Easter Devotional - Day 50
"Yahweh All Powerful told me to say: 'People of Judah, I, Yahweh, demand that whenever you go without food as a way of worshipping me, it should become a time of celebration. No matter if it's the fourth month, the fifth month, the seventh month, or the tenth month, you should have a joyful festival. So love truth and live at peace.'" Zechariah 8:18-19
So much for a somber, depressed service as pleasing to God! Worship is to be a celebration of joy an interaction. This joy is not simply an option in Zechariah's witness, but a direct command of Yahweh that our worship spill over from an attitude of rejoicing in God's love.
Fasting was traditionally associated with mourning in sackcloth and ashes. It was often understood as a special level of piety that would gain God's attention for one's dedication and self-defacing sacrifice. God would have to be impressed with someone going without food! If Yahweh were impressed, God would be more likely to grant one's petition. Certainly, God would be much more interested in looking in on a people mourning, wailing, and doing without, than with a people at a party, living it up with a good time. Zechariah had a different take on God's interests.
Yahweh wanted a people who could enjoy being together, celebrating, and inviting God into the midst of their celebration. God had created life to be enjoyed, celebrated, and rejoiced over. Certainly, God had demands to place upon life with boundaries for human action and interaction. These limits were not designed, however, to inhibit joy and celebration, but rather to direct life into a more fruitful and worthwhile experience. To worship Yahweh should be integral to one's joy over living. A fast might focus one's attention, but it should be focused in celebration, not despair.
To enjoy God is the intent of Zechariah's take on worship. Even in fasting and petition, we are to come into God's presence with joy and the recognition of God's care and blessings for us. The puritanical take on a mournful piety is not Yahweh's understanding of proper worship, at all. God is not so much to be feared, but to be reverenced with joyous celebration.
Sure, the Christian life is a life of dedication, commitment, and call to a higher plane of ethical morality. It is, however, a life of joyous experience of God's presence and being God's presence before others with the full joy of the Creator's love and blessing upon a people called to the purpose of reflecting the Creator who rejoices over the whole of creation.
Worship is a reflection of wonder and the enjoyment of God's care and presence. It is time to put away the sackcloth, ashes, and long faces as we gather to celebrate the goodness of God—God's great love for us and God's loving provision for a life of beauty and blessing for others.
We have plenty to celebrate. It is time to take up Jesus' call to celebrate, even in times of fasting, as Zechariah would remind us. There is reason to sing, dance, and rejoice in the love of God poured out for us in Jesus Christ and evidenced in our lives by the coming of God's very breath, the Spirit of the Holy One which is for us.
Determine to transform your worship in celebration of God's goodness amid sincere discipleship.
"Lord, teach me to celebrate you and honor your presence and action in my living."
—©Copyright 2009, Christopher B. Harbin
http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/
My latest books can be found here on amazon
So much for a somber, depressed service as pleasing to God! Worship is to be a celebration of joy an interaction. This joy is not simply an option in Zechariah's witness, but a direct command of Yahweh that our worship spill over from an attitude of rejoicing in God's love.
Fasting was traditionally associated with mourning in sackcloth and ashes. It was often understood as a special level of piety that would gain God's attention for one's dedication and self-defacing sacrifice. God would have to be impressed with someone going without food! If Yahweh were impressed, God would be more likely to grant one's petition. Certainly, God would be much more interested in looking in on a people mourning, wailing, and doing without, than with a people at a party, living it up with a good time. Zechariah had a different take on God's interests.
Yahweh wanted a people who could enjoy being together, celebrating, and inviting God into the midst of their celebration. God had created life to be enjoyed, celebrated, and rejoiced over. Certainly, God had demands to place upon life with boundaries for human action and interaction. These limits were not designed, however, to inhibit joy and celebration, but rather to direct life into a more fruitful and worthwhile experience. To worship Yahweh should be integral to one's joy over living. A fast might focus one's attention, but it should be focused in celebration, not despair.
To enjoy God is the intent of Zechariah's take on worship. Even in fasting and petition, we are to come into God's presence with joy and the recognition of God's care and blessings for us. The puritanical take on a mournful piety is not Yahweh's understanding of proper worship, at all. God is not so much to be feared, but to be reverenced with joyous celebration.
Sure, the Christian life is a life of dedication, commitment, and call to a higher plane of ethical morality. It is, however, a life of joyous experience of God's presence and being God's presence before others with the full joy of the Creator's love and blessing upon a people called to the purpose of reflecting the Creator who rejoices over the whole of creation.
Worship is a reflection of wonder and the enjoyment of God's care and presence. It is time to put away the sackcloth, ashes, and long faces as we gather to celebrate the goodness of God—God's great love for us and God's loving provision for a life of beauty and blessing for others.
We have plenty to celebrate. It is time to take up Jesus' call to celebrate, even in times of fasting, as Zechariah would remind us. There is reason to sing, dance, and rejoice in the love of God poured out for us in Jesus Christ and evidenced in our lives by the coming of God's very breath, the Spirit of the Holy One which is for us.
Determine to transform your worship in celebration of God's goodness amid sincere discipleship.
"Lord, teach me to celebrate you and honor your presence and action in my living."
—©Copyright 2009, Christopher B. Harbin
http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/
My latest books can be found here on amazon
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