Mon, Jan 27th - 8:28PM
Worship: In Search of the Real Thing
"Worshippers, don't just enjoy God's wonderful presence for yourselves. Call others to join you there through faith in Christ. And those of you who want to see the world come to Christ, don't just call men and women to believe, call then to worship." ~Gerrit Gustafson Of all the activities of the church, worship is the least selfish and the most pure. People simply respond to God without any other motive.. They can look around and say to themselves, "Hey, God's here!" a time where we invite God to "invade our space" and actually engage people with Him. It moves people to see that there are individuals who do worship God, who really do love God with all of their heart, soul, mind, and strength. Worship can become a very powerful testimonial of hope and love to a world living on the edge of hopelessness and despair! Listen to what LaMat Boschman has said, "We are at a new place in God. Old road maps...old ways of thinking and acting won't help us now...Change is coming to our public worship service...people are giving their lives to Christ because of the witness of God's convicting presence in the middle of a vibrant worship service." We must recognize and admit to ourselves that God designed worship to witness to people. It will witness if we will simply allow it to. God places no limitations on how and when to minister to incomplete and broken people, He surely didn't when it came to me. To God, any time is a good time for healing brokenness in people. See what Psalm 34:18; 147:3 say, "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit...He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." In God's scheme of things, His expression of mercy and love do not depend upon human schedules or timetables. "He is patient...not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance (II Peter 3:9)." We however, have become very efficient at setting limitations on when, where, and how God can work. So, when are we going to let God out of the box? People seeking God can be profoundly touched by God during heartfelt, corporate worship. In remnants of Christendom God is doing a new thing. Seekers of God are observing their believer friends in a tangible, dynamic, supernatural worship relationship with the Living God, and saying, "Wow! We want that!" Nowhere in Scripture does it say that seekers do not belong in worship. Nowhere does it say that seekers can't be touched by observing God's interaction with believers. But we can find worship and evangelism linked throughout Old and New Testaments. Isaiah 66:19: "They will proclaim My glory among the nations." "Declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous deeds among all peoples...Say among the nations, The LORD reigns (Psalm 96:3,10)." "Therefore I will praise You among the nations, O LORD; I will sing praises to Your name (II Samuel 22:50 and Psalm 18:49)." "I will praise You, O Lord, among the nations, I will sing of You among the peoples (Psalm 57:9)." "For great is Your love, reaching to the heavens; Your faithfulness reaches to the skies (Psalm 57:10)." That last one reveals why King David wishes to boast about God. David wanted the pagan person to know the love and faithfulness of God. What we then need to do is to recover an old paradigm: open worship. In Numbers 15 God gives Moses explicit instructions about how worship should be carried out. God also gives an admonition regarding "outsiders." "For the generations to come, whenever an alien or anyone else living among you presents an offering made by fire as an aroma pleasing to the LORD, they must do exactly as you do (verse 14)." God didn't say that they were to dragged from the temple or the tabernacle, but they were to do exactly as the Jewish people did. God fully expected there to be some strangers in worship services. This expectation can be seen again in Deuteronomy 26:10-11. Israel was called to open worship. We turn to the New Testament and the presence of the stranger during corporate worship was a common occurrence. The apostle Paul felt the need to help the Corinthians church understand which worship practices may be helpful and which may be a hindrance to the unbeliever's conversion: "So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? But if an unbeliever or someone else who comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged byall, and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, "God is really among you!(( Corinthians 14:23-25)" Worship simply must be open, and it must be honest and vibrant. Open worship and grace are inextricably linked. A big word, but it simply means that they can't be easily separated one from the other. From the Old Testament we are taught that as God is host to Israel, so Israel is host to the stranger. Is this still true in the New Testament? "As it is written: "Therefore I will praise You among the Gentiles: I will sing hymns to Your name." Again, it says, "Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people." And again, "Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and sing praises to Him, all you peoples (Romans 15:9-11)." Paul reinforced and reaffirmed that open worship is to be the norm for Christ's church of believers. Nothing had changed with God's scheme of things. The apostle John repeats the Old Testament message as well: "Who will not fear You, O Lord, and bring glory to Your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before You, for your righteous acts have been revealed (Revelation 15:4)." When we look at the apostle Peter, we see that before Acts 10 he is completely convinced that God was only interested in the Jews. But in Acts 10:34-35 he has a revelatory dream that forces him to exclaim, "I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts people from every nation." Peter found out that God is not a separatist. The opportunity to become a true worshiper is available to everybody. That is all for today, beloved! Last time I did not provide much in the way of scriptures. I made up for it this time! Go and do some more research in the bible and discover how much more open worship is spoken of. Grace and peace be with each and every one of you this day. Trust in the Lord! ~Eric
