28 Then Jesus said, "Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light." Matthew11:28-29
Eugene Peterson writes an insightful passage about being eccentric in a Biblical sense of the word. The Greek prefix "Ecc" means "out of" or "out from." Therefore to be "eccentric" is to be "out of the centre."
His argument is that the further away we move from having God at the centre of our lives, the more unbalanced and unstable our lives become. Imagine a the bumpy ride we have when the axle is not in the centre of the wheel. The more we allow other things to take centre place in our lives, the less peace we will have.
Lives that stay stable and fulfilling in the long run are lives that have God at the centre. This is what true worship is all about:
1. To realise that there is no God but Him
2. To realise that life makes no sense if He is not on the throne.
3. To find our rest in Him
Fortunately for us, Jesus reveals the Father to us in a clear way - we don't have to wonder what God is like. There is no lurking fear that God may be a self-serving tyrant who has been ultimately corrupted by ultimate power. God is perfectly revealed in Jesus and we know that God is love and that God is ultimately good.
And worthy of our worship...
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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/
