Louie Giglio - The Game of Thrones Ends Here
Wow, I’m telling you, this chapter is so special; this moment is so significant in time, history, and eternity, and we get to be part of it today. I want to lift up four big ideas from Revelation chapter 4. The first big idea is that we see the Throne of God. I want you to notice how John expresses this in the NIV, which we were reading. It says, «After this, I looked, and there before me was a door standing open.»
Interestingly, that’s not how this text is originally written, so if you look at almost any other translation, you’ll see that in the ESV, it says, «After this, I looked, and behold.» Not, «After this, I looked and before me,» but «After this, I looked and behold, a door standing open in heaven.» I’m highlighting this because God wants us to see today that we have a role to play in this revelation unfolding. Our role is to look and behold what God is revealing to us. In other words, you see what you’re looking for, and God’s calling us today to ask: Are you looking? Are you perceiving? Are you beholding? Because I’m opening things before you, and I want you to see them clearly.
He says, «I looked,» and we’ll just take the ESV, «and behold, a door was standing open in heaven.» How powerful is this today? Heaven, according to this revelation moment, is not some faraway place because John is in the Spirit; he’s on the island of Patmos, but he’s in the Spirit. Suddenly, in the Spirit, he’s in the throne room of God, and a door is standing open before him in heaven. I believe God wants to invite us in today. Eternity, where God is, and heaven, along with everything we will see today, are not 10 billion miles away from us; they may only be as far away as the distance between one breath and the next. It’s like this reality we’ve talked about, living in two worlds: the heavenly world, the eternal world we will look into today, and the earthly world, where you and I live—what we see here on Earth, what we can touch and feel. But I want you to notice that these two worlds are overlapping, and we’re living in the overlap of this kingdom and the kingdom to come.
When we say we want Earth to touch heaven or heaven to touch Earth, we’re in that overlap. John, in the Spirit, in a rocky quarry on Patmos, is now seeing the throne room of God, and I believe what God wants to say to us today is: I’m closer than you think. The reality of heaven is nearer than we think; the kingdom of God is at hand, and it’s closer than any of us might believe. So he looks and sees a door standing open in heaven. The voice I first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, «Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.» At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne. There was a throne before him in heaven with someone seated on it. That’s the first thing I want us to note today: in the throne room of God, we see one seated. We see God seated, and we’re invited into this moment. Can we just take that in for a moment? We’re invited to see what’s happening in the throne room of God. We’re invited to understand what is going on at the epicenter of all existence. We’re invited in to see it.
I’ve been thinking about some of the places that Shelly and I have been and the things we’ve experienced in life—just small things here and there, but kind of cool experiences nonetheless. I was thinking about being in the Oval Office with a sitting president. I see the photos, and I’ve seen videos, but I know what it’s like to go into that room and sit on that piece of furniture. I’ve been there. I was thinking about our rocket experience and going to Mission Control, being in Mission Control during a launch, and knowing what it’s like to be in those private astronaut quarters under quarantine right before they launch, standing on one side of the glass while they’re on the other.
I know what it’s like to be in heart transplant surgery, looking down from ten feet away while someone’s life is being saved. I know what it’s like to be in the locker room at Jordan-Hare Stadium when Auburn takes down Alabama on their home field. I know what it’s like before the game, at halftime, and after the game. I’ve been there. There’s a picture that we have of Shelly sitting on a piano bench at the piano in Abbey Road Studio 2, the very piano that «Hey Jude» was written on, and we know what it’s like to be in that space where a lot of classic Beatles music was created.
We’ve gotten to be in many spaces, and maybe for you, none of those places matter. You’re like, «I don’t care about any of that; I just want to get back to the kitchen where they make Jenny’s ice cream.» That’s really where I want to be. It doesn’t matter what your special place is; it’s just that thought of, «I wonder what it’s really like to be there.» Do you see this today? We’re getting a glimpse into the very throne of God. God wants you to know what’s happening in there; He’s inviting you in so that you can understand what is happening in the throne room of Almighty God. What is happening in the throne room? There is a throne, and one is seated on the throne.