Comment (0)
|
Wed, Jan 22nd - 6:32PM
Worship: In Search of the Real Thing
We have transitioned from the cultural upheaval of the 1960's to today's society. How did we get here? As young John F. Kennedy was taking office as President in 1961, Western society had already begun to leave the cerebral, rationalistic, Enlightenment base upon which it had functioned for nearly three hundred years. The 1970's simply accelerated this process. The new worldview probably began the moment the following scientific premise was overthrown: We can understand the world entirely through objective means. Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum physics shoved us into the paradigmatic upset, especially discovering that atomic functions are unpredictable and enigmatic rather than orderly and mechanistic. The recent discoveries by science has revealed that we may not be able to determine objectively why the generative laws are what they are or how they were created. This discovery simply has not simplified matters for the scientific community, it has muddied the waters immensely. What this general trend has done is to create feelings of disillusionment with the notion of human goodness and progress. This in turn has influenced how we think about life. Science is providing people with more gadgets to play with, but is leaving them with an empty feeling deep inside. There is this growing recognition that evil is real an that it can't be removed simply by education and social reforms. Henry Nouwen agrees: "Beneath all the great accomplishments of our time there is a deep current of despair. While efficiency and control are the great aspirations of our society, the loneliness, isolation, lack of friendship, and intimacy, broken relationships, boredom, feelings of emptiness and depression, and a deep sense of uselessness fill the hearts of millions of people in our success-oriented world." What are these people all looking for? They are searching for experiential proof, a supernatural relationship with a powerful Higher Power. They seek a supernatural experience with something that will explain to them why they are here, why they ought to have hope, what it is they are here for. Of course, it is up to the church today to be prepared to meet this need. The problem as I see it today, too many churches have failed to rise and meet this growing need, and people are turning to encounter the supernatural any way that they can. This has helped fuel the explosion of paranormal and supernatural shows on television. Since a growing number of unchurched people seek contact with the supernatural, we must change our worship so that it features direct, supernatural interaction with the Living God. We must do this for the church is supposed to live in both the natural and supernatural parts of reality. We must emphasize celebrations of God-encounters. This means that those of us who facilitate worship services will have to overcome two major hurdles in our way. First, we have to set aside some of our control issues and get out of the way! Getting in the way means that we miss the very felt-need that brings most people through our doors: meeting God. In our obsession with control, in our clock-driven servitude to schedule services as short as possible, we do not give people a chance to drop their barriers and open up to God's presence. God wants us to create a worship environment, to give people permission to interact with God according to His work in their own hearts. The thrust of the Bible asks each of us to conform our experience to revealed truth, not make truth from out of our experience. We must not forget what A. W. Tozer said, "Worship rises or falls with our concept of God." We must understand, and accept, that the demise of "rationalism" is not the demise of truth. The issue has been that not enough truth-telling has been going on in our worship services. If we leave out truth in our evangelism, then we are left with the same results as in existentialism: despair. Without Christ any spiritual experience is a deadly dance with the powers of darkness. That must not continue to happen since we have been called from out of the world of darkness and into the Light of Christ. Why does Christianity work? Because it is true! Jesus the Christ said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free," not "You will have a spiritual experience and your experience will set you free." Jesus set us free so that we could have a relationship with the Living God. The goal of each worship service is an intimate relationship with the Living God, not some "feel good music and drama." Here is why worship is failing today: We are depriving people of both the reasons for faith and an experience of faith. We are emptying our services of both spirit and truth, the two things necessary in order to worship God. We must acknowledge that the world is perishing because of a lack of the knowledge of God, of the Holy. That is all for this cold day in January. Grace and peace be yours! ~Eric
Comment (0)
|
Sat, Jan 18th - 1:19PM
WORSHIP: In Search of the Real Thing
We must reconsider our assumptions. Our assumptions about people who are seeking God, spirituality, and worship may very well be unfounded. They could be false. As George Gallup has stated, the unchurched , by many measures, are more religious than they were in decades past. There is a huge difference between how Americans view religion and how they view spirituality. There is a divergent view of definitions and in this context we see that spirituality is an individualized pursuit and has to do with an inner state of being.
