Category: Worship

Engaging God in Worship

9/16/2015

Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. May God bless you this week with a heart that truly engages God in worship.

This past Sunday I mentioned our need to truly worship God. In a day when the word “worship” is often confused with singing certain kinds of songs, I feel the need this week to describe and define what I mean when I refer to worship. As you may have already noted, I used the word engage when referring to worship. You see worship refers to an entire lifestyle rather than just 20-30 minutes on a Sunday morning while the band is playing and we are singing. I was reminded this week that the first occurrence of the word worship in in Genesis when God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moriah. Abraham said to his servant that he and the boy were going to worship God and then return. Here we get the idea that worship means obedience – even when that obedience requires great sacrifice and dedication. In Romans 12:1 we read that presenting our bodies as living, holy sacrifices to God is our logical and reasonable service of worship to God. In neither of these two references is singing or music even remotely a part of the worship God received. What He did receive though was a complete dedication and surrender of someone to Him. Romans makes it clear that such a total surrender is the logical and reasonable thing to do – if we are thinking rightly.

So how does a Sunday morning worship service work into a proper view of worship. First of all I would have to say that just worshipping on a Sunday morning is contrary to Biblical worship. If we are not worshipping God all during the week, what we do on a Sunday morning can do more harm that good in our lives. Now I know that last sentence may have shocked some people. How can this be true? But this really does have everything to do with a Biblical definition of worship rather than a religiously cultural one. If worship is to be a lifestyle – then all we do every day can and should be worship unto God. If worship is to be a lifestyle – our whole lives should be spent seeking to honor and glorify God. This should show in how we surrender ourselves to God – and how we seek to live before Him no matter what we do. For the person who views worship merely as something we do as we sing on Sunday or when we hear “worship music” – worship becomes something divorced from an every day, every choice lifestyle. There is another Biblical word for that kind of “music-only-worship” . . . hypocrisy. You see when we do not live for the glory of God in all we do – all week long – and then show up on Sunday and sing emotionally charged songs to God – we are simply being emotionally driven hypocrites. True worship flows from all of life – not from the emotions we feel when really cool worship songs start to play – or – when we feel wonderful hymns move us in our hearts.

When I pray that we will engage with God in worship – it means that we will truly turn to Him every moment of every day. If this has not been happening during the week – the best thing we can do on a Sunday morning is start the worship service by getting on our knees and engaging God in repentance and confession of sin. That will do more to incite true worship than any song in any style that plays. We desire to meet with God – to engage Him as we give our lives to Him. Out of that flows true worship. There are times when we begin singing that I am not in a position to engage with God through singing, praise, and adoration. I need to engage in admission of sin and confession of the same. Other times I need to engage in seeing the worldliness and deadness of my own heart – and cry for mercy and for His gracious reviving in my spirit. Some times I am in pain emotionally and need to cry out to Him to give me hope and heal my broken heart. And – to be painfully honest – some Sundays, I need to choose to sing praises – to honor – to adore – to magnify Him - as a sacrifice because I don’t have any emotion or excitement at all. It is a matter of choosing to do what is right – what is Scriptural as I offer up a sacrifice of praise simply because He is worthy of it.

Precious saints of God, worship is not a matter of exciting or moving songs in the midst of a spiritually supercharged moment. Worship is a matter of choice – and that choice is one we make moment by moment. It is doing all that we do – whether we eat, drink, sing, work, play, or any other activity – and doing it to the glory of God! It is something we do every day of the week – every time of day – and every moment we live. What we experience on a Sunday often is just a culmination of how we’ve been worshipping all week long. So with that in mind – my prayer for you and for me is that we live a life of worship all week long – and that such a life culminates in a wonderful experience of worship corporately as we engage God on Sunday in a similar way that we’ve engaged Him every other day this week. Here’s to a lifestyle of worship to His glory.

