Thu, Feb 20th - 5:33PM
Worship: In Search of the Real Thing
Most worship leaders/pastors use some sort of blueprint when planning their worship services. It might mean simply taking the topic of the sermon/message and surrounding it with appropriate music. Some have discovered that although singing is important, it is not all there is to worship and they include drama, videos, dance, and other things. Some splurge by throwing in a hurried altar call at the end of the service. But this is not what Christians in the early church were actually doing. Yes, they sang psalms and did readings from the Old Testament, but these were reinterpreted in light of the risen Messiah. Their worship literally revolved around the Gospel. They focused on the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ through the accounts of the apostles. They celebrated the Lord's Table every time they came together in each other's homes. What about our churches today? How often do we hear explicit reference made to the work of Christ? Have we been placed beyond the Gospel? It would seem that we, as a group, have spent too many years wandering around in abstract things, not connecting what God has said to people's lives. We also seem to have lost the ability to connect what God is saying to the most important things that He has already said. What has happened to Luther's principle of balancing the Law and Gospel? For people seeking God, who enter our services could have a difficult time to get an accurate picture of God if they come in on a several week span of "God's Money Management Miracles." Real worship does not simply communicate a "truth for the day"; it involves people with the Savior. Therefore, we must keep Christ Jesus central. As I have said before, real worship takes place when we believers interact wholeheartedly with the Good News. It takes place when we enter into the reality of our redemption through song, prayer, the Word, Communion, and all of the arts. We can't remove the Gospel from our worship services for how will unbelievers find out about it? Are we too concerned that they will be offended by it? Jesus was not very concerned about people becoming offended by what He proclaimed. The apostles were not too concerned either. Paul came out and stated, "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes (Romans 1:16)." Perhaps the fear of offending people with the Gospel is indicative of much deeper problems. Perhaps too many of us are very willing to do whatever it takes to get unbelievers into the building but not to bring them to Christ? If this is true, what a tragic day for the born-again church of Jesus Christ. It would seem that not enough of us take Paul's Roman 1:16 statement seriously, perhaps because we do not read it often enough anymore. In this week's upcoming worship service, are there moments built into it where the unbeliever will hear the message: "It's okay to be hurting, okay to have doubts, okay to cry out to God from the depths of your pain." Or will that person go away convinced that Christianity is only for people who have nice smiles, have nothing going wrong in their lives, have nice jobs, and aren't scared to death of the future? Good worship exalts the God made known to us in Jesus Christ. Good worship allows us to know God at the most intimate levels. As Ecclesiastes 3:11 indicates to us, the desire for unimpeded communion with our Creator is imprinted on our very souls. Each person is seeking someone with whom they can open the book of their life and know that that person loves them no matter what the book's "contents" may be. "No matter what" love is a rare commodity in our world. It is to be found in God. That is all for today, beloved! Let's start working towards making our worship genuine, making it real. Let's get back to our first love, as Christ tells one of the churches in the Book of Revelation. Let's get fired up, revived! I hope each person reading this post will revisit Paul's message in Romans about not being ashamed of the Gospel. It is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who chooses to believe! Amen. ~Eric
Comment (0)
|
Fri, Feb 14th - 3:35PM
WORSHIP: In Search of the Real Thing
Today, lets look at knowledge of who we are worshiping. It is essential for us to know who it is we worship in order for it to be real worship. We worship the God whom the Bible has revealed as eternal, unchanging, holy, righteous, wrathful, just, sovereign, jealous, merciful, and loving. God's character as revealed by the Word of God must be an integral part of our services. Sproul states, "Unless we understand what God is like, nothing else in the Bible will make sense. Apart from understanding God's justice, wrath, mercy, and holiness, there is no way we can fully understand the message of God's forgiveness and grace found in the Gospel. The cross will make no sense to us if we do not understand why God's character required it." So, in order to claim to be participating in Christian worship, we must make sure we do arrive at the cross and include the Resurrection! WE do not get stuck in the pages of the Old Testament with a partial image. Scripture makes: If we want to know the Father, if we want a relationship with God, we must look at the Son. Jesus said, "Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father (John 14:9)." Hebrews 1:3 affirms Jesus' words: "Jesus Christ is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of God's being." John 1:18 reveals to us that no one has seen the unveiled God, none except God the One and Only who is at the Father's side and has been made known to us by God. That is Jesus Christ.