Looking back at the 1960's, we must acknowledge that it was more than just a social protest or getting high, it was a result of spiritual crisis. Old cultural and religious scripts had lost power over the baby boomers, forcing them to think through again their religious and spiritual options. Personal rights and freedoms were at the forefront of demonstrations and movements at this time. We tend today to walk through our lives remaining unaware of the fact that the shock waves of that "crisis" are still rippling through Western society, ripping a crevasse between religion and spirituality that is very wide and deep. People who look for God today do so in an intensely personalized way. They want to be directly in touch with "their Higher Power." And they are not very confident that that will happen in any church. Back in 1995 public confidence in the clergy was at an all-time low (52 percent), down 15 points since 1985. Public confidence in churches was at about the same level (53 percent), also down 15 points from 1985. What spurred this reduction in confidence? Unfavorable publicity and news about religious figures involved in televangelist scandals, political extremism, or religious cults. Since then the question seems to be about the church's basic ability to connect with God. It has been reported that 76 percent of those boomers who returned to evangelical churches believe that churches have lost their spirituality, while only 48 percent of the boomers who returned to mainline churches agree with that statement. If it is true that the unchurched are more spiritual than previously thought, could it also be true that the "churched" are actually less spiritual than they are often assumed to be?
We are left with 65 percent of unchurched people claiming that the Christian faith is relevant to the way they live today, but only 27 percent believed that the church is relevant. Only 13 percent have said that being part of a local church is very desirable. Ouch! Here is the reality that believers are faced with as they go out into this world to spread the Good News. The truth is only 8 percent of the unchurched skip church because they do not believe in god or Jesus Christ. Mr. Barna says, "The unchurched don't have a problem with God so much as they have a problem with God's religious franchises: the church. Brothers and sisters, we are the problem, not God or even the concept of God. Most people want to meet the Christ in us and the Christ in our services. If they come to your particular worship service, will they be able to "meet Christ in you and in your service? Will they have the opportunity to connect with God? Or will they be forced to sit in isolation and silence, not really getting to participate?
Surprisingly, as we entered the 21st century more than 95 percent of Americans believed in god or a universal force. 84 percent characterized God as the "heavenly father of the Bible who can be reached by their prayers." 80 percent believed that God works miracles today. Almost an equal amount reported "There are spiritual forces that we can't see but that affect the material world in which we live." What are we doing to help all of these people connect with God? 88 percent of Americans report that they pray. 33 percent report having had a "particularly powerful religious insight or awakening that changed the direction of their lives." We must become aware of the accelerating need within our culture to connect with some kind of spiritual reality. Individualism, the pursuit of rights and freedoms, and industrialization, have left people with a growing need to experience something bigger than their everyday life. Humanity is not abandoning science, it is simply looking through religious revival to reaffirm the spiritual, to regain a more balanced quest to better our lives and those of our neighbors.
