and worthy of true love and acceptance. Vulnerability means we are going to be who we are, accept who we are and not put on the mask to gain acceptance either internally or externally.
I say that because many of us find our worth in our accomplishments, careers, sucess, financial standing or religious activity. We look to others to validate our sense of worth, and that is where vulnerability becomes so risky. If we are rejected or shamed our sense of self worth will be challenged or devalued. Like a financial investment we treat our own self worth like a common stock that others can buy or sell on a whim. When the image and reputation are strong and produce the acceptance and validation we seek, the self worth goes up. But when rejection or shame happen its like a sell-off of the stock takes place and our self worth plummets. This is the vulnerability trap. We have to stop treating our self worth as a public stock and start treating it as a private investment. The first step is accepting yourself, just as you are. Until you can do that, you will remain a public stock, exposed to the whim of the opinions and perceptions of others.
One of the books that has greatly influenced my understanding of this is a book called the Money Motive by Thomas Wiseman. It's been out of print for some time, and actually there are only a few chapters I really connected with. What was profound to me was that for 10 years, Wiseman studied the wealthiest people in the history of the world, and interviewed a number of those living today. His conclusion is that whether a person was destroyed or positively impacted by his wealth was largely related to his self worth. If the self worth was low, he would seek to use the money to give self validation and external validation from others. If the self worth was high, he used the money to benefit the community and those around him. I think his premise is profound. Self worth is the largest indicator to facilitating and experiencing genuine intimacy. If our self worth is low, we will seek to raise it through image, reputation and the approval of others. And we will use money, power and sucess to do it.
If we can come to peace with ourselves and accept our self for who we are, we will be able to engage in healthy connections and flourish in the garden of intimacy. But if we are not at peace with who we are, if we struggle with self hatred or shame we must reconcile with our own hearts first. The same principles apply - we have broken trust with ourselves. We wrestle with shame because we feel we should have done better, could have done more and made bad decisions. But mercy must be applied to our own hearts before it can be applied to others. And this is found primarily in our relationship with God. When we can come to terms with the fact that our loving Creator has designed us and made us for intimate connection and has arms open wide to us, that He values us enough to send His own Son to die for us, we can find a steady place to gauge our self worth. I firmly believe that any other indicator of self worth is faulty, unpredictable and destined to fail us. Since we can rest assured that He has forgiven us, we can forgive our self. Because we know that He loves us, and His love is not based on our image, performance or any indicator that we control, the self worth can be secure.
Time and time again in the New Testament we see the reference to being 'in Christ'. When God the Father looks at you and you are truly born again and in Christ, He sees His perfect Son. Every failure, all of the sin and the shame are non-existent to His permeating gaze. What He sees is Jesus, that is being clothed in the righteousness of Christ. That is the something no other religion can offer. I remember reading a sermon that Martyn Lloyd Jones preached in which he referred to the innate drive in human nature to want to appease the gods. He said that we can go into any culture in history and find some tendancy to appease the gods. We do it because the guilt and shame are inescapable. And what he said was alarming and yet enlightening. He said that tendancy carries over in Christianity. We tend to want to appease God. We view His gazing across the earth and examing those on it as a perfectionist tyrant eager to punish and teach a lesson. We fear his wrath and anger. We live in terror of our own perceptions of who He is. So we tend to try to appease Him with good works, service religious activity. But the only thing we are appeasing is our imagination because that god does not exist.
When we read in 2 Chronicles 16:9 that His eyes range throughout the earth, its not to punish or let another outburst of rage loose on the earth. It is to 'strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him'. He is looking across the earth to help those of us who love Him! He searching for SOS signals and pain, He is wanting to love and validate, help and encourage. What an unfortunate thing we don't see this. We have to stop trying to appease God, and get a revelation of His Glory. As we established earlier, He loves us and deeply desires intimacy with us. If we are in Christ, we are accepted, loved and under the tender affection of mercy and grace. It means we can open our hearts to Him without fear, we can be vulnerable with this Mighty Being! It means we can take our self worth off the public stock market and realize that it is private stock. God wants to buy it all up and it was so worth it to Him that He came Himself in human flesh and suffered awful brutality and death to buy it. When you realize that it will change your life and open the door for genuine intimacy. Read Jesus comments in Revelations 3:20 to the Laodecian church which was clearly the most apostate and most deceived of any of the churches. He says, 'Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.' That is His heart to you! If we have repented and are in Christ, and have opened the door of our hearts to Him, we are going to have fellowship with Him. It will be a feast and satisfy the void in our hearts.
