Honouring and Celebrating God
God has spoken to me recently about honouring Him. Or rather the lack of honour I had for him. God has been so gracious to me throughout my life, saving my life miraculously twice with no medical explanation for why I am now alive.
However, the reality of what God has done for me had not pierced my heart. In fact, I was completely broken by the fact that actually, I had no trust in God at all. God had more than proved His awesome power over this life to me by these events and yet I was so scared to trust Him, believing Him to be at best uninterested in looking after me and at worst, incapable of doing so. In essence, my God was too small! Massively too small!
I was of course, heartbroken to discover this, heartbroken that I had so insulted and dishonoured God with my lack of faith in Him in spite of his obvious demonstrations of His saving power in my life. However, praise God! He is always merciful and had gently revealed this to my heart. He had brought this revelation in such a gentle way, the Holy Spirit simply touching my heart and speaking quietly to me and saying “well, if God saved your life twice in this amazing way, surely you can trust Him? Surely these acts show that He cares about you massively, is deeply interested in you and is more than capable of looking after you?” And as the truth of this statement permeated my heart and spread out throughout my being, I began to weep. Because I realised that I had NEVER honoured God for what He had done. Of course I had told people and given testimony but to actually turn to God with thanksgiving and praise was something I had never done. And I had not celebrated God with joy shining out of my face as I related what He had done. I had been almost apologetic as I told people, waiting for disbelief and mockery. How wrongly had I behaved?!
As I repented to my Daddy for not giving Him His due, a weight lifted from me and a change happened in my heart. I felt it happen, the fear of other people’s opinions went, the fear of claiming a miracle and having people disbelieve me went, and a joy in the Lord came in. And the results of this are showing in my life, I am able to come to God and praise Him and thank Him easily, with no uncomfortable feelings, but with sincerity and honesty, knowing that He is more than worthy of my praise and wanting to let Him know how thankful I am. And I am able to share a powerful testimony of JOY! When I talk to people about what God has done for me, the joy of my salvation shines out of my face and when I talk to people that don’t know God, they can see that I have something that they don’t. And they want it! Because I have been set free from the prison of fear and lack of trust in God and have been released into the Joy of the Lord. So now, I have a basis of trust in God. I have a great place to start from and every time the enemy comes with a lie or something to try to make me worry about my future, I can turn and remind the devil of all that God has done for me and he has nothing to say because God cares about my watchfully and attentively as He has already proved.
Psalm 18 v 28 – 29:
“Lord, you have brought light to my life; my God, you light up my darkness. In your strength I can crush an army; with my God I can scale any wall.”