So, how many options are available at today's spiritual salad bar? We have the New Age where you can pile your plate full of repackaged Eastern mysticism, natural science, the occult, do-it-yourself psychology, and even a bit of "God is love" Christianity(without the cross and resurrection of course). Spirituality has become big business today. Companies like IBM, AT&T, Proctor and Gamble, Ford Motor Company, and General Motors were spending around $4 billion per year on New Age consultants and motivational speakers back in the 1980's. The general assumptions ingested in New Age buffets is that God is an impersonal force, or a field of energy that holds everything together. Bottomline: God is everything, everything is God, and humans are part of that process so we too are God. We therefore can create our own truth, our own reality. It promises quick fix spirituality, global harmony, and self-empowerment from the "divine within"---without the troublesome demands for personal moral accountability. What a deal!
My final thought for you today is this. The false notion is that only the uneducated, lower echelons of our society are experimenting with the supernatural. Wade Clark Roof reports, "Interest in the paranormal and psychic experiences is widespread and appears to have increased during the 1980's. Clairvoyance, ESP, precognition, deja vu, and related experiences of the "supernatural" are more commonly reported now than a decade ago. More so among the college educated than among those with less education. 52% of the high school educated endorse faith exploration as compared to 66% of the college educated and 69% of the postgraduates." So much for the argument that paranormal stuff is only for the uneducated and unintelligent people of this world!
~Eric
Comment (0)
|
Sun, Jan 12th - 11:42AM
WORSHIP: In Search of the Real Thing
So what is missing from our worship services today? How do we go about finding it? For starters, worship has biblical parameters with which we need to acquaint ourselves. Until we choose to do this, our churches will continue to be held hostage by our own ignorance. Sally Morganthaler has said that appear to be three basic formats under which the majority of churches fall when looking at the structure of their services. There is the traditional community church: with one or two hymns sung, five to ten minutes of announcements, fifteen second prayer, scripture reading, special music or choir, testimony or presentation of special church project, offering, the message, and dismissal. There is also the comfortable contemporary church: with a borrowed TCC format with the message as the centerpiece, usually features a worship band instead of a piano or organ, has a song-sing rather than hymns, may include a mini-drama of three to five minutes. And then there is the cutting-edge community church: with instrumental selection performed by worship band, two vocal selections performed by band and worship team, corporate song, introduction of theme via multimedia presentation, scripture reading and explanation, drama, a solo, the message, dismissal. Perhaps you see your church falling into one of these three categories? If so, be advised that these are not effective vehicles for assuring that worship of God takes place each week. Why? Interaction with God is either nonexistent or so low it can't be detected. Most of the opportunities for personal response have been cut out of these types of worship services. They each have an interaction deficit that leads to other such deficits, and these formats are immune to God's presence. They are formats tending towards being stripped of direct reference to Christ Jesus, from the concept of sin, from anything remotely resembling confession, repentance, and commitment. In any of these formats it would be a daunting task to find anyone who actually had a true encounter with God. True, within these three formats there are opportunities for people to come away with good feelings in their hearts. But is that the goal of worship? Good feelings? Really?