We have talked about the background, and what’s happening culturally. We’ve discussed Domitian, the Roman Emperor, and how he projected himself to be a god—his throne was the mightiest throne on planet Earth. John is persecuted for his faith in Jesus by this earthly throne, but now he sees a heavenly throne. There is an earthly reality and an earthly jurisdiction, but now he sees the heavenly throne. At the end of the day, this is what he’s showing us: when it all comes down, there is just one throne. «I saw a throne, and one sitting on the throne.» At the epicenter of eternity, there is just one throne; that’s why the working title for this talk today is «The Game of Thrones Ends Here.» Because at the end of the day, we just see one throne, and we see the Lord God Almighty seated on that throne—not standing, not nervously looking around, not anxiously pacing, but seated on the throne. You know what that means to me? To see Him seated there means that God is confident in His place; He is assured in who He is. He’s unfazed by the counterfeits and the chaos; He is undisturbed by the tempest and the tyrants. He is seated on His throne.
Dozens of times, we see through the text that Christ is seated at the right hand of God. The only time we don’t see someone seated is in the account of Stephen being persecuted and stoned in Acts. In that moment, he has a vision of heaven just before he dies, saying he sees Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Everywhere else, you see Jesus in heaven seated at the right hand of God—in this instance, He is standing. Why? Because just like we read in these letters, someone is overcoming. When people overcome to the end, Jesus stands in their honor. Seated is God secure; do you see already why He’s inviting us into this moment? Because He wants us to live lives knowing there’s something secure, assured, and something we can be confident of.
What is it? It is the one who is seated on the throne. What does John say about Him? He begins to describe Him, and remember, we’ve said this many times; he’s reaching for the right words to fully describe what he sees in glory. He says, «And the one who sat there had the appearance—key word, not saying He was this but He appeared to be this—of Jasper and Carnelian.» These are two stones that are important in the story of scripture, and these two stones represent to us what God on the throne looks like. John is saying it was like—that’s the key word—appearance like Jasper and like Carnelian. So, you look up Jasper, and you will find it is a red stone; it can sometimes be yellow, streaky, or have a tan color mixed in—sometimes even green.
Now, when you look at Revelation 21, notice what you see about Jasper. It says toward the end, «He carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel.» This is the new heaven coming down, and it also looks like, «like Jasper,» and now he describes what the Jasper stone in glory looks like: clear as crystal. So, we go back to what John is describing of the one who is seated on the throne; his appearance we can now know was clear like crystal but also like this other stone he mentions, the Carnelian, which we know is a red stone. We see the brilliance, purity, radiance, and translucence of God in all of His majesty, and we see red, the sign that we see everywhere in the story of the redeeming grace of Almighty God. The one we will see in the very next chapter is Jesus Christ, the Lamb who was slain, now in this story being worshipped at the throne; His appearance was brilliant, beautiful, radiant, and awe-inspiring.
It’s more than he can describe, and it’s really more than we can understand. We just know: take the most precious gemstone, refine it to the most elegant level, shine it into the clearest and brightest light, and that’s what he sees sitting on the throne—that’s who he sees on the throne. He says, «A rainbow resembling an emerald encircled the throne.» We don’t know exactly what that looked like, but we know that a rainbow is a sign of peace; it is a sign of God making peace with man.
I saw recently this cloud, which is called a pileus cloud. Do you know what a pileus cloud is? This picture blew my mind. Check this out: this is a rainbow cloud, a pileus cloud. If I saw that, I think I would be taken up into heaven! It’s crazy! But then you realize that happened above some people’s houses in the sky and now here’s John; he’s in the throne room of God, and a rainbow resembling an emerald encircles the throne of God. You could say, «Oh man, the worlds are overlapping.» Heaven and Earth aren’t as far apart as we might have thought they were, because God can put that in the sky; surely, there is some glorious emerald-like rainbow that encircles His throne. Surrounding the throne were 24 other thrones, and seated on them were 24 elders; they were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads. We’ll come back to that, but notice verse 5: «From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings, and peals of thunder.»