But this likely will not happen in an instant. It is a process, a growth process. God is the ultimate growth partner. He will never leave us, never forsake us. He will always accept us. Nothing can separate us from His love! As we engage with Him and accept this reality, get our self worth to the place of a private stock, we will find that the garden of intimacy is a beautiful place. We are marveling at His grace, receiving the loving affection of His touch and feeling the comfort of knowing we are worth something! The God of the Universe thinks so! The private stock is at its greatest value ever, and no longer prone to the whims of the approval or rejection of others.
The problem for many of us who have been in the faith for a while is that we stop walking with God and start walking for God. The difference is that we aren't walking with him anymore in the garden of intimacy, marveling at mercy. Instead, we tend to works and trying to please God because we have lost our bearing somewhere along the way and have misplaced self worth. The only reason to works and self-righteousness is because our self worth is not properly placed. If our self worth was properly placed, the reality is, we would be marveling at mercy and extending mercy. The fruit of our lives would be love. This is what frustrated Jesus in His day. It's astonishing to read of his words towards the Pharisees and his anger towards the monelenders. But the issue was that the entire design and idea of the temple was to give symbolism and facility for the people to have intimacy with Him. Instead the entire religious system had become one of misplaced self worth and identity. Their self worth was now in works and trying to appease God.
If we believe that God is wanting us to live in shame and guilt, and withholds his affection from us when we fail Him, we cannot possibly have a stable self worth. This sort of view damages the roots in which love grows. Paul prayed for the Ephesians that they would be rooted and established in love - love is the essence of trust and mercy, it is the fertilizer of vulnerability - these things are the garden of love. We need to get a revelation of the yearning in God's heart for us, the painful costs He has incurred to buy up the stock of our self worth. This will lead to marveling at mercy. Who are we that this amazing God loves us with such incredible depths and passion?
The apostle John made an amazing statement when he says in I John 4:18 'There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out all fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.' The reason we would ever stop walking with God and walking for God is when our self worth is low. Some of us just take that stock public, as we discussed earlier. But others of us feel we need to convince God this stock is a value He can't pass up! And that has to do with trying to appease God. In reality, we fear His rejection. If we aren't confident of His acceptance and mercy, we will easily believe, when we stumble or fall, that He gets the rod out and starts chasing us. We fear punishment because we have stopped growing in the garden of love. Remember my personal story previously about having a growth partner who grows with us through our weaknesses, challenges and failures? It is no different with God. Having intimacy with someone means you have a growth partner. And as those who are in Christ, we have the Perfect Growth Partner!!
Hebrews 4 is well known as the chapter of rest, but what is oftened overlooked is why we can enter rest from laboring and striving to please Him. "Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." Hebrews 4:14-16 We can have confidence because part of God's marvelous plan of redemption and mercy was that His Son would walk as the created ones (you and I) and feel the temptations, weakness and pain first hand. Sending His Son to die for us is a truth of enormous implications, but to think that He really was tempted in all the basic ways we were and sympathizes with us during our struggles is comforting. Love compels one to do something like that, nothing less. God's great plan of the Universe was to outwit Satan by showing off just how great His love really is through you and I. It's a testimony against Satan because the one who thought he should be equal to God can't even come close! Nothing compares to God's love! It's a testimony to us that we can put our trust in Him, and that we can see right up front, we can never equal God. The next time you are feeling pretty good about yourself, just think of the unlimited love and patience God shows across the earth in a given minute. Consider that He has done this for thousands of years! How God wants us to rightfully and wholeheartedly grasp this love of His - it is the essence of who He is. God is love.
