Be responsible for your people; don't be responsible for your people / 9

What does God require in the first, second, and third commandments?
First, that we know and trust God as the only true and living God. Second, that we avoid all idolatry and do not worship God improperly. Third, that we treat God’s name with fear and reverence, honoring also his Word and works. (Deuteronomy 6:13-14) (from here)

We are to live according to reality - to worship you, the One God who exists, and to worship you as you are. We are not to strive or long for or delight in anything else, be it real or of our imagining, as if it were better or more mighty that the One God, almighty in power, goodness, and perfection. We are not to speak or act as if you are something other than what you have revealed yourself to be.

Lord, it is somehow strange for us that what is good and what is real should so exactly adhere. We are so steeped in postmodernism that we forget how key is truth, that at the heart of it all you really exist and you really are the one, good, perfect, mighty God, and that it is because of the true reality of this that we are to worship you and you alone. You are not some Wizard of Oz, posturing and cravenly demanding obsequience, but Almighty God who made us and before whom we would die, were we to see you face-to-face. And it is because you exist and are such a God that it is so monumentally stupid and perverse of us to speak or act as if there were many gods, or as if we looked to the sky and found you no bigger than our imaginings, no different than our desires.

And it was while we railed against you or quietly dismissed you that you stooped low to have mercy on us, and yet still as your children, we struggle to trust you and wholly give you our allegience. Instead of enjoying the good with which you bless us and praising you for it, we slyly give it our true love. Forgive us again, Lord. We praise you for who you are and want to know you better, for this knowledge is what we need to fill our hearts and make good our deeds. Help me, help my people, with this.