Christ Jesus is how we know God. He is the only way we know God. He is also the only way for us to access God. Hebrews 10:19-20 informs us of this reality, that only by the blood of Jesus has a new and living way been opened for us through to the presence of God the Father. Logically we are forced to realize that the only way to worship God is through Jesus Christ. This line of reasoning is fine, but we can't stop there for Jesus Christ is no longer walking around on earth for He sits at the right hand of God's throne in heaven. Again, logically we are forced to realize that the only way to worship God through Jesus Christ is to involve God's Holy Spirit given to each believer. The Holy Spirit is the specific manifestation of God's presence and is always fused in some way to the work of Christ, He is not operating in some sphere of influence all His own. As you may be realizing here, we are entering into the "Trinity Zone." The Godhead is the ultimate expression of unity. As Christ speaks only what the Father ordains (John 3:34), so the Holy Spirit speaks and acts only according to Christ. He was sent in the name of Christ, and His sole purpose is to glorify and testify to Christ (John 14:26; 16:13).
It is ironic that there is so little of Christ Jesus and the Gospel in the majority of evangelical worship today. To be an "evangelical" means to proclaim the "evangel" or the Good News of Christ Jesus. We see little mention of Christ during our worship service. Christ's life, death, and resurrection have become increasingly irrelevant in church worship services. There is praying, singing, performing, and preaching all done as if we are completely on our own. Hear the words of William Hendricks: "Grace is becoming theological fiction. Modern-day American Protestantism has given back a lot of theological ground that Luther, Calvin, and the other Reformers in its heritage paid for in tears, and that Christ paid for in blood...Most churches preach grace but live works." Perhaps the greatest tragedy is that a system promising forgiveness to people and freedom from guilt ends up making so many of them feel guilty. Massive expectations are forcing many to stagger under this burden and try as they might, they can never rest in the confidence that God is pleased with them. Once these people discover what has been denied to them they make a beeline for the door, never to return.
The reality is the biblical understanding that it is not us but God who is in the transformation business. For evangelism to work, God is the chief actor and agent of our salvation. Believers must come to know that there are over 120 references to grace in the New Testament and that the majority of those times grace has nothing to do with salvation! Nothing! Most of the grace passages refer to different aspects of Christian living. This is nothing less than what the Reformation reinstated to the church over five hundred years ago! Sola Scriptura, sola fides, sola gratia. By the absolute authority of Scripture we do know that it is only through the gift of faith and by the power of God's grace that we have access to both a saving and sanctifying relationship with God. If the gospel is not the only power for living the Christian life, why would the author of Hebrews tell us to "fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2)?" "By one sacrifice Jesus has made perfect forever those who are being made holy (Hebrews 10:14)." This verse tells the believer that the Word is the power for living out the Christian life forever.
The Law can only tell me what I need to do; the Gospel tells me what God has done for me and gives me the power to do what the Law requires of me (Romans 7:4-6, Ephesians 3:16-21). The Law shows me my sins, the Gospel forgives me for my sins and frees me from being a slave to them (Romans 6:18). Why do we wonder why there is such a poor performance level in the church at large and why people's lives are falling apart? It isn't because we preach too much grace. It is because the grace has not gone deep enough. When grace goes deep enough, it touches the deep rootedness of desire that causes me to want to please God. The apostle Paul lays it out very clearly for us. It is only by the power of Christ's shed blood and resurrection that believers can bear any fruit for god (Romans 7:4-6). We must stop putting our confidence in ourselves and trust completely in Christ's forgiving and transforming power. This means that we need to glorify a relevant Jesus and put the life-giving Gospel back where it belongs, at the heart of our worship service.
That is all for today my friends! May the Holy Spirit of Christ lead you into all truth and knowledge! Grace and peace be with you.
~Eric
Comment (0)
|
Mon, Feb 10th - 9:44PM
WORSHIP: In Search of the Real Thing
ALLOWING WORSHIP TO WITNESS
People who are searching for God can pick up a religious experience at any New Age quick-stop shop. But they won't be taking Jesus Christ out with them in their bags. What these people need to see in our church worship services is the exaltation of the God incarnate and present with God's people. This sort of effective worship will witness to both believer and unbeliever alike. One will be called into a deeper walk with Christ while the other will be called to enter into a walk with Christ. For Christians our worship has to be evangelism, otherwise we are not obeying our Lord and Savior.
