Worship The One True God

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