Freedom Within

DAILY BYTE

Worship is the means through which God keeps us free. But if that is true, then what exactly do we need freedom from? Well firstly, and this may sound kind of weird, but we need to worship to keep us free from ourselves. You see worship is that which reminds us that we are not at the centre of all life, in fact we are not even at the centre of our own lives, and that to be free from the tyranny of self-obsession we NEED to worship God.

This is what happened in the story of David and Michal (see focus reading). Many of us may read that story and think ‘oh no, do I have to dance before God for my worship to be found acceptable?’ But the main issue of this story is not the dance, it is self. David put aside himself to worship and was released in a wonderful way whereas Michal could only think of herself, and what others were thinking of her, and so she was not only unable to engage in worship for herself, but resented and despised David for it.

It wasn’t about David’s dance – it was about his heart! We can make worship just as much about ourselves if we dance for the attention of others, as we can by refusing to dance in the first place. The warning in this story is not to make worship about ourselves. As Michelangelo is recorded to have said: ‘When I am yours, O God, then at last I am truly myself.’

The point is that we worship to remind ourselves that we are NOT at the centre of it all, and if we insist on living as if it is then we will forever live in a space between emptiness and barrenness. We will never be filled.

We worship in order that we might take ourselves off the throne of our lives and place God on that throne.

Read the following Eugene Peterson quote carefully. It is wordy but well worth absorbing:

‘We worship so that we live in response to and from this centre, the living God. Failure to worship consigns us to a life of spasms and jerks, at the mercy of every advertisement, every seduction, every siren. Without worship we live manipulated and manipulating lives. We move in either frightened panic or deluded lethargy as we are, in turn, alarmed by spectres and soothed by placebos. If there is no centre, there is no circumference. People who do not worship are swept into a vast restlessness, epidemic in the world with no steady direction and no sustaining purpose.’

PRAY AS YOU GO

As we worship you this week, O God, we pray that you would give us an ever deepening awareness of what it means to be ‘kept free’ from ourselves. Help us to live our lives in such a way that we are not the centre of our lives, but you are. Help us to truly be yours Almighty God, in every way, so that we might free to be ourselves. Amen.

FOCUS READING

2 Samuel 6:16-22

As the ark of the LORD was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD, she despised him in her heart.

They brought the ark of the LORD and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it, and David sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings before the LORD. After he had finished sacrificing the burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the LORD Almighty. Then he gave a loaf of bread, a cake of dates and a cake of raisins to each person in the whole crowd of Israelites, both men and women. And all the people went to their homes.

When David returned home to bless his household, Michal came out to meet him and said, "How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, disrobing in the sight of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!"

David said to Michal, "It was before the LORD, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the LORD's people Israel — I will celebrate before the LORD. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honour."