UCB Word For Today

The worship pathway. When you’re on the worship pathway, you resonate with the psalmist: ‘I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go into the house of the LORD.”’ Something deep inside you feels released when praise is given. Your heart opens up and you come alive. You find yourself in tears, sometimes in moments of deep joy, because God seems so close. But here are two cautions if you’re on this pathway: 1) Don’t judge people who are not as outwardly expressive as you. Some of them grew up in churches where no one raised a finger, let alone a hand in worship. 2) Guard against an experience-based spirituality that has you always looking for the next ‘worship high’. C.S. Lewis wrote about the fatal sin of saying, ‘Encore!’ by demanding that God reproduce an experience or an emotion. He said that of all prayers, this may be the one God is least likely to grant because it can lead us to worship an experience rather than the God to whom our experience points. Music, for instance, can be a great gift to worship. But because music affects our feelings so powerfully, we can grow dependent on it to produce a certain emotional response. In this case, you may need to spend some time worshipping God without music, so that your worship is based on who God is and not a matter of getting swept up in certain sounds. Also, you may need to engage more in Bible study so that your heart is deeply rooted in the knowledge of God.

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.

The serving pathway. On the serving pathway, you find God’s presence seems most tangible when you’re helping others. You identify with the words of Jesus: ‘Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these…you did it to Me’ (Matthew 25:40 NKJV). And you may find that you are uncomfortable in a setting where you don’t have a role to play or a service to perform. An example of this would be Dorcas, whom the Bible says ‘was full of good works and charitable deeds’ (Acts 9:36 NKJV). Gladys Aylward could be considered a more recent counterpart to Dorcas. A humble housemaid from London, she didn’t let hardship or rejection by a missionary society silence Christ’s call on her life. In China, she cared for orphaned children, protected the vulnerable, and faced danger to help people in need. Her life was marked by humble service, obedience, and joy in serving God. President Jimmy Carter has probably inspired more people as an ex-president than he did while he was in office because of his passion for servanthood through such channels as Habitat for Humanity. People on this pathway find that if they’re just attending church but have no place to serve, God begins to feel distant. They need to be ‘plugged in’. Two dangers faced if you are in the serving pathway are: 1) You will be tempted to judge others who don’t seem to be serving as much as you do. 2) You can get caught up in being God’s servant and forget that you’re His beloved and redeemed child. Hence you have to stretch by learning to receive love as well as to offer it.

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.

The relational pathway. People who follow the relational pathway find that they have a deep sense of God’s presence when they are involved in significant relationships. Jesus’ words, ‘For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them’ (Matthew 18:20 NKJV), makes perfect sense to the relational type. If you are on the relational pathway, you may feel guilty when you hear other people speak of long periods of solitude with God and think: ‘Solitude wouldn’t be so bad if I could just bring a bunch of other people along.’ You have often experienced key spiritual moments, such as being convicted of sin or being encouraged to persevere, as God speaks to you through other people. You are much more apt to practise prayer or acts of servanthood when you can do it in a relational context. When you are on the relational pathway, you tend to hear God speak to you more in a conversation than from a book. And you stagnate spiritually to the degree that you feel isolated. But there are two dangers you must guard against. One is superficiality – getting spread so thin relationally that no one gets past your external self to know you and love you and challenge you deeply. The second is becoming so dependent on the thoughts and counsel of others that you don’t develop the sensitivity and ability to hear God for yourself. ‘Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left’ (Isaiah 30:21 NKJV).

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.

The relational pathway. People who follow the relational pathway find that they have a deep sense of God’s presence when they are involved in significant relationships. Jesus’ words, ‘For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them’ (Matthew 18:20 NKJV), makes perfect sense to the relational type. If you are on the relational pathway, you may feel guilty when you hear other people speak of long periods of solitude with God and think: ‘Solitude wouldn’t be so bad if I could just bring a bunch of other people along.’ You have often experienced key spiritual moments, such as being convicted of sin or being encouraged to persevere, as God speaks to you through other people. You are much more apt to practise prayer or acts of servanthood when you can do it in a relational context. When you are on the relational pathway, you tend to hear God speak to you more in a conversation than from a book. And you stagnate spiritually to the degree that you feel isolated. But there are two dangers you must guard against. One is superficiality – getting spread so thin relationally that no one gets past your external self to know you and love you and challenge you deeply. The second is becoming so dependent on the thoughts and counsel of others that you don’t develop the sensitivity and ability to hear God for yourself. ‘Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left’ (Isaiah 30:21 NKJV).

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.

A spiritual pathway has to do with the way you most naturally sense God’s presence and experience spiritual growth. We all have at least one pathway that comes most easily to us. And there’s enormous freedom in identifying and embracing your spiritual pathway. It means you can focus on relating to God in that way. For the next few days, let’s look at some different spiritual pathways and see which one’s yours. First let’s examine the intellectual pathway. When you are on this pathway, you draw closer to God as you learn more about Him. You love to study Scripture. When you go to church, you often find yourself marking time during the musical worship until the sermon starts. When you are faced with a crisis or a spiritual challenge, you tend to go into analytic, problem-solving mode. You identify with the words of Jesus when He said, ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your…mind’ (Luke 10:27 NKJV). The danger of this pathway lies in becoming all head and no heart. Dallas Willard once observed that it is extremely difficult to be right and not to hurt everybody with it. That’s why Paul wrote: ‘Knowledge puffs up while love builds up’ (1 Corinthians 8:1 NIV). The New Living Translation says: ‘While knowledge makes us feel important, it is love that strengthens the church. Anyone who claims to know all the answers doesn’t really know very much. But the person who loves God is the one whom God recognises’ (1 Corinthians 8:1-3 NLT). So be sure your growth in knowledge is balanced with growth in humility and love.

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.