Lent day 7 - addressing God

Over the past year or so I have found myself becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the way I
and others address God.
I've spent decades being perfectly happy to say things like ' Come Lord Jesus' or ' Come Holy Spirit'.  Until recently I've had no problem whatsoever with asking God to draw near or be enthroned on our praises.  But now all of a sudden Im starting to wonder if the way I speak to God isn't just the teeniest bit.........wrong.

Yesterday evening I was at the healing service I go to every month.  I lead the worship. There are two prayer slots where we pray for Northern Ireland - health, education, politics, church etc and then there is personal prayer for anyone who wants it.  It is a quiet, understated service and I love it.   Yesterday we had a couple of minutes silence at the start and the usual intonation ' Come Holy Spirit' was uttered.    In my mind's eye I saw that the Holy Spirit was already there.  He didn't need an invitation and He wasn't waiting to be asked before He decided to turn up.   I saw Him like a cloud of tiny fragile and incredibly beautiful butterflies hovering over us.  Asking Him to come was pointless.  He was there already.  But He wasn't able to settle on us until we had become still and quiet.

It occurred to me that what we should probably have been praying was something along the lines of  ' Still me Lord until I am aware of Your presence'

In worship I very often envisage myself coming into the presence of God.  The doors of the throne room opening and me drawing near with multitudes of others all praising and expressing our love to Jesus.  It seems to me that the very essence of worship is drawing near and bowing down.  Why then do we continually ask God to come to us?  It seems all backwards to me.   Am I being ridiculous??  Is it just a matter of semantics which is entirely unimportant or does the way we address God say something about the way we think and feel about Him? 

I suspect that our thinking about God is way way way too small.  Which is hardly surprising.  We make Him the same size as us by speaking about Him as though He is a person who we can invite to our Sunday services or our prayer meetings in the same way we would invite someone to lunch.    But He is God of the universe.  He holds the stars in His hands.  He is the beginning and the end.  He formed us in our mother's wombs, has all our days written in His book and knows every hair on our heads.   He is being worshipped in heaven by a gazillion shining angels and the whole of creation.  He is so incredibly gracious and kind to us - He doesn't seem to get offended when we order Him about and tell Him what we want Him to do.  He smiles at our foolishness when we ask Him to bless our feeble endeavours and cheers when we do sometimes work out that in fact we are supposed to be joining Him in His.

We have much to learn.

Lord,  I'm so sorry that most of the time I reduce you to my size and speak to you as I would speak to one of my friends.  You are so much bigger, holier, more incredibly powerful than anything I could ever imagine and You deserve to be addressed with reverence.  Please would you teach me how to speak to you in ways that please you.  Thank you for your kindness in not minding too much when I get it wrong. Thank you for your butterfly Spirit who is always hovering and waiting for an opportunity to land in my heart.