Most of us have witnessed the same scene play out as we were running errands. I have participated in this same scenario more than once. When my sons were younger, I would always exit a store with them in the same way. Once we were about to walk out of the doors, I would lean down and grab their hand in mine and hold it fast. Only then would we move toward the end of the curb to wait until it was safe enough to head toward our car. Suddenly, something (usually a penny) would catch their attention and they would lunge into the street oblivious to the cargo van moving too quickly through the parking lot. My hold on them was the only thing that kept them from a horrific fate.

What was their reaction to my obvious care for them? Did they quickly turn and say, "sorry daddy, thanks for saving me?" Not even close. Most of the time, they would react with violence. They would either attack me or begin to throw themselves in every possible direction in an attempt to break free. They would exhaust all of the words they did know trying to tell me what they thought of me and my keeping them from their desired goal. They risked their lives for a dirty penny when they had a turtle bank at home with much more than that in it and a father who delighted in giving them good gifts. Instead of good gifts from their father, punishment was coming.

I wish I could say that I no longer act at all as my sons did years ago. But, I cannot. I was reminded of the hard truth of the sinfulness of my own heart today while listening to Pastor Kenny preach on Psalm 73. I was reminded that I can and do act like they did against God when I sin. Asaph, the author of this particular psalm, recounted a time when he committed the sins of complaining, envy, and unbelief. Though he began his lament by stating truth in verse 1, he quickly took his eyes off of God and began to speak with exaggeration mixing truth with untruth (v. 4 - 15). In his complaints to God regarding his feelings about his suffering, he alleged that the wealthy and unbelieving people around him were not suffering as he did. Asaph had put his eyes only on himself. He was throwing a pity part with a guest list of one. He substituted his feelings as his source of truth instead of God and His word. It was not until he went to worship with God's people (verse 17) that he began to turn his eyes back on God and gain an eternal perspective.

Asaph then wrote the two verses that cut me to the core. In verse 22, as a result of looking at himself in the light of who God is, he stated, "I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you (ESV)." When he realized how he had sinned against God he saw himself as he was, an ignorant beast. He quickly turned from his complaining, envy, and unbelief and broke out into praise and worship (verses 23-28). In verse 23 he went on to state, "Nevertheless I am continually with you; you hold my right hand." Asaph noted that, despite his sin, his Heavenly Father was still with him. It was certainly not due to Asaph's efforts or anything he had done. In fact, his Father should have let go of him. Instead, He maintained His hold and stayed near.

Like Asaph, I still sin. I complain (which is a lack of thankfulness) and covet what others have. My lack of thankfulness and my envy demonstrate a lack of belief in God's goodness (which I, like Asaph did in verse 1, would affirm). God commands me to always give thanks to Him (Ephesians 5:20; Philippians 4:6), not to be envious or covet (Exodus 20:17; Ephesians 5:5), and to trust Him (Proverbs 3:5-6). Yet, I lunge this way and that striving for shiny trinkets (idols) that are worthless. I act like a brutish and ignorant beast. For sinning against a good and eternal God, I deserve punishment (called hell) forever. Nevertheless, He is with me. What a thought! In addition to saving me (by paying for all of my sins) and causing me to be born again through the life, death, and resurrection of His only Son Jesus; He keeps me with Him until the day I go to be with Him. If He left my safekeeping to me, all would be lost. Let us react the same way Asaph did in verses 23-28 and praise God for He is so good! Let us remember that when we sin, He will hold us fast. Let us remember that when we suffer, He will hold us fast. For our Savior loves us so, He will hold us fast.

Lastly, let us not forget those who do not know Christ. Asaph remembered them in verse 27. They will pay for the sins that they have committed for eternity and there will be no forgiveness for them without Christ. Let us respond by telling them "of all of your (God's) works." Let us share the good news of Jesus Christ with them (1 Corinthians 15: 2-6) and pray that God grant them repentance of their sins (2 Timothy 2:25) and faith in Him (Ephesians 2: 8-9) through Jesus. Let us, like Asaph, share the goodness of God.