It’s brilliant! The one sitting on the throne is brilliant, but He’s also powerful. He’s dispensing lightning from the throne. He’s showing us in this picture, as we peek into heaven, that final judgment comes from this throne. All authority and might come from this throne, and we’re going to see that it’s the greatest place on Earth, and we’re going to root all our hope, our lives, and our future in this place and in the one who is seated there. But make no mistake, again, God, in the very best way, is terrifying—not terrible, just terrifying. The kind of terrifying that wakes us up from our slumber and causes us to be on the edge of our seat, making us bow down in reverence and awe, standing with no words to simply adore the beauty, the majesty, the might, and the power of the righteousness that is God—the one who is seated on the throne.
The first thing we see when we look in the throne room of God is a throne and one seated there. But the second thing we see when we behold the open door before us is the mystery of a God who is three in one. Whenever we begin to talk about God—a one God in three persons, three in one—it’s complicated, and I’ve never apologized for that. This is the mystery of God, but we see it beautifully in this text. We look up above, and we see Jesus; He’s inviting John in. So there’s Jesus Himself, the Son of Man and the Son of God, in this moment inviting John to «come up here and see what must take place after this.» But then we also see that at the throne, not only is there lightning and rumblings and peals of thunder, but before the throne there were seven lamps blazing. These seven lamps, which we’ve mentioned many times already, are the seven spirits of God. More likely, the translation here is the Sevenfold Spirit of God—seven being completion.
This is the Holy Spirit, the completeness of the Spirit of God before the throne. So we have Jesus inviting us in, we have God the Father seated on the throne, and we have the Holy Spirit at the throne blazing. We see the three-in-one God all at work here, all equal. Nobody is vying for a position greater or different than anyone else’s, just recognizing that one God is now inviting us into the story. We know that seated on the throne is the Father, as Jesus mentions at the end of the last letter in the ones we looked at together. He says at the very end, «To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on His throne.»
So we’re seeing this God Almighty, and we’re going to see Him described in just a moment—the Lord God Almighty. We see the Son of God, who we will hear is the one who takes away the sins of the world, while the Holy Spirit is just there, hovering, filling and antheming everything that is happening, almost as if to say, «I don’t need a whole lot of credit; I’d be just happy shining a lot of light on the one who gave His life for the sins of the world so that we could stand before a throne like this in a moment like this in time.»
The third big idea we see in this text is that in the throne room, we see that God dwells in perpetual praise. We see these 24 elders, dressed in white with crowns of gold on their heads, and then we see from the throne peals of thunder. Before the throne, there was what looked like—a key phrase again—what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal. Then there were other creatures in the center and around the throne—four living creatures. They were covered with eyes in front and back; the first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, and the fourth was like a flying eagle. Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under their wings. Day and night, they never stop saying, «Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.» They never stop saying, «Holy, holy, holy.»
This triplet only appears with this characteristic of God because this word «holy» describes who is seated on this throne. He is set apart; He is distinct; He is in His own category, in His own league; He is different from everything and everybody. «Holy, holy, holy!» They never stop saying, «Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who is and who was and who is to come.»
And whenever the living creatures give glory, honor, and thanks to Him who sits on the throne and who lives forever and ever, the 24 elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives forever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and now say, «You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power.» Why? «For you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.»
Now just a footnote before we move past this: that includes you today. Again, you’re not random; you’re not accidental; you’re not incidental; you didn’t just happen to appear. You’re not the product of some long evolutionary process; you were created by God, and because of God’s will, you have your very being today. That’s the essence of your worth; the essence of your value; that’s the identity of all identities: you are created by God, and because of His plan, purpose, will, and desire, you have your being today.
These elders recognize that; they recognize that He started it all, He’s responsible for it all; He is the one that all life emanates from. All blessing, every good thing we have and experience has come from God. Every good and perfect gift comes down from above, from the Father of Lights, in whom there is no shifting shadow; it has all come from Him. Therefore, He’s worthy of everything that we have; He’s worthy of our worship.
«You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power.» That’s why we’re in this place today. We’re not here because life’s going great—some of you are going through the hardest of times, while some of you are experiencing the best of times—but we’ve gathered today because we recognize we’re standing in a grace-filled story, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. We are new creatures in Christ, woven into a heavenly story. We have access to the very throne room of God and the God who is seated on that throne. We are part of that story, on a journey to overcome and enter into the worship that is happening right now, where they never stop saying, «Holy, holy, holy.»
