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How do I relate to God?

August 16, 2017·Ben McEntee

Kids Week happened a few weeks ago, but in our house my three little girls are still singing a praise song they learned that week! The words are (and they’re now stuck in my head forever): “My God is so great, so strong and so mighty, there’s nothing my God cannot do!”

What simple, and yet powerful, lyrics! Its description of our God is beautifully simple and incredibly profound. When I hear my girls sing it, I am so happy and content to know they are singing about our God in a way that they can understand.

I was reminded of this song as I read Psalm 99 this week. This ancient hymn speaks of God’s might, power and holiness, with lines like, “Great is the Lord in Zion” and “the King is mighty, He loves justice.” As I read, I get a picture of our immense, powerful and holy God. But with all the greatness, strength and might of God, there comes inside of me a sense of fear filled with awe at His greatness and vastness! The writer intimates this with the opening lines: “The Lord reigns, let the nations tremble… let the earth shake.” At that, I become alarmed at God’s power and might in light of my own limitations – my own smallness, in comparison to His immensity. And that simple, cute children’s song that I heard being sung, with wonderful hand motions that my girls gleefully produced, becomes a distant memory to the hugeness and the majesty of GOD Almighty.

Psalm 99 begs the questions: How do I relate to God? Do I simply shake with fear and trembling in response to His greatness and power? Do I stay far from Him because He is holy and I know that in my own strength I am not? These are wonderful questions that Psalm 99 beckons us to ask; it also provides the answer, and it has little to do with us and so much more to do with God Himself.

We get a glimpse of who God is, His character, and how he responds to His creation (even when they fall short): “Lord our God, You answered them; You were to Israel a forgiving God”. I understand that God is big and strong and mighty, and He also is a God who gently answers His people. He forgives them. We see that God allows His people to talk to Him, because we read that they “called on the Lord.” God makes room for His creation to meet Him and comprehend Him and to praise Him in a way that only a great, strong, and mighty God can.

That realization takes away the trembling – but it doesn’t take away the awe! And the awe that I feel brings me to a place where I can say “less of me and more of Him!,” as I humbly worship and praise our great God! I encourage you to join me in prayer this week, as we seek to know God more and to see His greatness and power and might being demonstrated in our lives in and through the Holy Spirit – and in doing so, God Himself will be glorified in this place!

The Church on the Way