How Should We Worship Together?

How Should We Worship As The Gathered Church?

When we pray, we pray to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.  When we worship together as a church we worship the Son, in the Spirit, to the glory of the Father.  “the real circumcision , who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh” (Phil 3:3).  The two ideas of worshipping in the Spirit and glorying in Christ should not escape our notice here.  They are inseparable. When the Spirit of God is at work within us, we most assuredly will be amazed with Jesus.  The Spirit’s chief mandate and focus is to bring glory to the Son, “He will glorify me, for He will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:14). This is all pleasing to the Father.  One day every knee will bow and tongue confess that “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father” (Phil. 2:11).  All worship of the Son, inevitably points to the Father!  All worship to the Son must be understood to be further to the glory and majesty of the Father.  We could safely say that Christian worship must be worship of the Son, by the power of the Spirit, to the ultimate glory of the Father.  Worship is deeply satisfying when we engage in worshipping in Spirit and truth. 

How Can We Pray?

How Can We Pray?

Someone recently with all sincerity told me that prayer for them was confusing.  They said, “do I pray to Jesus, the Father, or the Holy Spirit?” Perhaps this has been a question you have wrestled with in your struggle with prayer.  Thankfully scripture is clear and simple as to how we are to pray.

In a very revealing and remarkable way Paul writes, “For through him [Christ] we both have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Ephesians 2:18). 

It’s short and simple, yet what is written speaks volumes as to how we are to pray. 

First, notice that we have “access to the Father.”  Our prayers should be directed to the Father just as Jesus taught us, “Our Father in heaven” (Matt.6:9). 

Second, our prayers are to be directed to the Father through the Son.  For it is through Christ and Christ alone that we can come “boldly into the throne room of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb.4:16).  He is the one who had made a way for us to have restored relationship with the Father.  I do not come to the Father based on my own righteousness which are as “filthy rags” (Is. 64:6).  This is the rightful understanding of praying in Jesus name.  I can say “in Jesus name” at the end of my prayer and not be praying in Jesus’ name at all.  It’s great to say, “in Jesus’ name” if I am saying it with understanding of the gospel.

Third, on the question of the Spirit’s relation to prayer, “access in one Spirit,” Paul writes that all Christians should be “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication” (Eph. 6:18). The Spirit helps us to pray and listen in prayer (Rom. 8:26).

Rightfully understood prayer is to be directed to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.  Hope this helps you as you wrestle with the amazing adventure of prayer!

Success Or Significance?

 

“The thief only comes only to steal and kill and destroy.  I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” John 10:10

People either live in survival, success, or significance.  Most of the world lives at the survival level.  Half the world’s 7 billion people live on less than two dollars a day.  Yet when I visit these places in the world I find these very people often have more significance in their lives. If you live in the United States, you live at the success level even if you feel poor.  But success doesn’t satisfy.  You can have a lot to live on but nothing to live for.  You can be so busy trying to make a living that you fail to make a life.  You were made for far more than success, you were made for significance.  But we’ll never find significance in positions, pleasures, or possessions.  Significance comes from service.  Giving away your life for a purpose larger than yourself.  Jesus “made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil.2:7). 

Growth in my life involves giving up other things for significance. 

“It may mean giving up familiar but limiting patterns, safe but unrewarding work, values no longer believed in, or relationships that have lost their meaning.  Whatever the case, everything we gain in life comes as a result of sacrificing something else.  We must give up to grow up.” Maxwell 

Don’t waste your new year.  This is a time of deep reflection in my life. I ask the Lord, “Am I walking in, and doing the exact things that you have called me to presently?”  “Am I surrendered in this season of my life?”

Pastor's Devotion: God Can Relate

Pastor's Devotion: God Can Relate

Blessing or Stressing?

This is the time of year when people work on their dungeon tans (the pale skin of a person who eats a steady diet of Xbox and Facebook and doesn’t get any sunlight or exercise.)  Example: “Yo, Tim hasn’t come out in days,”….  “Ya he’s playing xbox working on his dungeon tan.”  Just remember the habits you form in the month of December will be your story until Spring.  “Cool story bro.”   It is also the time of year when people get super-stressed out, and the season that’s supposed to be special becomes stressful.  The Christmas buzz hits hard (you’re buying a wii on ebay for $500 with your credit card…. must be the Christmas buzz.)