I will be in that chorus; I will be in that place; I will join my voice to that anthem, and I will sing with them, «Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.» Recognizing that grace has brought us out of the depths and placed our feet on a rock. We say today, not based on circumstance, but based on the cross, the empty tomb, and the risen Christ: «Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and praise and all the power.»
You’re worthy of it, God, for You created everything. You created me, and by Your will, I exist and have my being. There’s a lot of debate about the 24 thrones and the 24 elders. Most people you read will say that it represents 12 and 12, that 12 represents the old, and 12 represents the new. It’s the 12 apostles in the new part of the story, and it’s the 12 tribes of Israel from the old part of the story.
Interestingly, another footnote: you can dig down into any part of this you want and spend as much time as you care to. But the tribes of Israel all had a stone, and Aaron, the first high priest, had a breastplate with four rows of three stones. Each one of those stones had the name of one of the 12 tribes of Israel engraved on it. Interestingly, the first stone is the Jasper, and the last is the Carnelian. So even in his appearance, which was like Jasper and Carnelian, John was seeing the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. These 12 tribes were the forerunners of faith, while the other 12 thrones represent the fulfillment of all prophecy.
Now we have the 12 apostles in the story, carrying forth what God had said He would do. I think that’s a great plausible explanation, but honestly, no one can say with 100% certainty who is on the 24 thrones, and here’s the big story of Revelation that I’m trying to grasp for my life, and I would offer you to consider as we’re moving through for yours: maybe I don’t need to wrestle too much with the 24 thrones and who the elders are.
We know they’re overcomers of some kind; they’re dressed in white; we see that in the overcoming language in the letters before. They have crowns of gold on their heads; we see that in the overcoming language of the letters that came before. We know those overcomers somehow represent the church and the kingdom of God, both up to Jesus and from Jesus. They’re representing the faith of all of us somehow, but I’m not going to get too bogged down in who they are because the point of Revelation 4 is not telling me who the 24 elders are; it’s telling me what the 24 elders do. That’s what God wants us to understand today. He doesn’t want us to walk away going, «Man, that was fascinating! I now know who the 24 elders are, and I can write a big thesis on all of that.»
He’s saying, «No, I don’t really need you to get that part of the story. What I wanted you to see when the door was open was what these 24 elders are doing.» And we know for certain what they’re doing: as soon as the four living creatures exclaim once again, «Holy, holy, holy,» the 24 elders fall down off their thrones, lay their crowns before the throne, and say, «Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things, and by Your will they were created and have their being.»
So I love this; the four living creatures—what do they do? Well, they never stop saying! The second thing I want you to know about the four living creatures: they’ve never missed anything. They never stopped saying «Holy, holy, holy.» These four living creatures, as far as we know, have never been to the Alps; they’ve never been to the coast of France; they’ve never been to Hawaii; they’ve never seen a snow-capped mountain. They have been at the throne of God for all of existence and eternity, declaring «Holy, holy, holy.»
We see their forerunners in Isaiah 6 when he has a vision of heaven, and in heaven, there are these seraphim. One cries out to another, «Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory.» And now we’re coming into eternity, future before us and eternity past behind us, and we see these living creatures whose whole existence is to worship God and sing the brightness, beauty, radiance, and power of the one who sits on the throne. They’re not saying, «I wish we could do something else.» They are proclaiming the glory above every single glory!
They never stop saying, and then the 24 elders never stop falling. If they never stop saying, they never stop casting. If they never stop saying, they never stop saying, «Worthy!» When we see into the throne room of God, we see that God dwells in perpetual praise. The atmosphere of God is worship. God has always existed in worship. Here are a few takeaways that I hope will inform our worship, both personally and corporately:
Number one, and this is terrible grammar but great theology: God has never not been worshipped. There has never been a moment in eternity that God hasn’t existed in this atmosphere of perpetual praise. Sometimes we think, «Well, the gathering here starts at XYZ time.» We always start with corporate worship, and that’s how we kick things off. But we never start the worship; we always join the worship because God has never not been worshipped.