**Resources - He Will Hold Me Fast (https://youtu.be/TNi3ejUCYrY) **

Have you ever had someone angry at you but you have no idea why? Those of us who are married have had this happen on more than one occasion I'm sure. It can be frustrating trying to mend a relationship when you aren't even sure what you did to break it in the first place. Oftentimes, the offended party will stew in their anger until you figure out what it is that you did wrong. Or we meet someone for the first time and they do something that annoys or offends us but since we don't know them that well we let it slide. Over time, they continue to do that very same thing because they have no idea how we feel about it and the anger continues to grow.

Is God like that? Does He wait for us to figure out every single sin we've ever committed and then confess each one individually before He forgives us? Are we supposed to have the self-awareness and spiritual sensitivity to be able to notice right away every single time we sin and confess it on the spot? What if we have a sin in our lives that we continue to commit without realizing it? Can we have true fellowship with God in that case?

David asked this question in Psalm 19:12 - "Who perceives his unintentional sins?" In other words - who is able to know every single sin they have ever or will ever commit? How can we possibly keep track of every evil action, word, or thought? We can't, and the good news is, we don't have to. In the second part of that same verse David says, "Cleanse me from my hidden faults." God doesn't expect you to always be able to specifically lay out each wrong; His desire is that you have a heart bent toward repentance.

Sure, if you pray that prayer as a way to 'get you off the hook' for all those sins you couldn't care less about, then God probably isn't going to honor that prayer. But if you approach Him with humility, understanding your sinful heart and inability to walk in holiness apart from Him, He will forgive - completely.

As a matter of fact, when we do confess specific sins (which we should regularly do), God takes our prayer for forgiveness a step further, cleansing us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9 - "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

I am in no way suggesting confessing specific sins isn't important and that all you need to do is pick one sin per day to confess in order to stay pure before God. My point is that "God looks at the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7), so we need to be sure that our hearts have a posture of repentance and humility. That's why David says elsewhere, "The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit. You will not despise a broken and humbled heart, God" (Psalm 51:17).

Understand and rejoice in the truth that our God is "...compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love" (Psalm 103:8). Every single day, confess your sins to Him; known and unknown because He will be quick and faithful to forgive.

There is a Puritan prayer that says: "Teach me that if I do not live a life that satisfies Thee, I shall not have a life that satisfies myself."  That means that our joy, pleasure, and satisfaction are directly tied to our worship. In other words, we cannot be truly happy unless we are living lives of worship to God. We spend so much time trying to see how close we can get to sin without actually sinning because we want Jesus and our vices. But it is Jesus alone who can bring the satisfaction we are looking for.

This is why we should not ask questions like: "how far can I go before it is a sin?" Instead we should be asking "how close can I get to Jesus?" I know you've probably heard something like that before, but maybe you haven't heard why that's true and so important to understand. It's not about behavior modification or legalism, it's actually about your joy - your joy is found in holiness and worship, not mindless obedience to rules.

You see, it's not truly worship to obey God out of duty. This is why Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep my commands" (John 14:15). Our love for Jesus drives us to obey and worship Him and that is where we find joy that lasts. You won't increase your joy by following the rules better, but by loving Jesus more - which actually will help you follow the rules better as well.

At the very same time, it is the very duty of worship that will often drive us to delight in our Savior. I am not in any way suggesting that we should only worship and obey God when we feel the emotion of love for Him. I'm saying that love is a choice and action that will in fact fuel our emotions and ignite our joy in Him; which can only lead to more worship and obedience. This almost exactly how a biblical marriage should work (I guess Paul was on to something when he said marriage is a picture of Christ and the Church).

Tim Keller said, "The sin beneath all other sins is a lack of joy in Christ." I believe He is right. Consider even the original sin of Adam and Eve. They decided they wanted more than God and what He had given them. At some point, they decided that they would find more joy apart from God Himself. In order to find that joy however, they had to step outside of His Law. So the very first sin was, at least in part, driven by a lack of joy in God and a desire to find it elsewhere.