A true encounter with the Living God leaves us with changed hearts and calls us to changed lives. We will be transformed from the inside out. Stop and consider just a few of the biblical figures who had an encounter with the Living God: Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Moses, Isaiah, Mary, Paul, and Peter. Each one was struck to the very core of their being, forever changed by their closeness to holiness. The apostle Paul puts it this way: "And we, who with unveiled faces all contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit (II Corinthians 3:18)." Where is this transformation today in our churches? We are going out of worship services each week exactly the same as when we came in. Why is this? David Wells has concluded, "We seek happiness, not righteousness. We want to be fulfilled, not filled. We are interested in satisfaction, not a holy dissatisfaction with all that is wrong." I am driven to believe then, that our worship must cost something, or else it is meaningless and powerless. True worship requires sacrifice. Yes, Christ is the only sacrifice for sin, once and for all. But the term sacrifice is not just associated with redemption. It's literal meaning is "the act of offering something meaningful and valuable." So, in response to what God as done and is doing for each of us, we are to bring to God many types of "spiritual sacrifices" when we worship: praise (Hebrews 13:15), thanksgiving (Psalm 107:22), joy (Psalm 27:5-6), and repentance (Psalm 51:17). However, the most important sacrifice that we can give to God is ourselves (Romans 12:1-2). It is so important that it is labeled as "our spiritual worship." Worship means change. We are to say good-bye to some toxic behavior. We ask God to enable us to let go of the "junk." Christ proclaims, "If you love Me, you will obey what I command (John 14:15)." To love God is to worship God; to worship God is to love God. True worshipers then take intentional steps of obedience, and they say and do. Nonworshipers can never inspire others to worship. Being precedes doing in Christianity. The question then boils down to, "Do we truly long for God?" Are we walking in the Light of God's presence and leading God's people into throne-room encounters? Listen to what Henri Nouwen has said, "Are the leaders of the future truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in God's presence, to listen to God's voice, to look at God's beauty, to touch God's incarnate Word and to taste fully God's infinite goodness?" Worship then is to respond to God in spirit and truth.
That is all for today, beloved. I post this this morning since I am still recuperating from walking pneumonia and did not go to church today. I pray that these posts will enable you to return to truly worshiping Christ as He has commanded all of us to do. This study is driving me to conclude that most congregations are losing people due to lack of true worship taking place in their services. There are no opportunities for "seekers" to encounter Jesus there, and the believers have no encounters with Jesus in order to deepen their walk with Him. It would appear to be a correctable problem, if all of us are willing to engage in the solution. Grace and peace be yours this day!
~Eric
Comment (0)
|
Sun, Jan 5th - 5:05PM
WORSHIP: In Search of the Real Thing
Are you thinking at this point, "How can worship be the prime function of the church when Jesus said to go out into the world and make disciples of all nations?" How does worship fit in with the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18? We are correct as believers to take Jesus' words very seriously---evangelism is not a suggestion; it is an imperative. But, it is significant that in John 4:23 Jesus did not say that God is seeking evangelists. He said that God is seeking worshipers. And God is seeking them from every tribe, every nation, and every corner of this world of ours.
The true goal of evangelism is to produce more and better worshipers of God. The apostle Paul wrote in Romans 15:8-9, "Christ died so that the Gentiles may glorify God for His mercy." "I am a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles with the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit (verse 16)." The work of evangelism is to glorify God, not to just save souls. We must focus upon that last verse in Acts 2:42-47 for one of the primary outcomes of the early church's commitment to worship was evangelism, the outreach often taking place within the worship service itself. Worship then drives evangelism.
When Christians have a genuine, infectious love relationship with God then evangelism by accident happens. Seekers are hungry to see evidence of God at work in our hearts! Good grief, believers should be hungry to see evidence of God at work in our hearts! We, as believers, must come to the realization that in all of Paul's epistles he never urges Christians to witness nor had he anything to say about foreign missions. Nothing! What was Paul always doing? He was consistently bringing people to Christ and leaving them with Christ. When Christ Jesus is central in my heart, what do I want to do? I want to tell others about Jesus! So, again, I say to you, it is worship that fuels, that drives, evangelism.
If church growth is the driver of my actions, then I am misguided and I am acting unScripturally. My goal must always be making God the goal. All that I do within the sanctuary and worship center must be that so like Paul, all people there may "know Christ." Am I dismissing growth? Hardly. When God and the worship of God are first in the life of any congregation, growth will follow. God must be the first priority of the congregation, not ministries, not growth, not success. By our actions and perhaps by the lack of priority of personal worship in our own lives, we are giving our congregations one unmistakable message: Worship is unimportant. It is simply another activity that ought to be done each week. So, how does the worship of God rank in your church? Are all of you longing for more of God? Are your worship services joyful, wholehearted ministering to the heart of God, or are they finely tuned performances? Remember what Jesus said, "Seek first the kingdom and His righteousness, and all of these things will be given to you as well (Matthew 6:33)."