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Calvary Core Values - Core Value #4 - Worship

9/29/2014

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Calvary Core Values
Core Value #4 – Worship

  As we continue to look at the core values at Calvary Chapel we now want to address worship. First off I want to acknowledge that the public worship of the church and the music and style of it is quickly becoming a flash point for many churches. What is sad about this statement is that there is no universal music style that can be claimed by anyone as more “biblical” than another. Worship is solely about giving glory, honor, worth, and praise to God Himself for Who He is and what He has done. Worship is about singing to God out of love and obedience as we give Him the glory that He is due. Worship is singing about God to each other and the world around us so that their thoughts can be lifted to worship Him as well. But worship is about so much more than just music and singing.

  A Biblical view of worship recognizes an understanding of Romans 12:1-2 as absolutely essential. This passages reads as follows:

“Therefore I urge you brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good, acceptable, and perfect.” (Romans 12:1-2, NASB)

  What we learn from these verses is that worship – a true spiritual service of worship to God goes way beyond what you sing on any given Sunday. It goes way beyond singing altogether. What we read here is that worship involves our entire way of living. Our entire bodies should be presented to God every day as living, holy sacrifices. When we live like that – giving all of ourselves to God daily – then we are doing what we should logically do. The word for “spiritual” in Romans 12:1 is the Greek word “logikos,” from which we get our word logic. The only logical way to live when we understand the gospel – is as a 24/7/365 sacrifice of worship to God. This is in everything we do – everything we say – even everything we eat, drink, or anything we ever do. We learn this in 1 Corinthians 10:31 – whatever we do is to be done to the glory of God. Therefore worship goes far beyond the 15-30 minutes we spend singing in a service. It is something we do with our entire lives as we live for the glory of God.

  Having addressed that worship is a way of life, I also want to address how worship is viewed when we gather together on a typical Sunday morning to worship God corporately. First off, our corporate worship should not exceed our private worship. Some come and worship on a Sunday morning nothing like how they are worshipping God during the week. What I mean when I reference private worship is what we are doing as we seek God during our time alone with Him each day. There is an inherent danger that comes with times of corporate singing. We sing songs that are celebratory – and that in themselves can incite us to excitement. But are we ever excited about God, about the work of Christ, about the gospel, about the work of the Holy Spirit, or about God’s faithfulness? I know this is a difficult question to answer – but do we even think about such things much during the week? Can we go a week with little or no thought to God, His greatness, and His glory – and then come into a worship service and find ourselves singing with great excitement and passion? There is something very wrong with that kind of picture and practice.

  God warned His people about public worship that does not match private devotion. In Isaiah 1 He asks Israel why they needlessly trample into His temple for “their” sacrifices and worship. He found it offensive that they were one thing in public worship – and yet quite another in private life. If we truly worship God – it should be that our public worship is little more than the overflow of our private devotion to God. If things regularly go beyond this – it is honestly not worship – it is hypocrisy. That is why at times I grieve over my own heart and its readiness to get all excited in a public venue – when my private devotion has severely been lacking. What should we do when this is the case? In Joshua, when Achan had sinned and grieved God, Joshua called upon him to “give glory to God” in a confession of his sin. You see, God was most glorified in Achan’s life, not in some public display that did not match his private life, God was most glorified when Achan stopped everything else and took the time to confess and repent of his sin. Saints, there may be times when the best worship service ever – would be little more than us stopping our usual routine – and gathering to a time of getting on our knees or faces and confessing sin in our lives.

  Let me make a few comments on music in worship. Unfortunately there are often as many tastes in music as there are people in a congregation. That is because what style of music you enjoy has far more to do with your personal tastes than it does any particular command of God. What I find is the following kinds of scriptural commands when it comes to worshipping God in song.

