Here God, Take My Arm - Literally!

Stunned, I stared in disbelief at a picture -- taken somewhere in the vastness of India -- printed in a National Geographic. Incredibly, it showed the "sacrifice" a man had made for "god". With a begging bowl on the road between his knees, naked but for a loincloth, he sat with his right arm sticking straight up into the air over his head. An arm, dried and stiffened, frozen immovably in that raised position.

Years before, this man had felt obligated to "honor" the "god" he worshipped with a "sacrifice". Apparently wanting to make it a very personal and serious "sacrifice", he decided to "give his right arm to god". Raising his arm toward the sky, he never brought it down. Nutrient flow was insufficient. He may even have restricted blood circulation artificially. But the photo showed incontrovertible proof of the devotion he felt for his "god" - his arm had become a withered stick. A bone covered with mummified flesh. Grotesque.

The New Testament says, "The sacrifices that pagans make, are offered to demons, not to God." [1 Corinthians 10.20] Surely this man's "god" received the deceived man's offering with delight.

People often complain about how "Godless" our country has become. Maybe it has, maybe it hasn't. But at least there is a wide-ranging understanding of Who God is and what He is like -- and most people in America would say that any "god" who delights in a sacrifice that cripples his worshiper, is no "god" at all!

Yet I've been "crippled" in my "worship" of God -- I've "sacrificed" something I thought would please Him.

What have I "sacrificed"? I've "sacrificed" my feelings. My sensibilities.

What?

Raised in churches all my life, through hundreds of sermons, preachers told me that true "faith" in God is unemotional. That my "feelings" don't "count". That I can only "safely know" God through theology, through my mind and my intellect. God is invisible so obviously (they said) no one can "sense" or "see" or "feel" Him.

One of the old hymns of the church is called, "In the Garden". I grew up listening to warnings about that hymn! I recall one preacher who said there wasn't a "single, theological doctrine" in the entire song.

What does this hymn talk about? It talks about how sweet it is to spend time every day in the affectionate Presence of Jesus. It's refrain goes: "And He walks with me and He talks with me!" It says Jesus' Voice is so "sweet" that even the "birds hush their singing". It paints a picture of an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus that's very, very emotional. Very "sensory". The preacher who "warned" us about that hymn, obviously never "walked in the Garden" with Jesus -- the Very Person he claimed to "love"!

In fact, I grew up hearing warnings about those people who call themselves "Christian" but who are "caught up in emotionalism". They get carried away with their feelings, working themselves into a lather in their excitement over God.

So, in response to the teachings I received, I "sacrificed" my emotional responses. I "gave them up for Jesus". My theology rejected it. My "church decorum" didn't allow it.

Years ago, a book commented that 11 A.M., Sunday morning, is the strangest hour in America. The author said that in that hour of church, across the United States, people sit inside houses of "worship", surrounded by stained glass images depicting stories of the mighty works of God. But sitting there, surrounded by the most powerful, sacred images known to man -- the people practice feeling nothing.

Well, I practiced feeling nothing for many years. But in the last few years, God's made it clear that sacrificing my emotional responses to His Person and His Presence, was not a sacrifice pleasing to Him!

It's very much like that old married couple in "Fiddler On the Roof". He asks, "Do you love me?" and she said, "You old fool -- of course I love you." "But," he persists, "do you love me?" She says, "For all these years I've cooked your food, raised your children, cleaned your house -- isn't it obvious I love you?"

That's fair, in a sense. After all, "love" has to include loving actions or it's not real. But romance is different. Romance needs plenty of loving actions accompanied by emotional intimacy.

What do you think will happen in any marriage where the man and woman practice feeling numb? One of them starts to get a little excited about the other, and gets warned, "Watch out! Calm down! Emotionalism, it's dangerous! Here -- let's study our marriage vows again -- let's reconsider the theological significance of, "I pledge thee my troth"...

Practicing the restraint of our natural, emotional responses to a God Who manifests Himself to us in so many wonderful ways is NOT a "sacrifice" He wants us to make. To inhibit our emotional responses to God is as grotesque as what the man in India did with His arm. A Christian who cannot shout for joy in response to one of God's mighty works is far, far from being like Jesus.

Jesus showed us His Father. Want to know what God is like? Look at Jesus. Jesus came (says the Gospel of John) to show us God the Father. And in Luke 10.21, when His disciples came back from traveling throughout Israel -- driving out demons, healing the sick and otherwise proclaiming the Kingdom of God -- it tells us of Jesus' excited, emotional response.

There, the Scripture reads, "In that hour Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit." In the original language of Greek, the word used for "rejoiced" comes from a word meaning, "to jump, to leap, to spring up and spin around"! The Weymouth translation gives it as, "On that same occasion Jesus was filled by the Holy Spirit with rapturous joy." Apparently, in the face of Satan's shattering defeat by Jesus' disciples, Jesus was jumping and leaping and spinning about in rapturous joy!

The man in India with the withered arm? Unfortunately, even if he went to the doctor and tried to, he wouldn't be able to get it down and working again. But my "withered worship"? God has healed it. I'm released to love Him. I can express my responses to the wonderful Presence of God according to how I feel. In my times of private prayer or in public worship, I can laugh, shout, jump and spin about (I haven't got that down yet, but if Jesus can, so can I!) I can even be quiet. I can even weep when I sense the Spirit of the Lord on me. Sometimes I weep for joy, sometimes I sense the broken Heart of God and "join Him" in His tears.

One man I know, who came to know Jesus late in life, said he'd never cried even one tear for over thirty years. But after coming to know Jesus, he wept every time he stood worshipping in church. He felt embarrassed, as if a "real man" wouldn't cry -- especially in public.

I don't know about whether "real men" eat quiche or not. But I do know this: Real men worship God with complete abandonment.