I was reading the first few chapters of Haggai this morning, along with Isaiah 48, and it struck me that God has two fundamental priorities that are at work with equal ferocity and consistency. Awareness of these two priorities gives wise counsel to us in our daily journey of knowing, understanding, and enjoying God.
Fundamental Priority Number One: “Return to Me!”
So many people struggle with the wrath of God being poured out, particularly in the Old Testament but also referred to in the New. The notion of an angry God who is so insecure that He insists on our worship and will kill us if it is withheld is truly disturbing. While I see the mental trail that people follow to end up in this perspective, it is quite far from the actual heart of God.
Return to me! I love you with an everlasting love. You were made for relationship with your Creator. You were made to know profound peace, joy, and love - to live powerful lives. This passionate and ordained objective for you is sabotaged by your refusal to bow to God or to walk in His ways. This amazing life, that we all yearn to experience, can only be found in a posture aligned submissively to our great God. Life simply does not function correctly any other way.
God’s heart breaks over our rebellion and He quite willingly joins us in our self-created suffering with the consistent cry, “Return to Me!”
Fundamental Priority Number Two: “I cannot allow my name to be defamed.”
My mind went to Hillary Clinton and her horrific journey through Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearings. Being married to the man who is being questioned about cigars as sexual instruments inside the Oval Office, detailed sexual activities in the White House with an intern, and his humiliating parsing of “what the meaning of the word “is” is on national television must have been unbearable to her. It defamed her name.
I recognize that God is intimately familiar with those same feelings as we, the ones who bear His name, also demonstrate such intolerable humiliations of ourselves, defaming the One who has married us as His Church and adopted us as His children.
These two fundamental and unbreakable priorities of God are lived out in tension with one another and we often find that we have placed ourselves squarely in the center of that tension. But as we align our own hearts with both essential priorities, we can find a life that is beautiful, unstoppable, and full of glory!
Isaiah 48:17-19:
“This is what the Lord says— your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go. If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your well-being like the waves of the sea. Your descendants would have been like the sand, your children like its numberless grains; their name would never be blotted out nor destroyed from before me.””