What is worship evangelism? Gerrit Gustafson defines it as "wholehearted worshipers calling the whole world to the whole hearted worship of God...and the fusion of the power of God's presence with the power of the gospel." This is what happens when we allow worship to be what it was meant to be: a resource for incomplete and broken people to find completion and wholeness in God's presence. In our worship each day our hearts ought to be singing "How great, is our God! Sing with me! How great is our God? All the world will see, how great, how great, is our God!" If we bring this sort of passion and love to our worship services, we will hardly be able to wait to get there, for we will know that something is happening there. Think about this: in all of the best relationships there is always something "happening." So why not in our relationship with Christ? Do we not love Him more than life itself? It is therefore time to make worship an evidence of a dynamic relationship with God that outsiders can easily see and feel for themselves.
We must come to accept and understand that ongoing relationship depends upon four basic elements: nearness, knowledge, vulnerability, and interaction. Having all four of these elements make a relationship fulfilling and significant. Nearness means that we spend time in the other person's presence; knowledge means that we get to know who the other person is, what makes that person different from all other individuals; vulnerability means that we risk rejection and allow ourselves to become known; and finally, interaction means that we participate in an ongoing dialogue of both words and deeds, a dialogue using a language both of us can understand. When we stop and think about this, these four elements are also the four "relational" ingredients, the basic building blocks for any true worship service that will witness and nourish the body of Christ's disciples.
NEARNESS
When the person of God is revealed to me in our worship, there is an electricity, an atmosphere of expectancy, joy, hope, and peace that settles over me. Tears of joy will run down my cheeks unbidden, I'll find myself unable to sing. For me, I need to always remember God's promise found in Matthew 18:20: "Where two or three come together in My name, there am I with them." Later on in Matthew 28:20 He says that surely He will be with us always, even to the very end of this world. Contradictions? It would seem that the only logical explanation is that Jesus is speaking about a different kind of presence in the first passage, something more than just God's omnipresence. For a past example of this "presence" we can look back in the Old Testament to when God was present within the Tabernacle. It is the revealed presence of God in a certain location. Some have called it God's manifest presence. Whatever we wish to label it as, God desires to remove our blindfolds within corporate worship and give us an extraordinary, breathtaking glimpse of divine radiance. God desires for us to come away changed, transformed into something other than what we were before we ever entered the service.
Most of us crave this extra "glimpse of God", for with any experience of God's nearness comes all the blessings of His divine nature: renewal (Hosea 6:3; Acts 3:19), power for change (II Corinthians 3:17-18), deliverance (Psalm 97:3), comfort (Isaiah 51:12), joy (Psalm 16:11; Isaiah 51:11), and peace (Isaiah 9:6). It is all of these things that people everywhere are longing for and in search of. Too often pastors and worship leaders rush through their prepackaged service formats without once recognizing God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as a supernatural reality. R.C. Sproul made this statement: "Worship is in absolute crisis in America in the 20th century...people do not sense the presence of God. We've done everything in our power to make people comfortable, but we feel cut off from the heavenly place." Too many unchurched people feel that Christianity has absolutely nothing special to offer them. What's worse, believers are so used to not having and sensing God's presence that we don't even miss it!
So who is ultimately responsible for the experience of God's presence during worship, the worshiper or God? We can't be thinking that we are waiting for God to show up. He is already there where two or three gather in His name. That logically means that the worshiper is responsible. God's presence is always something that we "come into." Abraham came into the presence of God. Moses came into the presence of God. Jacob also came into the presence of God. It is exactly why, after his dream at Bethel, Jacob exclaimed, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it...How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God (Genesis 28:16-17)." When it came to the Tabernacle, the people were to enter into the outer courts of the meeting tent, to come close to the presence of God. As they traveled across the desert they saw before them a column of fire by night and a column of smoke by day, leading them ever onward to their promised destination: the land of abundance. God's presence was there with them as they journeyed. God's presence today is with each believer as they journey through this world on their way to heaven's gate. Today His presence simply is not a column of fire nor of smoke, it is His Holy Spirit dwelling within each of us. So it is a matter of God waiting to reveal Himself, but He is also waiting for us choose to draw near to Him. Psalm 145:18 tells us, "The LORD is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth." To have an experience of God's presence Truth is always prerequisite. The Truth is God's Word. God chooses to be revealed to us through His Word, not just the written or preached Word, but through that which is infused into our songs, prayers, communion celebrations, baptisms, testimonies, annointings, and presentations. Truth is so important because the Word is Christ Jesus, Truth incarnate (John 1:14). Clearly we actually meet God in the Word.