During the Christmas season I slow down my life intentionally.  I do so because the Christmas season is the most stressful season of the year, and I don’t think that is God’s heart.  He didn’t come to bring stress, but peace.  If we are walking in unhealthy stress during the Christmas season perhaps we aren’t celebrating Jesus, perhaps we are celebrating something or someone altogether different.  Here are some practical things I do in the Christmas season to stay on chill. 

1. Pause throughout the day and listen to worship music or “opera to relax station” on Pandora.  When you listen to Christmas music try not to listen to annoying Christmas music.
2. Exercise
3. Walk slower unless you’re exercising. 
4. Give in random acts of kindness.
5. Remind myself the stuff cannot make me happy. (Remember the beautiful letdown that happens every year on the afternoon of December 25^th). 
6. Use less social media like Twitter, Facebook, etc.  and stop exposing yourself to constant advertisements.  Instead spend time reflecting on Jesus as God with us (Emmanuel).
7. Budget really well on needs versus wants, and communicate very clearly with your spouse the plan.
8. Plan your week out on Sunday nights so you are not saying yes to everything.
9. Remember the stores are set up in such a way to entice you to buy a bunch of nonsense.
10. Evaluate your traditions.  Are they honoring to Jesus?  Do they add to the quality of the season or just the quantity? 
11. Breathe deeper.  Studies show that stressed out people breathe much shallower in their lungs.
12.  If you’re married remember to spend quality time together (NAKED TIME).  Date nights!  Don’t neglect them!  A stressed marriage makes everything LAME.       

Holiness Is Joy

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.  1 Peter 2:11. 

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
1 Peter 1:14-16.

For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. 
1 Peter 2:25. 

Holiness=peace and joy. 
Unholy passion=suffering. 

Define holiness:  It is an attribute of God. He is completely and utterly without sin and the result is goodness. He is immutable and never ceases to be holy.  As we abide in him and he in us we partake of his holiness and become set apart as his worshippers and servant/friends from one degree to another as we are in the process of sanctification.  

Martin Luther viewed God's grace (and therefore God's holiness), as an invasion of the life. Actions that demonstrated holiness would spring up, not premeditated, as the believer focused more and more on his or her relationship with Christ. This was the life of faith, according to Luther; a life in which one recognizes that the sin inherent in human nature never departs, yet Grace invades each human spirit and draws each person after Christ.

Gods invasion in my life=personal and practical holiness. 

How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. Psalm 119:9

 I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.  Psalm 119:11

When God Speaks Your Language

Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross.  It read, “Jesus of Nazereth, the King of the Jews.”  Many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek.  So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘the King of the Jews’, but rather, ‘this man said I am King of the Jews.’”  Pilate answered “what I have written I have written.”  (John 19:19-22)

And he said( thief on the cross next to Jesus), “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”  Luke 23:43

What I find so striking in these texts is the fact that God uses Pilate who can care less about Jesus, to point people to Jesus, by making a sign that was simply meant to mock the Jews by saying, “as the king goes, so go the people.”  In the Luke 23 account the sign which was written in the three languages is connected to the thief on the Cross saying, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  The Lord used Pilate to make a sign that a thief on a cross could read and it would even speak his language. 

Yesterday, I bought a book which happened to be the book the Lord used in my life at 18 years old to completely turn my life around.  The book gives a simple down to earth explanation of the cross of Christ.  There’s nothing spectacular about the book but the fact that it absolutely speaks my language.  I was on a plane when I read it, and it was Christmas break.  The book starts out with both illustrations of Christmas shopping and flights in describing the gospel.  What are the chances that I would randomly grab a book off a shelf, actually have the money to buy it (college life), and then actually read it?  I am an ADD poster child by nature and the chances of me reading a book, let alone a book about the gospel is mind-boggling.  God spoke my language. 

What language is He speaking to you?  I am not talking about dialect but the day to day drama of your life.  How is God making known to you the truth of the gospel in your language?  How is He bringing the truths of the Bible into your heart?  Are you listening? There were two thieves around Jesus that day as He hung on the cross, yet there was only one who understood the sign.  We have the greatest sign ever—the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  May we pay close attention to what God is speaking to us today.