Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
.........Jesus once said, "You honor me with your lips, but your heart is far from Me". Praising God with our lips is an integral part of our journey, mine anyway, but the "end-all & be-all" I agree is too simplistic, and in retrospect seems too close to Lee's way of zeroing in on one aspect of reality in an unbalanced way.
But I still do like to praise the Lord!  |
I too Love Praising the LORD. AND we MUST Praise the LORD!! The scriptures instruct every living thing that has BREATH to Praise the LORD!!! I think it's obvious by my posts I do just that!
My recollection of 'praising the Lord' in the LC was soooooo outward...almost, ALMOST superficial. It was expected we 'Praise the Lord'. So like a bunch of mechanical robots, we did. But that's ok. At least we were doing SOMETHING!!! A lot of people don't even open their mouths except to eat & drink and talk about everything under the sun but the things of the Lord.
If anything, we learned to to tap into the rivers of Living Water by Giving Praise to our LORD & KING. At least I did.
I recall making a conscientious effort to pay ATTENTION to the Words that came out of me while at the prayer meetings or when we 'called on the Lord' while going into the meeting halls or greeting the saints by saying 'Praise the LORD saints!'. I realized we/I could easily get trapped into speaking 'vain repititions'.
To prevent that I knew I HAD to go deeper...for deep calleth unto Deep.
So I 'exercised' and 'exercised'. Then I got burned out. I got burned out because I had hidden sin...unrepentant sin. Inward sin I wouldn't let go of. God knew I wasn't letting go & couldn't bless me with His PRESENCE even though He did bless me by providing for me and not forsaking or leaving me.
But about 4 yrs ago, I did some heavy duty soul searching. I did the right thing. I confessed my hidden sin & with buckets of tears, I asked the Lord to forgive me. I learned the power of Repentance. I learned the power of Brokenness, I experienced the Power of the Cleansing Blood of the Lamb...and when I gave my life back to the LORD, I learned the power of
Galations 2:20 !! I now LOVE that scripture...'cause I know what it is to die to self..and it is LIBERATING!!!
Today when the forum or my friends or in my private time with the Lord, I declare the PRAISES of My KING,
everyone knows I declare His GLORY with JOY UNSPEAKABLE !!!!!!!
I'm not being pretentious. I'm not putting on a front. But you better believe I know what it is to
WALLOW, not merely walk in the valley of the shadow of death. I KNOW what it is to be in the belly of Jonah's whale. So when I speak of our GREAT REDEEMER and DELIVERER, I know that JESUS is MIGHTY TO SAVE...'cause He saved me...not just from going to hell..but from my dead end life!!!!!
I genuinely AM living in the Presence of the KING 24/7!!! And I don't want to be anywhere else. Never again do I ever want to leave the Presence of MY Lord, Our LORD and KING--Jesus, the Anointed One..and His Holy Spirit. And now God can and IS using me!!
THANK YOU Sweet LORD JESUS!! BLESS THE SAINTS on this Forum WITH YOUR PRESENCE!!!! With Your LOVE!! With Your GLORY!!! With Your POWER!!! You are WORTHY-LAMB of GOD!! You ALONE are WORTHY!
HALELLUIA King JEEEESUS!!!!!