The God who made the world and
everything
in it is the Lord of heaven and earth
and does
not live in temples built by hands. And
he is not
served by human hands, as if he needed
anything, because he himself gives all
men
life and breath and everything else.
From one
man he made every nation of men, that
they
should inhabit the whole earth; and he
determined the times set for them and
the
exact places where they should live.
God
did this so that men would seek him and
perhaps reach out for him and find him,
though he is not far from each one of
us.
For in him we live and move and have
our being…
Paul speaking from Mars Hill in Athens
Acts
17:24-28 (NIV)
On our recent trip to the Greek Isles, we
stood in the center of the excavated city of Corinth. When you stand in the
Agora (marketplace) and look in one direction, you can see the remains of the
temple to the pagan god Apollo. If you look in the opposite direction you can
view a beautiful mountain; the high place where the citizens of Corinth went to
worship their gods.
As I stood looking at the ruins of that
city, I thought about the Apostle Paul as he stood miles away on Mars Hill in
Athens and proclaimed the attributes of the One True God as recorded in Acts
17.
My heart broke as I thought about those
residents of Corinth who missed the opportunity to know that One True God as
the Apostle Paul walked those streets. Then I remembered the words of Isaiah 66:1 "This is what the
LORD says: 'Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.'"
No matter how high the temples to their
pagan gods, their places of worship were still the footstool of the One True
Living God Jehovah.
Like the ancient city of Corinth, we make
gods of many things in our American culture: beauty, intelligence, wealth,
power, Hollywood. Many of our churches are either almost empty or already
dead with little or no worship occurring in them. My heart breaks for my homeland as the evidence of our national apathy towards the things of God mounts.
I pray that God will awaken
the sleeping giant; His Church. We hear rumblings of His voice. We see glimpses of His
Glory. We know that we, His people, are praying. Oh, that God will bind
our hearts together in unity and prayer to the Owner of the Footstool as He
shakes the foundations of our world and says, “Arise, Church of God arise!”
Don’t forget to look up, and worship Him
in holiness today!
©JP 2013
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