If so many worship services incorporate Scripture readings and responses on a weekly basis, why is God still absent? It must be that God chooses to be revealed, not through bland dispensing of the Word, but through a living and active Word, that which indwells and takes root in our hearts (Colossians 3:16). It is a matter of honoring God with our lips while our hearts are somewhere else (Matthew 15:8). This sort of worship is in vain, worthless. In John 8:47 hear Jesus' words to the Pharisees: "He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God." Ouch! That hurts. Come on Christians! Wake up! What kind of relationship with God are you actually in? Platonic or love?
Another element within worship that God uses to be revealed to us is in our heartfelt praise of Him. This means all of the terms we might think of for exalting God for who He is and what He has done: worship, adoration, glory, thanksgiving, etc.). When we exalt God in our worship and when we do so in the name of Christ Jesus, God is made manifest among us (Matthew 18:20). So worship leaders, if we are not loading up our services with the Living indwelling Word, and if we are not giving God our sincere and heartfelt praise, no amount of lackluster recitations, programmed enthusiasm, or stage technique will ably manufacture God's presence. Unfortunately worship leaders and pastors, who we are as worshipers or who we are not does make a big difference as to whether or not people sense God's presence. We can't perform our way into God's heart nor can we invoke God's glory with holy-sounding phrases. Hear the words of veteran worship leader Brian Doerksen: "When I stand before people to lead worship, I know full well that I am not able to convince anyone to worship God by trying to talk them into it or by stirring their emotions. My first desire and task is to worship God myself, to give Him my life and love again and again...My only prayer and hope is that God comes and breathes His life into the offering of all our worship and lives...In that light I intend to live out my life as an offering of worship."
I would say that that ought to be the approach of each and every believer, each and every day. Worship God in spirit and in Truth. To walk the Way. To live out the new life given to us by Christ. That is all for today, beloved! Grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you each and every step of your way.
~Eric
Comment (0)
|
Tue, Feb 4th - 6:24PM
WORSHIP: In Search of the Real Thing
Brothers and sisters, we simply can't hoard all of the "good stuff." We must become willing to ungrudgingly share with strangers The Story. We can minister to strangers through small groups, parenting and marriage classes, food pantries, singles' events, divorce recovery groups, AA and NA groups, and community based events. But even with all of these good things, something huge is missing from the overall picture. That missing piece from the mosaic is worship. In many churches it is functionally shut off to unbelievers. Why do this when God has hammered home the point over and over about opening worship up to all peoples who want to be there. Why prevent people from having ready access to something as potentially life-changing, healing, and beneficial as an experience of true worship of the Living God? Outside of our daily walk with Christ, worship is the single most powerful tool at our disposal for satisfying the hunger of starving, broken souls, for tearing down spiritual fortresses of pride and unbelief. Worship is a tool for ushering in true joy.
Is worship meant to be a reward for attaining spiritual maturity? Or, is it meant to facilitate spiritual maturity? How about some more questions. Is God revealed only to an elite group of spiritually "fit" people? If so, then Moses, Jacob, and a ton of other biblical figures would not qualify. How is spiritual maturity measured in our congregations, and do all of the people attending worship services measure up? If some fail to measure up, do we ask them to please excuse themselves? If we do limit who can attend worship services, where can the less-than-mature Christian and the stranger go to have a healing, interactive, supernatural encounter with the Living God? See where these questions are forcing us to go? Are we going to choose to wall off our worship of God so that only those who meet our list of criteria can touch the face of God? Worse yet, will our lack of spiritual fervor blind us to the fact that we are not actually worshiping God unless it is done in spirit and in truth? A crucial question then becomes whether or not the believers within your congregation are really worshiping God at all when they gather together each week. That must be resolved before anything else can be fixed. Worship is not just for the spiritually mature. It is for the spiritually hungry, which now includes more people than we ever realized in the past. God is searching for worshipers (Jesus reply to the lawyer's question tells us this), and you could be one of them!
Can I force my way into the presence of God? No. Hebrews 10:19-22 makes it crystal clear that the blood of Christ Jesus, not titles, proficiency, or maturity, is our only access to a holy God. What this means is that each worship service, people at all stages of their faith journey have the potential of being met by God directly. So, we need to be creating an atmosphere, an environment, of unparalleled welcome and acceptance in our worship centers. All are welcome, for God meets people where they are. Our churches must be public spaces. Each person in the beginning come and gather as "strangers" with others; we all come in on the same level. Everyone is here for the very first time, everyone.