There is a term in the Hebrew which we translate 'pure in heart' which is really a term of having nothing to hide from the Lord. Purity is often related to gold, and there is that element of purity but I don't believe we can really grasp the depths of that until we get the definition David used so often in his Psalms. The term 'jhjhjjk' in the Hebrew is about not having anything hidden. It was a turn used in the marketplace of folds in a garmet where a hole or disoloration might exist and be covered, or a water pitcher that may have a leak and been covered in paint to disguise it. When we come to God we are to be transparent and vulnerable and not try to cover over all of the ugliness. That is purity of heart - it means we aren't trying to put a mask on when we come to God. Isn't that the great plague of dating? Everyone has on their best face and trying to look their best. For once, I would have just loved a woman to tell me 'There are many things about me you may not like. I can be a bit cranky around a certain time of the month, I hate not having enough money in the bank, and I can't stand being disrespected. And you should probably make sure you see me without the make-up pretty soon and make sure you like whats under there.' I know, not very romantic from our perspective, but eventually all of these things are going to be exposed anyways - and we dread it, loathe anyone seeing us for who we really are. A confident man would be blown away with that sort of internal honesty. When we come to God, we are the same way. We come with our make-up on, talking about our ministry accomplishments and then giving Him our to-do list. No wonder we aren't experiencing intimacy with God and keep hopping from meeting to meeting to try and fill that desire.
God wants us to come to Him and just be real about all the ugly stuff in our hearts - He yearns for us to be vulnerable and feel safe and accepted by Him. I want my mate to feel safe, accepted and treasured as much as possible, and that requires a lot of intentional action on my part. God has made that intentional action for us through Jesus Christ. Will we trust Him and His goodness? Will we take off the make-up, get real with Him and be pre-occupied with what kind of God could love us just like we are? When we can be vulnerable and real with God, something amazing happens. The love of God can start flowing freely into our lives in truth and we can see Him more as He is! We talk of the glory of God falling in our meetings, but I once heard a visiting speaker say that was non-sense because the glory if God was in us and it should be rising in us. There is a lot of truth to that. The glory of God is in us by the Holy Spirit, and He will reveal to us all the lovingkindness and goodness of the Father. But we have to trust in His mercy and allow it to bring us to a place of feeling safe and accepted enough to be totally vulnerable and transparent with Him. He already knows it all - He just wants us to have truth enough in the inner parts.
Certainly, there are things we cannot see and know and for those things God brings the fire - the purifying fire. And as He does, we scream in shock and horror that such darkness resides in our hearts. But we must enter that rest - remember that the great God of the Universe has made a way to have fellowship with us. He desires our deepest fellowship and intimacy. And He is patiently working in our lives through the process of sanctification to grow us more and more like Him. The more we are like Him, the more we will see of Him. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says 'And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lords glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord...'
We have all partaken of the glory of God to be in Christ, to be born again, to be a Christian. It is the glory of God that we have this opportunity. God's glory is the revelation of who He is - that He is Love, that He is compassion, kindness and mercy. As we grasp this, beholding His glory, it has the same affect on us that it did Moses on that glorious mountain where his face radiated so much it bothered the Israelites to look at him, they asked him to put a veil over it! We should be radiant when we are beholding this glory - this amazing love. And as we do and the revelation permeates our heart and soul we are transformed to show this glory quite literally to those around us. Spending time with Him, adoring Him and communing with Him should only bring about a greater and greater revelation of just how incredibly good He is.
John continues in verse 19 'we love because He first loved us.' And that says it all. If we are ever going to love another, and have a self worth that is not up for public trading we have to know that He loves us. His love causes us to be fruitful in the garden of intimacy, with love for those around us. We show mercy, build trust and accept those around us. John continues with this thought in vs 20 '...For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.' The very fruit of us abiding in the garden of love with God, walking with Him and having genuine intimacy with Him is love for those around us. His trust, His mercy and His vulnerability with us, cause us to show the same to those around us.
I can hardly think of a more vulnerable act for the human soul than that of worship. To surrender ones image, reputation, worth and value at the feet of another in service and adoration is the ultimate act of vulnerability. And here is the amazing part, vulnerability grows! We will be vulnerable to a point, but as trust grows, we find ourselves letting down our guard more and more which is a fruit of intimacy. The more we worship Him and get a revelation of Him, the more we surrender. It's a life long process but its with the greatest growth partner in the Universe. We couldn't have a safer fulfillment to our innermost cries for intimacy and worth.
