Tired.

Physically, I am exhausted today. Mentally also but mostly physically. It doesn't really make sense though. I went to bed at about 1am, and although I did wake up again at 6:30, I refused to open my eyes and forced myself to sleep more. I did this 3 more times until finally opening my eyes. Success! It was 8:30! Yet, I'm still dead tired. I can't quite explain it.

Last night at small group we focused on what I believe were two major points. The first was whether or not "feeling" was a positive or negative thing in worship. I think we agreed that "feeling" is not necessarily good in the singing/music aspect of worship but overall we should "feel" when we are worshipping God. That is, in prayer, meditation, study -- in every day life. We talked about how musical worship is often engineered to induce emotional feelings from us. Such as playing the piano in the background of a prayer, or during an altar call. Or how in those crazy evangelical praise nights, even after the song is finished they keep drumming and playing and everyone has got their arms lifted high and the leader keeps chanting "Hallelujah! Praise God, Hallelujah". If you've ever heard a live recording of Hillsongs you'll know what I'm talking about.

The second topic was two different mindsets while worshipping God. On one hand we often worship God because of what He did for us. His sacrifice, His Grace, His abounding love. We pray by thanking Him for dying on the cross and relieving us of our sins, allowing us to become one with the Father, etc. The second mindset is worshipping God for who He is. The all-powerful, all-knowing being. Our creator, our Abba Father. I think because of our human nature of thinking in the give and take mindset, we often forget to praise God in the latter mindset. We've learned to do things and get things in return and in the same way we think God works the same way, so we thank Him for His grace and then we ask for things. We bow before God, not because He is all powerful, but because He made that all-important sacrifice for us.

God IS all powerful though, He's a unstoppable force and sometimes it's good to kneel before Him just because of that. Think of in the movies, when they show a servant serving a king. That king has done nothing for this poor servant, except probably embarass and abuse him for his entire reign. Yet, he kneels before the king, constantly cowering before him. He's a lowly man-servant, unworthy of facing his king. He won't even dare to steal a glance at Him in fear that he will be punished.

Well, the difference is if the servant makes eye contact with the king, he'll probably lose his head. Whereas if we look into God's eyes, well who knows, but the Bible tells us that we cannot possibly do it, that we would not be able to handle or bare the sight of God because He is so wonderful!

I think that there needs to be a balance between the two 'styles' of worship, but that the 'cowering in fear' has got to be emphasized more because people have forgotten just who God really is. He's not just some being out there who made the universe for fun. He is not "Q", but our sovereign Lord.