When you lay your head down on your pillow tonight, and you’re tapping out, you’re done for the day; you’ve given it your best, but you’ve run out of steam, and it’s time for you to close your eyes and drift off to sleep, I hope the last thing you listen for right before you fade away is those four living creatures and the seraphim we see, the cherubim, in the Old Testament vision. I hope you can hear them saying, «Holy, holy, holy.» You might be thinking, «I believe it, but I need to close my eyes now.» And when you open them, I hope the first thing you sense and know is, «Holy, holy, holy!» And the whole time you slept, they never stopped saying, and the elders never stopped falling, casting, and saying. Worship never starts with us; we always join in the worship that is perpetual around the throne of God.
Secondly, I want us to see that you cannot be in God’s presence and not respond with extravagant worship. That’s one of the core values of our house. Not just some kind of worship—not just, «Okay, I’m singing. I got one hand up; I’m feeling good about it.» No, that’s not understanding and not seeing; it’s not beholding the one who is seated on the throne. Because when we are in the presence of the one seated on the throne, the response we see here—and these are heavyweights, these are overcomers—somehow they have garnered thrones around the throne of God, but even those around the throne of God are not saying, «We’re up here, and we’re doing pretty good.»
No! When «Holy, holy, holy» comes, they hit the ground, take off their crowns, and throw their crowns at the feet of the throne. Then they say «Worthy.» There’s a sense that you cannot be in the presence of God and not respond with extravagant worship.
If you’re not sensing that extravagant response, then you don’t need to try harder; you need to see better. If that hasn’t been a part of your story—wanting to fall down before the Lord God Almighty, wanting to give everything valuable as thanks for being the originator of everything you have of value—then you don’t need to try to worship harder; you need to see better. You don’t need to find a different church; you don’t need to find a different expression or different style. You need to see better because it’s not about the song—it’s not about the style; it’s not about the church. It’s about a revelation of Jesus Christ that God is inviting us into.
There’s an open door before you today that we can see into the throne room of God, and it is not casual. There’s nothing about it that’s commonplace. There’s nothing ordinary; there’s nothing run-of-the-mill. There’s nothing that feels like, «Oh, we’ve done this before.» There’s no routine; there is just brilliance, beauty, awe, wonder, and grace that allows us to be there.
We’ve said this in different ways, but another thing about worship I want us to see, both personally and corporately, is worship is giving back to God what He has freely given us. We say around here that worship is giving God His breath back. A lot of people trip over that; they don’t understand what we’re saying. But all we’re saying is: we have breath in our lungs because God gave us that breath. So when we breathe out that breath, it should be praise because He gave us the breath of life. With the breath of life, we thank and honor the one who gave us the breath of life.
And it’s His breath in our lungs—that’s what we sing in that song, «Great Are You, Lord.» It’s Your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise; we pour out our praise. But it’s not just our breath; for these elders, it was their crown. This is their overcoming; this is how they endured.
This is our testimony. But they’re realizing: wait a minute, how did we get the testimony? How did we overcome? How did we make it? We made it by the grace of God. We made it by the infilling of the Holy Spirit. We made it because of the promises of God’s word. We made it because He fulfills His purpose for our lives. We made it because He protected us, guided us, filled us, used us, and moved in and through us. We made it because of Him. This crown that we were rewarded is because of Him.
This is His crown, not our crown. So thank you for being kind and inviting us into the story, but without You, we would not have overcome and endured to the end. So as we’re falling down to say, «Worthy to You,» because they never stop saying, «Holy, holy, holy,» with every testimony we have, we want to praise You; with everything we’ve accomplished, we want to praise You.
We’re just giving back to God what He has so freely given to us. People ask me all the time, «How do you get a worshiping church?» Well, it’s not by changing who leads worship, how you lead worship, or poking people, saying, «Come on, let’s sing a little louder; let’s lift this a little stronger.» That’s not how you get a worshiping church.
You get a worshiping church by preaching the cross of Jesus Christ and hoping that people get a revelation that everything they have, including their breath, has been freely given to them by a glorious, brilliant, awe-inspiring God seated on the throne. At the end of the day, there are 24 of these other thrones, but there is just one throne that is worthy, and that is Jesus.