We believers must come to accept the fact that worship is a leveler of the playing field. Sixty-two percent of born-again believers think "there is no such thing as absolute truth." Forty-two percent either agree strongly or somewhat that "if a person is generally good or does enough good things for others during his/her life, he/she will earn a place in heaven." (RC Sproul, Power Religion: The Selling Out of the American Church). It would appear then, that the behavior and priorities of born-again Christians and non-Christians are identical in every area except in religious practice. This is confirmed by 50% of born-again Christians saying that "the main purpose in life is enjoyment and personal fulfillment." (George Barna). But during authentic worship, we all must come to the foot of the cross, and none of us can boast of anything that we have accomplished. If there is any goodness, any righteousness in us at all, it is only because of the Cross of Christ. Each of us need to be saying, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner."
Turning our worship services into evangelistic camp-meetings is a serious mistake. When we convert the worship service, when we gear everything to an altar call at the end - we distort the purpose of the worship service. What has happened within too many congregations across America is that the Billy Graham crusade atmosphere has been adopted to worship services. But evangelism isn't worship, for the intent of the service is directed toward people and not towards God. We must relearn that worship is directed towards God and not towards people; worship's purpose is to glorify God. Locking evangelism into only one particular expression we end up constricting our ministries and fail to honor God's infinite creativity and power. In Acts 16 it is seen how God used worship to evangelize unbelievers in a Philippian jail. "About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them (verse 25)." Here were two men who had been beaten and were chained to the walls, worshiping God! There was something honest and genuine about their worship that drew the other prisoners into listening to them rather than jeering them. The two men were witnessing, announcing the kingdom of heaven, and elicited a response. The results? The jailor came to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior. So evangelism comes in many forms and shapes and sizes. Strangers also come to know Christ in ways other than revivals and camp-meetings. Worship is one of them.
What is a hidden benefit of worship evangelism? Worship services happen each and every week so strangers can keep on coming back to experience God's presence, to hear and learn about Jesus, to witness Him in action, and begin to lower their personal walls. In open worship there is no pressure to make a decision before the end of the service. There is more time for the process of coming to faith and more time to observe others participate in their personal faith. I will reiterate: in effective worship , worship that witnesses, the central purpose remains unchanged: worshipers interacting with God. Effective worship needs to be as transparent as possible for it is the gospel in motion. Everything that we do each worship service should be as sensitive and understandable to unbelievers as we can possibly make it. We need to apply what Paul says in I Corinthians 14:23-25 to worship. We are being prophetic as we speak out the truth of God in our worship, as we are all proclaiming who Jesus is and what He's done. We must do this since it is what The Story is all about.
Perhaps you are wondering if unbelievers can actually worship? In John 4:23-24 Jesus makes it clear that those who would worship God must do so in spirit and in truth. Unbelievers are still being drawn to the Truth and thus can't yet worship in the Truth. However, by the Spirit of God who is drawing these people, the things of God are being revealed. These people are capable of some spiritual understanding and discernment. Nicodemus was able to discern that Jesus had come from God (John 3:1-2). Before he sought out God, God was already seeking him out. We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to be in pursuit (John 6:44). Another factor we must always keep in mind is that none of us can know what resides within the stranger's heart and soul, only God knows for sure what lays there hidden from our limited sight.
What can be known is that much can be learned by the stranger through simple observation. According to Hippolytus, there was a formal two to three year period designated by many New Testament congregations in which the unbeliever attended worship merely as an observer, or "catecumenate." More and more groups, such as Promise Keepers, are including a half hour of worship in their main sessions. This is to provide opportunities for both believer and unbeliever to come into the presence of Christ and be touched.
We can't afford to keep on believing the old axiom, "Unbelievers can't relate to worship." This concept has more to do with the weak nature of our worship services and elitism than it has to do with any divine law concerning unbelievers and worship of God.
That is all for today beloved! I hope and pray that some of you become blessed by the reading of these posts, and that your perspective on true worship begins to be transformed by the Spirit of God. Grace and peace be yours.
~Eric
Comment (0)
|
Back to Blog Main Page
|
|
| About Me |
|
| Feb. 2014 |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
1 |
|
2 |
3 |
4
|
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
|
9 |
10
|
11 |
12 |
13 |
14
|
15 |
|
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20
|
21 |
22 |
|
23 |
24 |
25 |
26 |
27 |
28 |
|
|
prev
|
|
next
|
|
|
Archives
|
| |
Name: E J Rajaniemi
