Sunday Matters #7
For a quick refresher on WHY and HOW we’re using this resource as a team for this season, click on this previous blog post: “New Resource for 2024”.This week, i’ll just point out one quote from the chapter that stood out to me personally this week:
When you see God accurately, you are overwhlemed with beauty, and when you are overwhelmed with his beauty, you have an entirely different attitude toward and response to the hardships of life between the “already” and the “not yet”. So, again and again, we run to the “temple” not just because it is our duty to do so, but because we know we need to see God for who he truly is and, in seeing him, be able to see ourselves with humility and clarity. (pg. 41-42)
Tripp points out that when our gaze is pointed in the wrong direction, it has a catastrophic effect on the way our hearts are formed as worshipers. When our gaze is on “self”, we worship our own accomplishments or, on the other hand, we can become despondent with our failures. When our gaze is formed inaccurately by our experience, we let our hearts feast on the worship of the wrong god or, conversely, we become malnourished believers seeking to fill our hearts hunger pains with “fast food” beauty and glory. When we see it this way, we begin to feel a greater need to assemble with our brothers and sisters and receive from the same God, in the same room, on the same day, in the same way, with the same songs, and the same Word preached over our dry hearts. A key aspect of the gathering is to be a primary way our hearts are discipled or formed each week. We need it! We actually crave it, whether we realize it or not.
So once again, let’s humbly submit to the sweet discipline of the Spirit of God our Father. Let’s open our hearts with a posture of forgiveness to reconcile as fellow broken brothers and sisters because Christ has reconciled with us. Let’s not let the pain of this life linger in our hearts to overwhelm us, but be overwhelmed by a greater view of our King. Yes, let’s open our hearts together as the gathered body of Christ this Sunday and call on the same God to help us to truly SEE ourselves and his beauty!
Our Green Room Prayer for Sunday:
We want to cry out to your Spirit now to help us see you more clearly that we might submit ourselves more freely to all that your Word reveals to us today. Help us to love you and one another as you have loved us. Amen.
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. (2 Peter 1:3–4)