The last thing I want us to see, as we fly over this amazing chapter, is that the reality of the throne room is our anchor in the storm. This glimpse is not just a future glimpse—oh, that’s where we’re going! Oh, that’s what’s happening in heaven! That’s what will happen in the future! That’s what is to come!
Jesus said, «No, the glimpse is not about something out there; it ties closely to what’s going on right here, right now.» I need an anchor in the waves and in the storm. I need something I can be sure of; I need to drop anchor in a place that will hold me no matter how intense it gets. John is hanging on to his faith in his late 80s, possibly early 90s, in a rocky quarry persecution atmosphere. But he still holds on, and now he has this vision, which I guarantee you will seal it for him until the end.
He knows it’s not somebody else’s throne that will determine what happens in his life; it is the throne that will determine what happens in his life. Just like the one seated on it is assured and confident, that gives him assurance and confidence in the storm.
It was interesting; I was looking a little deeper underneath this text where it says they never stopped saying, «day and night, these four living creatures.» They never stopped saying. This word «saying,» originally had in its meaning to lay down as sleep, but the meaning of it migrated in time to lay the argument to rest. You know, sometimes you’d be in a little bit of a back-and-forth with someone, and here comes the final word—now it’s like, «Okay, we’re putting that to rest.»
We just put that baby down; that’s the final word. That’s the final say; the argument has been laid to rest. So, it started out with a meaning of «lay down to sleep» and ended up more in a legal meaning: we settle the matter; we put this baby down; it’s done; it’s finished. That’s the word that’s behind them saying constantly, «Holy, holy, holy.» They’re saying, «It is settled! It is done!» This argument is over; the case is closed. «Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come!» Case closed! Done! Finished! No more conversation, no more discussion, no more debate; it’s done!
But it started with the meaning «lay down to sleep,» and I realized that’s it! That is one of the great benefits of being able to see through the open door into the throne room of God. I can drop anchor right here, no matter what kind of storm I’m in because it is settled—who is on the throne? Who is running this universe? Who is in charge of history? Who’s making His plans come to His conclusion? Who’s calling the shots, and who is in control of everything? He is seated on the throne of thrones, therefore, when I lay down in my storm tonight, I can lay down and know that they are declaring, «It’s done! We put this baby to sleep!»
So I can rest; I can find peace; I can find comfort in knowing I’ve seen the throne of God. I didn’t get the vision; I wasn’t taken up. I wasn’t there trying to describe it; I wasn’t saying, «The appearance was like this and like that.» I wasn’t there with the four living creatures; I don’t know; I’ve never seen anything like them before. One had a face like a man, a face like an ox, a face like a lion, a face like an eagle in flight! They were covered with eyes all over, front and back, under their wings—I’ve never seen anything like it!
I wasn’t given that assignment, but the person who was given that assignment is holding the phone up for us today so that we can hear what is happening in the throne room of Almighty God. Think of that! You will spend every one of your days on this Earth now knowing what is being sung around the throne of God; if that does not give us a place to drop anchor in our storm, then we have missed the power of the glimpse we have today into the very epicenter of it all.
This collection is called «All-Consuming Fire,» and we’re realizing that the throne is the all-consuming fire. The Holy Spirit is burning like a lamp there—the all-consuming fire. Jesus, His eyes are like fires, His face like the sun in full strength and brilliance. He is the all-consuming fire. So what gets consumed when we step into the throne room of God? In the throne room of God, this is what is consumed: everything that is not holy, holy, holy gets consumed in the throne room of Almighty God.
We want to open our lives to that consuming fire today because this is our reality, and it is closer than you think. Our worlds are overlapping right now, and the door that is standing open is not lightyears away; it’s right here on your aisle of Patmos today, calling out: «God, give me spiritual eyes to see that the kingdom is closer than I think,» so that that kingdom can hold sway over this kingdom. That throne can allow me to get my marching orders for life. I want to move closer to unhindered praise. I want to move into the reality of never stopping saying «Holy, holy, holy.» I want to move into the reality that if I’m around the throne of God and I’m worshiping Him, there’s nothing else on this Earth that I need.
I’m not missing out on anything. I want to assume that posture; I want to fall down, and I want to gladly—not have someone pry it off me—gladly lay my crown down at the feet of Jesus.