Worship And "Perfect Hatred"

Written October 2015

The year has been a big year for Christian Martyrdom. I don’t remember any other year of my entire life of 56 years that I have been exposed to weekly reports of people being executed for their faith. On the contrary I attend Bethel Church in Redding California where the stream of information that flows in and through my church is a steady flow of the goodness of God and the testimonies of His healing power and stories of amazing exploits for Gods Kingdom around the world. Then I go home and if I catch a glimpse of the news, Facebook or hear something in passing conversation, there it is. Death, persecution, corruption and threats of war are everywhere.

My dilemma. How do I maintain joy and optimism without ignoring the sorrows that my fellow believers are enduring in other parts of the world? Sometimes I will be in the middle of a time of worship at church and my mind will wander into the sea of unfortunate realities. I will think things to myself like, “the odds are that within a 5 mile radius of me is a child suffering at the hands of an abusive adult”. I wonder what it must feel like for a person to discover that the house next them had sex slaves in the basement for years. Less than 100 feet from where they slept a person was being raped and tortured.

I know Jesus said that the truth will set you free, but not all truth frees us. There are truth’s that when contemplated can bind us up and darken our heart and mind. Human suffering is truth and it does not free me. It actually stirs up hatred. Hatred is a real emotion that has its place.

The Psalmist David wrote, “Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? And am I not grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with a perfect hatred: I count them my enemies. Search me O God and know my heart: try me and know my thoughts; And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Psalm 139:22-24. And don’t even get me started on the way that Jesus ripped into the Pharisees calling them snakes and vipers condemned to hell. Matthew 23:33

Yet there I stand at church in praise and worship in a house of passionate worshippers, safe and free. Free to love and free to embrace, free to laugh and free to cry while others suffer. Oh my, Oh God, how desperately this world needs you. King David’s son Solomon who is considered one of the world’s wisest men wrote that there is a “time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war and a time of peace” Ecclesiastes 3:8.

When I am engaged in worship, it is time to love. No matter what goes on around me, I owe my Lord the praise and the worship that He deserves. For a season the devil may succeed of robbing me of peace and joy, but I will always fight to get it back. But I refuse to let my Lord be robbed of the praise and the love that is His reward. If we the church stopped praising and turned our worship gatherings into moments of silence and reverence for the atrocities of Satan then we are defeated. We must praise, we must have joy, we must laugh and we must dance. And these expressions must be real and sincere. These joyous expressions of praise become the weapons of our army…. And we do so without forgetting the suffering and the lost and the oppressed. We worship in the spirit with them and for them…. To worship God is to hate the devil and destroy his works. We must never stop worshipping, it is a perfect hatred.