Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
    you are the one Israel praises.

• Psalm 22:3

But their idols are silver and gold,
    made by human hands.
They have mouths, but cannot speak,
    eyes, but cannot see.
They have ears, but cannot hear,
    noses, but cannot smell.
They have hands, but cannot feel,
    feet, but cannot walk,
    nor can they utter a sound with their throats.
Those who make them will be like them,
    and so will all who trust in them.

• Psalm 115:4-8

“You know how it is when you fall in love. That special person occupies your every thought, and it’s hard to focus on other things. … The world is wonderful. And all is good.
“It’s a glorious way to feel.
“This is also the way God wants us to feel about Him.
“All the time.
“When you are in love you wish you could feel that way forever. But if you did, then your heart would hurt every day and you would never get anything done. So as the extreme intensity of your love fades—-which it must do or we would never live through it—the depth of it must grow. It must be watered and fed and nurtured and become like a beautiful oak tree that cannot be shaken because the roots have gone down so deep.
“That’s what God wants to happen in your relationship with Him.
“I’m not saying that your first love for God needs to fade. I’m saying that it needs to grow. After that beginning rush—that initial spiritual high—your relationship with God needs to be nurtured and deepened.
“But how does all this happen?”

• Stormie Omartian, The Prayer that Changes Everything

In his book, To Live is Christ, To Die is Gain, Rev. Matt Chandler studies the book of Philippians, but he starts by saying that his children are young.  As a parent, you look at them, and for a moment, you want nothing to change.  But you know change must occur for them to fulfill their own destiny.  He relates that thought to our growth in faith.

Stormie Omartian comes at it from a different angle, maybe equally relatable.  If we truly love God, we should desire a deeper faith.  After all, we will be spending eternity with Him.  Why play catch-up once you get there?  And she uses the Psalm 115 quote above to illustrate that “we become like who or what we worship.”

Her book then is a beautiful book on the attributes of God, but from the perspective that if we praised God for all that He is and we praise God for all that He does, not just for us but in the universe, our love for God will become deeper.  The change will be transformative.  And it will change our prayer life forever.  The prayer that changes everything is to praise God, and in the process, we become more like who we worship.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.