Who Sits On Your Throne?

Sometimes when I’m singing worship in church, my mind starts to drift a little. I may get caught up in the meaning of the words, or get analytical, or maybe my mind wanders to the tasks I have still to finish that day. Maybe I even worry a little about those around me…(I’ll just be real.) But when my mind starts to wander, I often bring myself back into worshiping God by picturing my life and my heart as a throne-songs with word-pictures of the King of Kings and the Holy One especially bring this imagery to mind. The throne is big, over sized, and comfy looking. It’s in a huge open room. And it’s navy blue (but that’s beside the point though). What’s more important is that when I picture the throne of my heart, the “holy of holiest” (as EM Bounds says it), I often see myself sitting there. Or money. Or my pride. Or other people. Very rarely, at first, is God sitting there.

So, here’s what I do.

I PUSH them off.

Money, stop ruling my priorities. Self, stop acting like you can call all the shots. Pride, you are not as important and essential and “all that and a bag of chips” as you think you are. And people, I know I’m the one who put you there, but you really aren’t the one who should be ruling and occupying the throne.

These things should NOT be on the throne of my heart. When these things occupy the seat that should be filled by Someone else, my ministry, my authenticity, and the way I “preach” with my life suffers.

As I’m reading through Power Through Prayer by EM Bounds, this all comes to mind because he puts this into perspective. “Somehow self and not God rules in the holy of holiest. Somewhere, all unconscious to himself [the preacher], some spiritual nonconductor has touched his inner being, and the divine current has been arrested.” When something else is placed on the throne, God is no longer able to sit there. The ability for God’s power to flow through has been interrupted.

My life isn’t technically interrupted if other things replace the King of Kings. I can still “be” a Children’s Director, a mom, a wife, a daughter, a friend. I can still go through the actions of my life, but really, through this chapter, I’m being convicted that that’s all I’m doing; Going through the motions. Bounds says earlier in this chapter that “The life-giving preacher is a man of God, whose heart is ever athirst for God, whose soul is ever following hard after God, whose eye is single to God, and in whom by the power of God’s Spirit the flesh and the world have been crucified and his ministry is like the generous flood of a life-giving river.” While Bounds is referring mostly to Preachers who have an actual title as their job, I feel like it applies to us all. As people who preach Jesus with our lives, we have to subscribe to these thoughts too. Not just preachers from the pulpit, but we also must fix our eyes on Him and allow Him to sit on the throne. We have to thirst, focus and center on Jesus. Jesus must be the one sitting on the throne, ruling. He must be the one who breathes life into us. However, if the river is dammed up with other priorities or other focuses, the life-giving flood cannot flow through.

I love the picture painted for me as he also writes “The preaching that kills is the letter; shapely and orderly it may be, but it is the letter still, the dry, husky letter, the empty, bald shell. The letter may have the germ of life in it, but it has no breath of spring to evoke it; winter seeds they are, as hard as the winter’s soil, as icy as the winter’s air, no thawing nor germinating by them.” I can go through my life, the shell of it – actions, to-do lists, words, but never really have a breath of spring that really, truly brings what I do to life. I can even say that I’m doing something in the name of Jesus, but when the Spirit isn’t backing it, and the Lord isn’t the one sitting on the throne, then it won’t mean anything. If I’m still placing other things as the ruler in my life, I act as though I have the power to change things through my words and actions, and that is “the preaching that kills.”

I cringe a little when people say that you only have to do “good things” to have a good life or to “get to Heaven.” To me, those are the letters that Bounds describes as “dry, husky…empty, bald shell(s).” If I want it to truly have impact for God’s Kingdom, if I really want the Spirit to breathe through me into the lives of those around me, then I have to be so deeply rooted in prayer, so focused on Jesus, that I am dead to myself. I have to give up “my” spot on the throne, and clear it out for the one, true Ruler so that He is the One fulfilling my life and breathing life into every little thing I do.

How do you make sure that Jesus is the only one enthroned in your "holy of holiest" places?