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This is a very subtle area that can become very confused if I don't keep my focus on the bigger picture. Many would argue that the benefits of listening to wonderful worship music would outweigh any uncertainty about the ethics of how it was acquired. With nearly everyone seemingly approving of such activity it is very easy to rationalize.
But that is for me the very essence of the danger. I grew up fine-tuning the art of rationalization, and though it exercised my ability to think, it also ingrained the habit of self-deception on the way to achieving what I craved. The Spirit impressed me that my credibility will be called into question on this issue sooner or later.
I analyzed my natural response to this conviction and saw the familiar outline of a false god inside of me. It is too easy to protect these gods because they are often there to make me happy. That does not mean they are interested in my long-term satisfaction, just immediate pleasure. That is their trademark signature. In this case, my immense enjoyment of this particular music, no matter how “spiritual” it is, can become a deceptive decoy promising to be a source of life when in fact it can turn out to be a deadly liability when I am exposed to the pure presence of God's passion. Ironically the very music that I want to listen to that may help me better enter into His presence could become my worst liability. Not because the music is wrong, but because of the hidden virus of motive I cherished to excuse the means of acquiring it.
Yesterday I commented to a friend how I felt while sharing with someone recently about my favorite subject, the real truth about God in my growing understanding of the truth about hell. I notice that when I share this liberating truth with someone who is interested that I start to feel more alive and fulfilled. I am starting to see that it gives me a reason – more than that, a passion – to live and love and connect with other hearts. I get excited when I see the light seeping into dark minds that have been deceived all their life as I have been on this subject. It is liberating because it unties and exposes so many other lies about God and presents Him in a context of perfect consistency with the love and compassion that we claim are the center of His nature.
I sense that God is preparing thousands of hearts and minds with this truth to all merge into a surprise offensive on the enemy's massive cathedral of lies assembled over centuries of deception. It will expose a level of glory for God unseen before since possibly the beginning of the world. The question He has for me is, am I willing to release and let go of any false sources of life to trust Him alone to satisfy me, or am I going to rationalize and protect any source of pleasure that I have allowed to be more important to me than my trust in God's love and plans for me.
This is what I am seeing going on in my heart right now, not just my mind. As I read the two devotional books this morning both of them had important things relevant to what God is saying to me. I could hear His voice reinforcing the words and making application to me personally. The first book, Sons and Daughters of God, had a series of very helpful insights.
“Christ's office work is to introduce us to God as His sons and daughters.
“There is an inexhaustible fund of perfect obedience accruing from His obedience. In heaven His merits, His self-denial and self-sacrifice, are treasured as incense to be offered up with the prayers of His people. As the sinner's sincere, humble prayers ascend to the throne of God, Christ mingles with them the merits of His own life of perfect obedience. Our prayers are made fragrant by this incense. Christ has pledged Himself to intercede in our behalf, and the Father always hears the Son.
“He...will look with pity and compassion upon every soul who realizes that he can not save himself.
“His hand holds you much firmer than you can hold His hand.” (p.22)
Then I meditated on the reading in My Utmost for His Highest and was reminded of the call God had hinted at earlier this morning.
“The call is the expression of the nature from which it comes, and we can only record the call if the same nature is in us. The call of God is the expression of God's nature, not of our nature. There are strands of the call of God providentially at work for us which we recognize and no one else does. It is the threading of God's voice to us in some particular matter, and it is no use consulting anyone else about it. We have to keep that profound relationship between our souls and God.
“...As long as I consider my personal temperament and think about what I am fitted for, I shall never hear the call of God.... The majority of us have no ear for anything but ourselves, we cannot hear a thing God says. To be brought into the zone of the call of God is to be profoundly altered.”
I faintly sense that there is tremendous excitement and intensity in the heavenly world that I am not well atuned to yet. But God is inviting me into a deeper experience and possible soon a more active involvement if I am willing to cooperate with His preparation of my heart. The most encouraging words to me were the assurance that His hand holds me much firmer than I can hold His hand. That's wonderful good news.
“God, hang on to me.”