In too many Christian leaders' minds, worship is a thematically unified, well-oiled program without errors and/or glitches. God in the Scriptures never describes worship as a "program." Robert Webber has described our lack of training: "Seminary education does not equip a pastor for leading worship. Many seminaries do not even require worship courses or training. The training that pastors do get is in the art of preaching...Unfortunately, because of this training and perhaps even because of their gifts, most pastors feel that preaching is the essence of worship. But this thought is neither Biblical or is it, in the end, a means to good worship." Yet so many pastors continue to treat the sermon as the "meat and potatoes" of the worship service. Not one of the 800 or more references to worship in Scripture equates preaching with worship. We have elevated the pulpit to the point of completely distorting what worship is all about. We claim to be following Scripture, but are we really? It would appear that we are all following the traditions established by man, and not the ones created by God. Simply calling a church event "a time of worship" does not always make it so.
Our English term "worship" literally means to attribute worth to someone or something. But that is only a small part of what Biblical worship actually encompasses. To get a better, more complete, comprehension of worship we need to check what it means in other languages as well. The Geman term Gottesdienst means "God's service (to us) and our service to God." The French term le culte indicates "a lifelong engagement...a relationship of giving and receiving." Thus, the worship that is revealed to us from Genesis to Revelation is a rich and varied activity. We are to worship God in spirit and in truth. Lacking either of these prohibits us from worshiping God at all. Christian worship is not only offering all that we are to a Holy God. It is an intentional response of praise, thanksgiving, and adoration to The God, the One revealed in the Word, made known and accessible to us in Jesus Christ and witnessed in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. What does this translate into in our worship services then? How about singing, shouting, giving audible thanks, bowing, kneeling, praying, proclaiming, declaring, ascribing glory, and bring an offering. Does this sound just like your worship services? Probably not.
Worship is a two-way communication between believers and God, a dialogue of response involving both actions and speech. God reveals His presence; our need for intimacy with God is met, and we respond in thanksgiving and praise. God does speak through the Word; we are convicted and repent. God extends mercy through Jesus Christ; we respond with adoration. Real worship provides opportunities for God and God's people to express their love for one another. In worship we carry on an exchange of love with the Living God who is present, the God who speaks to us in the now, who has done and is doing marvelous things.
The truth is, great musical performances, thought-provoking dramas, touching testimonies, relevant messages, and apologetics about God and faith are all wonderful "tools" God can use to touch the unsaved person's mind and heart. But they merely examples of presentation and presentation does not require people to give anything of themselves back to God. Inspiration and worship are not synonymous terms. Webster's dictionary says to inspire means to "stimulate to activity." Yet worship, by its very nature, is activity. We need to remember that inspiration may lead to worship. Worship calls for the involvement of our mind, body, and soul. It demands nothing less than the complete, conscious, and deliberate participation of the believer. Worship is not a noun, it is a verb. It is something done by us. The problem that Americans are confronted by is a culture that breeds spectators. On average, people in this country watch seven hours of television daily, then there are the computers and the internet with its associated social media. Now we have added the cell phone with its ability to access the internet almost anywhere you happen to be. People do not speak and interact with one another as much for they can now simply text one another across the room. Children now have uncontrolled access to pornographic websites with their smart phones 24/7. They now can become jaded worse than when I was a young adolescent boy who was forced to sneak a look once a week at my dad's Playboy magazine. But these are the people that we wish to attract to our blase worship services where nothing exciting is going to happen? We will be a long time in waiting for them to come flooding through the front doors. Change, transformation, is desperately needed across America's churches in order to return worship to its rightful place.
