Six Steps to a God-Centred Life
Introduction
William Temple, like his father before him, was Archbishop of Canterbury (1942–1944). Among his many remarkable achievements, he wrote a superb commentary on the Gospel of John. He wrote the entire commentary, entitled Readings in St John’s Gospel, while praying on his knees before God.
About worship, he wrote: ‘Worship is a submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by his holiness; the nourishment of mind with his truth; the purifying of imagination by his beauty; the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of will to his purpose – and all this gathered up in adoration.’
Worship saves us from being self-centred and makes us God-centred. You were created to live in a relationship with God. That should be your number one priority. If you put God first in your life all kinds of blessings follow. Because God loves you he warns you of the dangers of disregarding the design for your life.
But what does it mean to lead a God-centred life and what steps do you need to take in order to get there?
Psalm 47:1–9
For the director of music. Of the Sons of Korah. A psalm.
1 Clap your hands, all you nations;
shout to God with cries of joy.
2 For the LORD Most High is awesome,
the great King over all the earth.
3 He subdued nations under us,
peoples under our feet.
4 He chose our inheritance for us,
the pride of Jacob, whom he loved.
5 God has ascended amid shouts of joy,
the LORD amid the sounding of trumpets.
6 Sing praises to God, sing praises;
sing praises to our King, sing praises.
7 For God is the King of all the earth;
sing to him a psalm of praise.
8 God reigns over the nations;
God is seated on his holy throne.
9 The nobles of the nations assemble
as the people of the God of Abraham,
for the kings of the earth belong to God;
he is greatly exalted.
Commentary
1. Worship God
You are invited to worship God.
Worship in this psalm sounds quite emotional and noisy: ‘Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy… God has ascended amid shouts of joy, the LORD amid the sounding of trumpets’ (vv.1,5). It also includes lots of singing (vv.6–7).
There is great exuberance in worship, as adoration and amazement of God bubbles over in extravagant action.
These are all outward ways of expressing your worship of the Lord. Worship includes the use of emotions to express your love and gratitude to God and to bring him honour.
All relationships involve emotions. I don't say to Pippa, 'I love you with my mind'. What I say is, 'I love you with my whole being, my mind, my heart, my will…'
We are good at expressing our emotions in other contexts such as football matches or other sporting events – then why should it be any different in our worship to God?
Prayer
Luke 18:1–30
The Parable of the Persistent Widow
18 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. 3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’
4 “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”
6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector
9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
The Little Children and Jesus
15 People were also bringing babies to Jesus for him to place his hands on them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. 16 But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 17 Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”
The Rich and the Kingdom of God
18 A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
19 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 20 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honour your father and mother.’”
21 “All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said.
22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
23 When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy. 24 Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! 25 Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
26 Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved?”
27 Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”
28 Peter said to him, “We have left all we had to follow you!”
29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God 30 will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.”
Commentary
2. Pray consistently
The God-centred life is a life of consistent prayer. Jesus taught his disciples to ‘always pray and not give up’ (v.1). You can talk to God not just in church or in set times of prayer, but anywhere and at anytime. I was taught very early in my Christian life to ‘talk as you walk’ through the day.
Jesus tells the parable of the widow and the unjust judge who eventually gives in to her demands in order to stop her bothering him and wearing him out (vv.4–5). Jesus says that if an unjust judge will listen to a widow’s plea, how much more will God listen to those who ‘cry out to him day and night?’ (v.7b). Never give up praying and pray hardest when it is hardest to pray.
3. Humble yourself
Humility is not something that happens to you. It is something that you are supposed to do to yourself. Rather than exalting yourself, you are supposed to ‘humble [your]self’. God promises that he will exalt you (v.14).
If we compare ourselves with others, we may become like the Pharisee, thanking God that we are not like other people – ‘robbers, evildoers, adulterers’ (v.11). The Pharisee was ‘confident of his own righteousness’ (v.9). He fell into the trap of trusting himself. If our lives are truly God-centred (our consciences quickened by his holiness), we compare ourselves with him and all we can say is, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner’ (v.13). The truth is that we are all sinners, and we are all in need of God’s mercy.
I find it very easy to read this passage and to thank God that I am not like the Pharisee. But by doing so I fall into the very trap that Jesus is describing – thinking I am more righteous than others, rather than recognising my sin and need for God. This is exactly the sin of the Pharisee.
4. Be childlike
Sometimes the ‘babies’ (v.15), children or young people in a church are described as ‘the church of the future’. But, according to Jesus, they are not just the church of the future, they are the church of today: ‘The kingdom of God belongs to such as these’ (v.16).
Jesus calls us to become like children. He never tells us to be childish (in the sense of being simplistic), but he does tell us to be childlike.
To be childlike is the opposite of being independent and ‘grown up’. Children tend to be open, receptive, trusting, humble, loving and forgiving. The God-centred life is a life of childlike dependence on him.
You become childlike when you show and share your honest feelings, acknowledge how fragile and vulnerable you are and how much you need God and other people.
Children are instinctively driven to explore and discover. They neither dwell in the past nor settle for the present, but look forward – with an unquenchable curiosity – to the future, fuelled by wonder and an immense capacity for enjoyment.
Cultivate this freedom to respond instinctively, like a child, and to feel and express wonder, awe, love and joy – to rush in and eagerly explore, probe and discover things for yourself.
5. Follow Jesus
There is nothing more rewarding than following Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, ‘We have left all we had to follow you!’ (v.28). Jesus replies, ‘I tell you the truth… no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life’ (vv.29–30).
