Lord, the joy and, face it, pleasure I get from being able to preach the Gospel to others, no matter the smallness of the group, such a joy to me. It is a pleasure at both ends - at the study end and at the preaching end. In the aspect of what you have called me to do, Lord you give me such joy and such great, great pleasure that I can't begin to offer any response but to say a simple thanks and offer a heart of gratitude. I can only do as David did - I can deliver thanksgiving to you:
34 Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good!
For His mercy endures forever.
35 And say, “Save us, O God of our salvation;
Gather us together, and deliver us from the Gentiles,
To give thanks to Your holy name,
To triumph in Your praise.”
36 Blessed be the Lord God of Israel
From everlasting to everlasting!
Indeed Lord, you are Good - you have been more than good to me, beyond good. Salvation from sin is good, it is good beyond all hope. To be rescued from the just desserts of my own foolish sin and rebellion and brought into rightness with you is far beyond good, but as with David, good is all we have to describe it - You are good!
But you went beyond good, you did not stop with only (my, "only?") saving us eternally. You give us good gifts while we remain here. You enable us to live lives of purpose and meaning. You use us to do You will. You allow us to be a part of accomplishing Your plan. You give us Your Spirit to do many things, one of which is to help us understand Your Word. Then You allow us - ME - to be a part of proclaiming your Word.
How can I express the joy I feel, the privilege, the thanksgiving at not being left outside of that great work? O Lord - the honor of handling Your Word and holding and handling it… The privilege of studying and seeking its meaning. The great task of preparing and presenting it to your people and to any of the unredeemed whom you bring to the congregation each week is overwhelming! Lord I am simply filled with a sense of, well, I run out of words, and that is no small thing! It is no wonder David's Psalms are filled with small words! There are no others!
How can we say thanks to You Lord, how can we adequately worship and praise? The unredeemed look at the scenes from Revelation and elsewhere and the see the believers on their faces and they accuse you of being a egotist and of other ridiculous things. What they don't realize is that one of the reasons men fall down before You is because there is no other reaction possible. There are no words, the is nothing we can do to give to You that which you deserve, and so we do what we can do, we fall on our faces and we bow and we exalt You. There is nothing left for us but that.
Human eloquence can go a long way, but it falls short. Human demonstrations can show great things and human worship can be profound, our music and our other shows of worship can be wonderful. But it all falls short. Your holiness is so far above what can even imagine that anything that we put forth falls woefully short. Even the Angels in heaven cannot come close to your real glory, the unreserved glory of the Holy One on the Throne…
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. 2 Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one cried to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
The whole earth is full of His glory!”
4 And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.
Isaiah, in Isaiah 6, was taken, via vision up into heaven and sees the very throne of God. There He sees God on His throne and he sees the Seraphim and even these Seraphim, designed to be in the presence of God, have 6 wings, only two to fly with - one set cover their feet with lest the touch holy ground, one set to cover their eyes with lest they see the holy person of God with! Even Holy Angels cannot compass the holiness of God! Before Isaiah can deal with the matter, just because of his presence there, the room had to filled with smoke and he had to cleansed with a coal from the alter lest his sin consume him!
We have not the language. This doesn't mean we shouldn't try - but in the end - thankfulness is best expressed by saying thanks to God and by the means by which God said we ought to show thanksgiving - obedience to His Word! Jesus said in John 14:15: “If you love Me, keep My commandments". Likewise in John 14:21 He said:
He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”
Obedience, submission is the best way we have to show thanksgiving - it far outstrips eloquence!
Lord, I am grateful, so very grateful for the great privilege of preaching your Word! You have been so good to me - far better than I deserve! You are good to me and You mercy will indeed endure forever!
