When we forget we’re helpless hopeless dogs without God, when we forget we’re to be woed as much as everyone else, when we forget we have no rights and are in no position to negotiate with the Master or control anything in his backyard, we do stupid things.  We walk into church, discover it’s banjo Sunday and get ticked off because that’s “not music we can worship to.” We have to point out what everyone else is doing wrong and see them punished for it.  We’re drawn into conversation by an awkward person we don’t have anything in common with and we feel superior and inconvenienced and hurriedly wriggle out and away.  Someone stabs us in the back at work and we pull the knife out and start slicing our way to a payback.  Our neighbor’s daughter gets knocked up and we can’t wait to spread the dirt.  Our contentment hinges upon how well our expectations are being met and our rights respected. We spend as if our income is ours and not God’s and get angry when we’re told differently.  We bargain with God as if we have something to trade him for what we want.

Stupid stuff like that.  Like dogs dressed in Master’s clothes.

Proskuneo is knowing our place (and it’s not in God’s chair) and knowing ours (on our backs ready to obey) and being perfectly content with whatever God decides to do with us and for us.  It’s saying Not my will but yours be done, God.  What do you want with me?

Lick.



Prosuneo is used in one of the verses quoted most often when worship is talked about.  In John 4:23 Jesus says Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.

In the Old Testament the word for this kind of submissiveness is shachah.  It means to bow down to a superior, to literally put one’s head to the ground, prostrate.  This is the position assumed by a soldier or servant of a king, one ready to receive orders from a boss.  People in this position aren’t issuing commands.  They’re taking them.

Shachah is found all over the Old Testament, like in Psalm 5:7 which says But I, by your great mercy, will come into your house; in reverence will I bow down toward your holy temple.

It’s becoming clearer isn’t it?  God wants the kind of worshipers that rollover well, know their place and are ready to do whatever their Master wants.

Other Parts Of This Series:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6