The beginning of Worship

This is not a program or proposal for anyone else, it is the insight of one discouraged disciple who has found a bit of encouragement. 

Near the beginning of our weekly worship service we are reminded of the two greatest commandments, to love God with my whole being and to love my neighbor as myself.  Each week I am reminded that I have failed to do either perfectly.  In fact if I am honest I don’t even come close to loving God or my fellow man as I ought. 

I struggle to love those who are closest to me.  I wonder how much of what passes for love in my life is nothing more than an attempt to manipulate those near me to give me what I want.  Are my acts of service to my wife, or children, really acts of love or are they a preemptive quid pro quo?  Do I help around the house because I love and want to serve my wife?  Or do I do it because I expect and want something in return?  We will not even discuss how I treat those I barely know or may not like.  As for loving God with my whole being, do I really?  The inclinations of my heart say emphatically “No”!  I fear that I may be trying to get from God what I want by parroting the motions of loyalty and service.

My guess is that I am a mixed bag of motivations.  Not wholly and completely manipulative and conniving nor completely pure and holy in motivation.  Perhaps I am a little like Job. 

Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him:

but I will maintain mine own ways before him.  Job 13:15KJV

Sometimes we remember and quote the first part of the verse, but don’t recall the second part.  We are a mixture of trust and willfulness, of loyalty and rebellion, of submission and defiance. 

Worship reminds me of my duplicitous heart.  It tells me that no matter how well I fake it with everyone else God knows what my heart is like.  And maybe, just maybe, I will recognize it too.  So each Sunday I ask God to forgive me and to help me in the week to come to grow in my love for Him and my fellow man.  It is I suppose a sort of repentance and reaffirmation of my faith in Him and my lack of trust in me.  I have no ideal what others in the worship service are doing in that moment.  I only know that each week I fail, each week I am sorry, and want to change, and each week I ask for God to help me.  

I regret that in our weekly worship we do not spend more time in meditation in this moment.  I regret that often I can go through the entire gathering of worship and never faithfully and honestly confront the darkness within my own soul.  “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?”  

But on those occasions in which I see this darkness then light of His grace shines more beautifully.