Friday

Psalm 126
Isaiah 43:8-15
Philippians 2:25—3:1
When you exult in God, you not only glorify in God’s love , you make much of him by rejoicing in him and delighting in him and being glad in him. Exultation adds that emotional element of joy in God that we believe is essential if God is going to be honored the way God should be. Another word for exultation in God is "worship."
Chapters 43 in Isaiah is breathtaking in its praise of the absoluteness and sovereignty of God –“ I! I! I am he, and there is no other god, no other savior, no other rock! I! I! I am the LORD the Holy One of Israel!” God's commitment to being God and being known as God is declared in awesome wonder.
The unfathomable “God-ness” of God - the bare, awesome reality that God is - is the most noble, true and beautiful reality there is. Isaiah was simply ravished by the thought that God is God. And so am I. Our Orthodox sisters and brothers believe that God’s essence is unknowable… the God beyond God… and that it is only by God’s energies or attributes that God can be known.
I love God. And I love to meditate on the nature of God. I cannot separate the delight I have in God as an infinitely holy and loving Being from the delight I have in Him as absolutely sovereign. His being God and his being sovereign are one. This idea of God’s sovereignty was very important to the Protestant reformers and it should be to us as well. I have been guilty of forming God in my own image, making God too small, thinking I can know God in any other way than to receive his infinite mercies with open hands and an open heart.