The Psalmist said rightly: "You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore" (Psalm 16:11). It's all because true joy can only be found in abandoning our pursuit of joy for the pursuit of God. In the end we find exactly what we have been looking for the whole time. Joy is not simply a by-product of worship, but the result and reward of it.

Our church closed out a sermon series in Romans 8 with an extended time of worship after the sermon. We've become accustomed to having our 'time of worship' happen before the sermon most of the time in our worship services. Singing before you hear the sermon can be a great way to prepare your heart to hear from God - I'm not in any way arguing against that. At the same time, hearing the Word of God can stir true worship in you that makes you want to sing in response to what you have heard. It was a great change of pace.

How I said it during my sermon was: "Proper theology will lead to proper worship." Too often, we use worship as an avenue to prepare our hearts to hear from God (which by the way, is worship) instead of simply giving praise to God for who He is no matter what our hearts are feeling at the time. It is knowledge of God that should drive worship; knowing more about Him leads you into deeper worship.

When did worship become a means to an end rather than an end in and of itself? When did worship become a tool for us to accomplish something else? If you read through many current worship songs today, many of them focus on what we are doing in our worship. For example, we sing a lot of lyrics that go something like: Lord, I give you my heart, or I surrender to you, or I'm crying out, or I fix my eyes on you. Of course, all of those are great things to declare and I'm not in any way suggesting we stop saying those things. I just think we need a whole lot more of songs that declare truth about who God is.

After all, worship is supposed to be about exalting the One you are worshiping. Let's start singing truth about this God Who deserves all our praise, and I believe our hearts and emotions will follow. If you're singing about Jesus and His attributes, you won't have to say "I give you all I am" because it will become your natural response to the truth you are declaring. Truth will inform your heart and emotions rather than having it the other way around. After all, you can't truly sing "Lord, you're beautiful" if you haven't seen His beauty or know why He is beautiful.

By using worship as a means to an end, we often find ourselves with shallow worship. Worship must be an end in and of itself because it is in that moment that we are doing what we have been created to do: worshipping our Creator. But you can't truly worship if you don't know Who you are worshipping. So dive into His Word where He has revealed Himself and allow the Spirit of God to take the Word of God and drive you into genuine worship.

I had a conversation with someone following my sermon this past Sunday that got me thinking about our ability to understand God. This individual was thanking me for pointing out the tension between predestination and free-will and how we as Christians have to seek truth instead of finding Scriptures that support our views. They commented on the fact that this is just one of the mysteries of God that we cannot fully comprehend.

My last blog post was an encouragement to worship in the face of mystery rather than always trying to find concrete answers to things we just can't understand. But I want to point out something else on the topic of mystery: We will NEVER fully comprehend God. Not even in eternity.

God is infinite in nature; which means that there is no limit to His glory and His ways are unsearchable. He has certainly made Himself known to us through His creation and His divinely inspired Word, but there are depths that we simply will never reach in our understanding of Who He is. And if that's discouraging or disappointing to you, your perspective may need to be adjusted.

Think about it this way: have you ever been on a really long road trip with friends? You begin by sharing stories, laughing, maybe even having deep conversations, and then you run out of things to talk about? Or maybe eventually you just realize that you've lost interest in the conversation, so you tune out?

We don't have that problem with God - His infinite nature means that we will spend eternity learning new things about Him that lead us to a deeper adoration and worship of Him. We can't "figure Him out" and He will never become "predictable" to us. You can't put Him in a box, and He will always exceed our expectations of him (Ephesians 3:20-21).

Yet, at the very same time the invitation goes out to us - "Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you" (James 4:8). God has revealed Himself to His creation and wants us to know Him intimately. He is beyond our understanding, yet He is near. His wisdom is unsearchable, yet He bestows wisdom upon us. This should make us drop to our knees in awe and wonder. We shouldn't be frustrated that we don't understand everything about Him, we should be passionate to know Him more deeply every day.

Praise Him for His infinite nature and, at the very same time, draw near to Him to know him more.