Adoration and the woman of Luke Chapter 7

An extract from God Holds the Key by Geoffrey Bull.

The normal attitude of the sanctified is prostration in the sanctuary. To bow down there, is not only their highest obligation but their greatest bliss. It has now become their proper sphere by the redeeming love of God. In the words of an old hymn we have it:

Show me Thy Face – one transient glimpse of loveliness divine
And I shall never think of other loves save Thine.
All other light shall darken quite, all other glories wane
The beautiful of earth shall ne'er seem beautiful again.

The prostration before His greatness, for the true believer, is really the unutterable committal of a lover, who loses consciousness of all things save of the Beloved in the moment of the surrender of union. There is awe, there is wonder, there is unspeakable submission. There is the unhindered flow of an abundant love-filled heart, outpoured into the bliss of the Redeemer. In the prostration, the entire horizon is God-filled, the whole vision Christ-centered, and the whole being Spirit consumed. The attitude of prostration, however, is not some thing divorced from the details of the everyday, rather is it wholly woven into them. The sanctuary is wherever we are bowed in Jesus’ Name. The spirit of this approach was evident even in the records of the Old Testament; how much more should this be the case in the days of the New.

How long is it now, since Jesus came in? Maybe for years you have coldly entertained Him in your heart, yet have your rebel lips not kissed His feet. Since He came in, maybe your head has still been high, when it should be bowed low beneath His knees. The Greek word worship simply means ‘to kiss toward’. This was a moment as recorded of the woman in Luke chapter 7 when it was most beautifully fulfilled; when this poor woman in the full enjoyment of God’s grace poured out her heart in adoration to her Lord.

Enough, O Lord! Thy conquest is complete.
Thy love foreknew yet bore all shame for me.
Mine outpoured soul shall lave Thy pierced feet.
Thy great forgiveness bind my soul to Thee.

This is the ultimate cause of all our bowing. We are the objects of His grace; and with a burning heart, our vision focused and our souls bowed down, do we come to worship in God’s Holy Hill.

Used with permission Hodder and Stoughton 1959.