That is all for today beloved. I kept it shorter today, not wanting to overload you two times in a row! I pray that you had a fruitful and grace-filled Sunday! Grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
~Eric
Comment (0)
|
Fri, Jan 3rd - 6:56PM
WORSHIP: In Search of the Real Thing
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to (Matthew 23:13)."
Are we shutting the kingdom of heaven in people's faces? Do we gather in our comfortable sanctuaries only to offer up empty, counterfeit praise with hearts that have been seared shut against the real thing? At best, George Barna claims, there is a maximum pool of 20 percent, with only 10 percent very likely to return to another church service and the other 10 percent are ambivalent. That is the reality we must deal with when we invite people who have already attended at least one church service elsewhere. The message appears to be: We reap what we sow.
There is no way to get around the basic fact that the corporate worship event is at the very core of our personal and corporate Christian identities. Worship cements our perceptions of God and of the world around us. While we are within those four walls of the sanctuary involved in worship, our concepts of and attitudes toward God, ourselves, and others are being fashioned, for better or for worse. Unconnected worship is not a divine design, no matter how many seminaries and pillars of faith have been and still are peddling it as such to all of us. It is an inaccurate representation of God or God's church. It leads us into becoming separatistic worshipers, which is a human invention. According to God's Word worship is meant to be a seedbed of godly humility and service, not a rock pile of pride and self-concern. If our worship is cheap, empty, devoid of adoration of the Living God, lacking in returning love to the God who so loved us that He came and died in our place, then we can't expect to have an authentic love for those who are missing from the body of Christ. Our failure to reach these people for Christ is not so much because of their brokenness, but because of ours. The bottom line is that we have not been anyways near being real enough. Real faith in Christ witnesses. In too many of America's churches, lost or unchurched people do not matter nearly as much as we matter. The worship that we demand is diametrically opposed to the very evangelism and discipleship that we are supposed to be empowered with. As Sally Morgenthaler comments in her book, "the truth is, worship that is supposed to promote spiritual health can't do so if it has become diseased by separatism, whether stated or functional."
The reality today is that scores upon scores of genuine seekers and saved are slipping away even as this week's bulletins and programs are being printed up for this Sunday. The time has run out for the use of "band aids and face-lifts." The time has come to make technique the servant of spirit and truth (John 4:23-24). Then we will be able to engage believers in heartfelt, active response to a living God. Then will our worship be genuinely attractive to the seekers who are hungering to see what a supernatural relationship with God is like. Only then will our worship produce what God always intends: a witness to Christ Jesus. But the problem is that we can't give away what we do not already have. The solution to this problem is that we can change. Fortunately, our transformation doe not rely upon ourselves but upon the ever-loving, forgiving, empowering God that we claim to worship! God is seeking worshipers who will worship in spirit and in truth. But God not only seeks them; He fashions them. The Lord of the universe can sculpt in each of us a living sacrifice that is holy and acceptable (Romans 12:13). It simply requires that we be willing.
"The shallowness of our inner experience, the hollowness of our worship, and that servile imitation of the world which marks our promotional methods all testify that we, in this day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of God scarcely at all." ~A.W. Tozer
The first step would appear to be that we must worship God and not ourselves. One prime example would be that of David in the OT. He went into battle with much more than target practice under his belt. He went with spiritual power, a power rooted in his worship relationship with God. It was within that relationship that God molded David's heart, sculpting both a humble and ready dependence upon divine knowledge and strength, and a desire to give God all of the glory. Where are all of the David's today? Unfortunately, the evangelical church of the third millennium is not nearly as spiritually prepared to meet its "Goliath." It is failing to reach and grow the millions of unbelievers and believers. It has forgotten that God grows the church through spiritual power. We, as a church, simply need to go back and read again the day of Pentecost in the Book of Acts and what happened. It is why Jesus said to Peter, "On this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it (Matthew 16:18)." David's power is sadly missing and almost foreign to contemporary born-again Christians, a passionate worship relationship with God. How many truly know the meaning of longing after God as a deer longs for water (Psalm 42:1)? If we are honest, not very many of us truly long after God. God is calling out to all of us, "Whose are you, for whom will you do all these good things, and on whom will you depend?"