Jesus calls the rich young ruler to the God-centred life. He calls him to give up everything else and follow him (v.22). Perhaps Jesus saw in him the potential to be like the apostle Peter, or Matthew, or one of the others who responded positively when Jesus said, ‘follow me’.
The more we accumulate the harder it is to live God-centred lives. The rich young ruler ‘became very sad, because he was very wealthy’ (v.23). It is not impossible for the rich to enter the kingdom of God (v.27), but it is very hard (vv.24–25) – not because the standards are higher, but because the risk appears greater.
In fact, it is impossible for any one of us, including the rich, to enter the kingdom of God on the strength of our own performance (vv.24–25). Yet with God it is possible for anyone, including the rich, to enter the kingdom of God. Jesus said, ‘What is humanly impossible is possible with God’ (v.27). Neither your past failings nor your present circumstances need determine your future. With God all things are possible.
Prayer
Deuteronomy 28:15–68
Curses for Disobedience
15 However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you:
16 You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.
17 Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed.
18 The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
19 You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.
20 The LORD will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him. 21 The LORD will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess. 22 The LORD will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. 23 The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. 24 The LORD will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed.
25 The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth. 26 Your carcasses will be food for all the birds and the wild animals, and there will be no one to frighten them away. 27 The LORD will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. 28 The LORD will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind. 29 At midday you will grope about like a blind person in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you.
30 You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and rape her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not even begin to enjoy its fruit. 31 Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will eat none of it. Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you and will not be returned. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and no one will rescue them. 32 Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, and you will wear out your eyes watching for them day after day, powerless to lift a hand. 33 A people that you do not know will eat what your land and labour produce, and you will have nothing but cruel oppression all your days. 34 The sights you see will drive you mad. 35 The LORD will afflict your knees and legs with painful boils that cannot be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head.
36 The LORD will drive you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your ancestors. There you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone. 37 You will become a thing of horror, a byword and an object of ridicule among all the peoples where the Lord will drive you.
38 You will sow much seed in the field but you will harvest little, because locusts will devour it. 39 You will plant vineyards and cultivate them but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes, because worms will eat them. 40 You will have olive trees throughout your country but you will not use the oil, because the olives will drop off. 41 You will have sons and daughters but you will not keep them, because they will go into captivity. 42 Swarms of locusts will take over all your trees and the crops of your land.
43 The foreigners who reside among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. 44 They will lend to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, but you will be the tail.
45 All these curses will come on you. They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the LORD your God and observe the commands and decrees he gave you. 46 They will be a sign and a wonder to you and your descendants forever. 47 Because you did not serve the LORD your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity, 48 therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the LORD sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.
49 The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand, 50 a fierce-looking nation without respect for the old or pity for the young. 51 They will devour the young of your livestock and the crops of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no corn, new wine or olive oil, nor any calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks until you are ruined. 52 They will lay siege to all the cities throughout your land until the high fortified walls in which you trust fall down. They will besiege all the cities throughout the land the LORD your God is giving you.
53 Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the LORD your God has given you. 54 Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, 55 and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities. 56 The most gentle and sensitive woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter 57 the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For in her dire need she intends to eat them secretly because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of your cities.
58 If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name —the LORD your God— 59 the Lord will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses. 60 He will bring on you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will cling to you. 61 The LORD will also bring on you every kind of sickness and disaster not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed. 62 You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left but few in number, because you did not obey the LORD your God. 63 Just as it pleased the LORD to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess.
64 Then the LORD will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods—gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known. 65 Among those nations you will find no repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the LORD will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart. 66 You will live in constant suspense, filled with dread both night and day, never sure of your life. 67 In the morning you will say, “If only it were evening!” and in the evening, “If only it were morning!”—because of the terror that will fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see. 68 The LORD will send you back in ships to Egypt on a journey I said you should never make again. There you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.
Commentary
6. Serve God
In this passage we see the disastrous consequences of not living the God-centred life, not obeying the law, not carefully following his command (v.45) and not serving the Lord (v.47). We also see the disastrous consequences of this within Israel’s own history.
In my own life, I have seen a glimpse of some of the things described, especially in the years before I experienced a relationship with God: ‘The sky over your head will be bronze’ (v.23). I have experienced the sense of what seems to be a great separation from God.
We see how ‘the LORD will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart. You will live in constant suspense, filled with dread, both night and day, never sure of your life’ (vv.65–66). ‘Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a centre of fear’ (Corrie ten Boom). This is the opposite of the peace and joy that Jesus offers.
Of course, sometimes I have failed to serve, obey and follow his command wholeheartedly. The wonderful news of the New Testament is that Jesus has rescued us from the deserved punishment and curses that would have otherwise followed: ‘Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us’ (Galatians 3:13).
Prayer
Pippa adds
In Luke 18:1–8, we read about the parable of the persistent widow. I have looked back over some of the prayers that I’ve prayed that haven’t been answered yet. I think I need to redouble my efforts and not give up.
Verse of the Day
Luke 18:13
“God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
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References
Corrie ten Boom, Clippings From My Notebook (Triangle, 1983)
William Temple, Readings in St. John’s Gospel (Macmillian, 1952)
The Bible with Nicky and Pippa Gumbel (commentary formerly known as Bible in One Year) ©Alpha International 2009. All Rights Reserved.
Compilation of daily Bible readings © Hodder & Stoughton Limited 1988. Published by Hodder & Stoughton Limited as the Bible in One Year.
Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version Anglicised, Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 Biblica, formerly International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Publishers, an Hachette UK company. All rights reserved. ‘NIV’ is a registered trademark of Biblica. UK trademark number 1448790.
Scripture quotations marked (AMP) taken from the Amplified® Bible, Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)
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