If you can’t tell, that’s my 3 year old son trying to get my attention.  Children are notorious for pursuing the attention of their parents, and my son is no different.  But we as adults are not unlike children.  We want and seek the attention of our Heavenly Father.

In Isaiah 66:1-2, the prophet details for us the kind of person we must be if we are to have God’s regard or attention.

Thus says the Lord:
“Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool;
what is the house that you would build for me,
and what is the place of my rest?

All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be,
declares the Lord.
But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.

Foundationally, we must have a proper view of God. He’s not a genie in a bottle who answers our whims when we follow a certain formula.  And through Jesus Christ, every believer has a measure of God’s regard because we have been made right with God by Christ’s death and resurrection.  But specifically, God promises to “look” to a certain kind of person.  The one God regards will recognize that God is greater, grander, and more majestic than we could imagine.  God doesn’t dwell in temples, churches, or the boxes we make for him.  He’s sovereign, Lord, and the One who made everything.  When we see God as He revealed himself in Scripture, we should exhibit the qualities of the person to whom he “looks.”

1. The one God regards will be humble.  Because we see God in is grandness and glory, we will recognize that life is not about us.  We will bow our hearts and lives before the One who is Lord of all.
2. The one God regards will be contrite.  Closely related to humility is the idea of contrition or confession.  When we see God’s glory and holiness from Scripture, we cannot help but be contrite and repentant before him.  For excellent examples of humility and contrition, read Isaiah 6 and Revelation 1 where Isaiah and John encountered visions of God in all his holy glory and bowed in humility and contrition.
3. The one God regards will tremble at His Word.  This trembling is not frightful intimidation, but rather reverent awe.  God, the glorious Creator of the Universe, spoke.  And he spoke to us.  And he graciously recorded for us what he spoke in the pages of Scripture.  We have God’s Word!  We can know God’s everlasting, supremely high thoughts (Isaiah 40:8; 55:8) because he has given them to us.

I’ll be honest with you.  I’m amazed at my utter arrogance and self-sufficient nature sometimes.  I think I know it all, that I don’t need help, that I have it figured out.  I have a feeling I’m not alone.  God is gloriously majestic and I must come before him humble and contrite.  God has shared his wisdom, his will, and his thoughts with us in his Word.   And I must revere and obey what he has to say by knowing it (reading, studying, memorizing, and applying it).

So, if we want people God regards (looks to), we should start by getting to know him through the pages and stories of the Bible.  As we discover God’s grandness, we will bow before him in humility and contrition.  As we learn and obey his Word, we “tremble” by applying the words of the One and Only to our lives.  Will you join me in seeking to be the kind of people God regards? I’m confidant that our nation and world could use many more people who have God’s attention.

Below was an original blog I shared at Pastor’s Today with Lifeway.com

I’ve discovered something in the overlap of teaching Western Civilization at Fruitland Baptist Bible College and teaching at my local church—something that has formed my ministry perspective and challenged my intellectual boundaries.  Here’s my discovery—too many Christians and preachers fail to contextualize biblical truth in light of the historical and philosophical developments of our age.  As a result, I believe proper application of theological prescriptions deriving from the authority of Scripture make far too little headway in today’s Western culture.

I think it was Francis Schaeffer who argued (and I paraphrase) that the field of the theology was the last intellectual sphere to address significant philosophical and historical developments.  In other words, the church has been late in addressing the prevailing intellectual and moral challenges of our age.  After teaching young college students and interacting church members over the years, I’m convinced Schaeffer was correct.  That is why I firmly believe we as church leaders, pastors, ministers, and theological students must read broadly and contextualize theology and scriptural application in our modern age.

Let me briefly offer an example related to scriptural authority.  If you are a biblical conservative holding a high view of Scripture as I am, then you believe Scripture is true, authoritative, and applicable today just as it was when it was first penned.  I’m afraid though that we are preaching to congregations who may offer lip service to that view, but have been bombarded by a philosophical and historical context that has undermined biblical authority.  Generally speaking, the Enlightenment overreacted to the religious conflicts spurred by the Protestant Reformation.  Enlightenment philosophes subordinated religion to the realm of personal values (privatizing religious truth) and elevated science to the realm of facts.  This shift served as a precursor to the higher critical views which further undermined biblical authority in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  As Nancy Pearcey highlighted in her book Total Truth, vestiges of this divide have permeated contemporary culture through academia and media.  Further attacks on biblical authority have come from postmodernism’s hyper-personalization of interpretation.  Thusly, postmodernism places interpretive authority in the hands of the reader not the author.

The implication for our congregations must not be missed.  Essentially, our understanding of authority and interpretation has been shaped by the tensions of Enlightenment modernism and contemporary postmodernism.  Why does this matter?  In short, it matters greatly because our pews are filled with individuals influenced by these tensions.  When we, as well-meaning, truthful communicators stand in our pulpits to declare, “Thus says the Lord” we must be cognizant that some (if not many) in our audience might hear, “Thus says another voice among many.”  How can we address this dilemma?  Let me offer three suggestions.

1. Be aware of this tension.  As I argued above, read broadly in theology, history, and philosophy.  You can start with Nancy Pearcey’s Total Truth or Andrew Hoffecker’s Revolutions in Worldview.
2. Build a strong case for the authority of Scripture.  The basis for our preaching is the authority of God’s Word.  Undermine the authority and you diminish the preaching.  Emphasize the authority and you properly elevate the task of preaching.
3. Build bridges between God’s Word and its authoritative influence on our lives in contemporary culture.  John Stott argued for this aim of preaching in his classic book, Between Two Worlds.  We should declare in our preaching that God’s Word has authority and apply it clearly to personal, intellectual, philosophical, academic, scientific, and historical dimensions (on and on the list could go).

If we love Scripture as God’s authoritative revelation of himself, we will not be content to apply its supra-cultural truths only in our holy huddles.  Rather, we will explore the influential ways God desires to speak authoritatively to our contemporary age.  Let us understand the dilemma of our culture.  Let us accept the challenge of declaring Scripture’s authority.  Let us apply God’s Word to our own lives and live it out in contemporary culture.