The next step would be to really make worship our number one priority. In reading through all of the Psalms one comes away with four qualities to David's worship. One is that his kind of worship is a life. The apostle Paul reaffirmed this type of life in Romans 12:1: "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God for this is your spiritual act of worship." It will be a a life like unto David's, the willing and daily sacrifice of everything we are, everything that we have, and everything we do to the Living Lord Jesus Christ. Second, David's kind of worship is uncompromising. In Psalm 27:4 we see David expressing himself: "One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek Him in His temple." He has total focus, total commitment, and uncompromised devotion! Jesus says,"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind (Matthew 22:37)." Ours is to be a no-holds-barred, adoring relationship with the Creator of the universe.
The third step is David's kind of worship witnesses. In Psalm 57:9 he says, "I will praise You, O Lord, among the nations; I will sing of You among the peoples." More significantly, David believed God would draw unbelievers to Himself through an authentic worship experience: "He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the LORD (Psalm 40:3)."
The fourth and overriding characteristic of David's worship is even more crucial: Worship was, unequivocally, number one in David's life. By prioritizing worship above all else, David was reflecting the heart of God. Clearly, worship is the most important thing God's people can do, it is the first and ultimate calling. Abel understood how important worship was when he sacrificed the firstborn lambs of his flock (Genesis 4:4). Moses was instructed by God to ask Pharaoh to let His people go just so they could worship Him (Exodus 4:22-23). Not surprisingly, the very first commandment God issued to His people dealt with worship(Deuteronomy 5:6-7). Did this change in the New Testament with Jesus? No, Jesus said, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her (Luke 10:41-42)." "Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to Me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have Me (Matthew 26:10-11)." Jesus knew and taught that God desires our worship above anything else.
Looking into the Book of Acts we see that the church at that time could have attempted to replicate the mass conversion event of Pentecost, but it didn't. Instead, it chose to give God all of the praise, honor, and glory: in a word they worshiped God. They not only worshiped God, they did it joyfully! What did these members of the early church do? "the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles...Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved (Acts 2:42-47)." How many of us are doing this today? Why aren't we seeing more people coming to be saved? Because we are trying to do it in our own power, we are not inviting God to work through us, to unleash His life transforming power. In I Peter 2:4-5 Peter takes worship beyond first priority and establishes it as the church's purpose: "As you come to Him, the living Stone---rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to Him---you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house...To be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." "You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God...That you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light (I Peter 2:9)." The church's main function is worship, to glorify God through Jesus Christ.
That is all for today, beloved. I have given you quite a few scriptural references to check out read on your own. I hope that you will do so and not simply take me at my word. I know that with what I have been studying on this subject that my own denomination and church must revisit how often we observe communion. We may decide to increase the frequency in order to allow unbelievers to observe the taking of the bread and cup. It would also reconnect believers more closely to Christ Jesus and their "first love." It would involve more people in the service and create movement, getting people out of their "observation seats." Worship is a participant activity, not a passive one. So this Sunday, show your love for Christ as you sing, as you pray, as you welcome one another in Christ's love. Have a genuine smile upon your face! Expect to encounter God Sunday! Be looking for Him, be listening for Him, for He will be there. But will you be choosing to draw near to Him? Grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
~Eric
Comment (0)
|
Back to Blog Main Page
|
|
| About Me |
|
| Jan. 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 |
29 |
30 |
31 |
|
|
prev
|
|
next
|
|
|
Archives
|
| |
Name: E J Rajaniemi
