Come Before Him

Psalm 95:6 says, “Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!”

This chapter of Psalms is a joy bomb with a sobering message. It begins with an invitation to worship but moves in the second half to a warning. The writer reflects on the times of Moses and how the people of God hardened their hearts to the word of the Lord. We come to Psalm 95:7-8, quoted in Hebrews, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”

I find it interesting how these two themes are presented together. On the one hand, we get to celebrate the Lord and are called into worship. On the other, we remember a time when God’s people missed the mark and, in ways, lost the opportunity to worship.

It tells me something about what it means to follow God and live in worship.

The invitation to praise God goes out to us, but we do not have to receive it. We can ignore it, overlook it, or even disdain it. Maybe we have grown too comfortable with the availability of church in our lives. We can all pull up YouTube and listen to worship music all day. We can open a podcast app and listen to sermons endlessly. Church is all around us.

So what does it mean when we come to worship and hesitate to respond? What happens if we hear the word of the Lord and we close off our hearts? There is a great danger in growing apathetic or resistant to God’s presence in our lives. It is easy to take for granted what is so abundantly available. If we don’t feel like worshipping or engaging today, we can tell ourselves we will be into it next time. Or worse, we can begin believing that we only need to engage in church when it is entertaining.

Can you see how quickly we can move from passion to come worship God to apathetic consumerism?

I encourage you to read through all of Psalm 95, which is only eleven verses, and see what God would speak to you. My challenge is this. Let us get so far beyond the possibility of a hard heart. Before we have a chance to decide if we want to worship, let us build a pattern of prayer, worship, and surrendered obedience throughout our lives.

It can begin here in a moment of prayer. A decision could be made today to make God the center of your life in an entirely new way.

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