In a day and age where worship is that thing we do on sunday mornings for 20-30 minutes, I can't help but take a moment to reflect more on this. At times, it seems contradictory in our Western culture to talk about worship in a book about intimacy and relationships. But the truth is, the intimacy we are discussing will bring about and lay the groundwork for true worship. Jesus made a statement to the woman at the well in Samaria in John 4:23-24 "Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” I have read a lot of ideas about what that means, and it has usually tended to the mystical. But nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus is saying that the ones God really wants as worshippers are those who KNOW Him, those who have genuine intimacy with Him. They see His glory - His love, goodness and kindness and they marvel at mercy. Worship from mere head knowledge only goes so far. I think of the statement God made about the Israelites in Isaiah 29:13 “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught." Your ability to be a true worshipper, to really touch the heart of God will depend on your knowledge of Him! If you are living in willful sin and rebellion, or are convinced God is a tyrant or just want to 'put your time in' your worship will be limited by that! But when you are abandon to Him in the revelation of just who He IS, marveling at mercy and His infinite love you have something powerful and can offer deeply intimate worship to Him.
The English word "worship" is derived from Old English worthscipe, meaning "worthiness" or "worth-ship." So in its simplest concept, worship is to give worth to something. God doesn't need us to fill up his love tank, validate his self worth or any of these things we need because He is All Sufficient. God wants our worship because it is the most accurate indicator of the revelation of Him we have in our hearts, the knowledge we have of Him and the level of genuine intimacy we are experiencing with Him. A revelation of Him should produce worship in our hearts. The truth of who He is by His Spirit produces worship from our heart to His.
To take it a little further, I have included a quick review of the Hebrew terms related to worship at the end of this chapter. You will see they reveal both the many dimensions of worship and a wide range of responses and actions in expressing worship to God.
But there is another indicator of our knowledge of God and a test of our level of intimacy with Him. And it is those around us. In 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 we read "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation."
Our lives should be a living testimony to the Glory of God. Those around us should be marvelling at our love, compassion, kindness and mercy. Sure, we need to share this message with the world but I think the greatest challenge to evangelism has been that we have sought to preach what we don't understand. I have some friends who are talented evangelists. They share their faith and love for God everywhere they go. As I have spent time with them, I see why - because they have become the message. They see themselves as ambassadors of reconciliation. Some of us need to spend some time in the Presence of the Lord and recapture the beauty of our salvation. The very fact that God desires friendship and intimacy with us is amazing and beyond understanding. It should captivate us.
Vulnerability with God always leads to fruitful intimacy, growth and trust in who He is. But it doesn't always work that way with those around us. As we discussed the risk factor, the very real threat of broken relationships, death and divorce can leave us scarred and wounded, with the gladiator concept we discussed earlier. So we will discuss that in more detail in our next chapter.
Halal is the most common term expressing worship, used 122 times in the Old Testament. It means to be clear (in sound or in colour), to shine, to make a show, or to boast. The implication is to make loud, clear sounds of praise. The Hebrew term also carries the meaning of being clamorously foolish, to rave, or to celebrate, thus to halal God means unbridled, exuberant praise. The English word "hallelujah" comes from a combination of the Hebrew words halal and Yahweh (or Yah).
Yadah is another common Hebrew term for worship (used 101 times) a well as a related word Todah (used 30 times). Both of these terms come from the root yad meaning "hand," and are an expression of worship that involves the use of hands: to hold out one’s hands, or to give thanks or revere with extended hands in thanksgiving, praise and adoration. It may also mean to use hands in confession or absolute surrender.
Barak (used 80 times), comes from the root berech meaning "knee." Its use as an act of worship involves kneeling down before God. It can also mean to congratulate, salute, praise or thank. It implies giving reverence to God as an act of adoration.
Shachah (used 66 times), means to bow, stoop down, or prostrate oneself as an act of submission or reverence; to make obeisance or to fall or bow down in reverence before God.
Tehillah as a noun (related to the verb halal) is used 55 times. It means the offering of praise and celebration, specifically with hymns or songs of praise. It may also sometimes mean singing spontaneous new songs to God by adding words to a melody from the heart.
Zamar, occurring 45 times, has the root Hebrew meaning of touching the strings or parts of musical instruments. Its use as an expression of worship was in the playing of instruments accompanied by voices, to celebrate or give praise with instruments and voices.
Shabach (used six times), means literally to address in a loud tone, implying laud, praise or proclamation with a loud voice or a shout.
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