- Sing to the Lord
- Sing to Him, Sing praises to Him; Speak of all His wonders
- Sing to the Lord all the earth
- I will sing praises to Your name
- We will sing and praise Your power
- Sing to Him with a harp of ten strings
- Sing to Him a new song; play skillfully with a shout of joy
- I shall sing of your strength
- I shall joyfully sing of your lovingkindness in the morning
- Sing the glory of His name; make His praise glorious
- Sing for joy to God our strength; Shout joyfully to the God of Jacob
- My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God
- I will sing for joy at the work of Your hands
- O come let us sing for joy to the Lord, Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation.
- I will sing of lovingkindness and justice
- I will sings praises to You among the nations
- Let my tongue sing of Your Word

  There are 88 different times when we are called, actually many times commanded to sing to the Lord. Therefore, regardless of what style you may prefer, it is a given that we need to – no – actually we are commanded to sing to God. Often that singing is connected with joy – in fact more often than not it is connected with joy of God Himself or some work He has done that should be stimulating us to joy. And – how important this is – God absolutely is to be the focus of our singing. Just about every command that involves singing – calls us to sing TO Him. Therefore, we are absolutely, unequivocally committed to singing to God in our worship services. We want to work hard to make sure that we do not distract from this fundamental focus of worship as we sing. That is why we also make certain choices to make the vast majority of our singing – congregational in nature. It is also why we shun any kind of performance in our music. We want our worship teams and any individual who leads in worship – to focus themselves on God as they sing to Him. Their leadership is first by example as they themselves are worshipping God. Then we ask them to lead us as we join together with them to worship God.

  This is also why we want to be very careful about anything that might begin to turn our corporate worship into more of a concert than an opportunity for the body of Christ to give God the glory, honor, and praise that He is due. Some have made their stages very elaborate – using light shows and having different kinds of moving backgrounds behind the words that are projected on the screen. This, in itself, is not evil – but we avoid it because we do not want to distract from God being the focus. As your pastor I personally think that the more ostentatious we become in our staging, the more likely we are going to get away from worship being simply singing to God and telling Him how utterly magnificent, beautiful, majestic, holy . . . and the list can go on forever and ever!

  There is another reason why I ask our worship teams to remain low key as they worship God and lead us to join them in it. Jesus said in John chapter 4 that God seeks worshippers who worship Him in Spirit and in truth. Worship is something that is inherently spiritual. God forbade men making images of Him in the Old Testament. Any picture we try to make of God is going to fall infinitely short of Who He is. He is Spirit, He is everywhere at once, and He is infinitely present and powerful in the everywhere He is all at once. The more we make our worship something physical, the more danger there is in us falling into idolatry by making God less than He is. Thus the focus needs to be on the truth of Who He is – not on the show going on around the singing. Worship in Spirit and truth focuses on Who God has revealed Himself to be in Scripture. That is the greatest and most trustworthy revelation we have. That is why we put such a great focus on the Word of God in our worship service.

  Worship, true worship incites us to greater, grander, more glorious thoughts of God. These thoughts are driven by what God has said about Himself in the Word. This is also why we try very hard to sing what is Scriptural about God. That is hard to do – because too often we get more excited about the music than we do the lyrics. The danger that is once again inherent due to this is that we sing “really cool songs” or “very reverent songs” or “very moving songs” whose lyrics actually do not accurately represent Who God is scripturally. Worship that is not singing “truth” about God – is actually idolatry – since it is singing about who we would like God to be rather than Who He actually is according to His revelation of Himself in the Word of God. Too be perfectly honest with you as your pastor, I am concerned more and more that the songs of today are so theologically light – and more “this is how I feel.” The other concern I have is that too many of our songs are turning to how God is making much of us – rather than true worship which is us making as much of God as we possibly can.

  Worship is about God – living for Him – singing to Him – and as I just said at the end of the last paragraph – making as much of Him as we possibly can. We cannot overdo true worship – because we can never give God all the glory that He is due. But it is my desire as your pastor to encourage you first by example and then by precept to give everything you have, every day God allows you to live, and in everything you do to glorify God. Just as God says to us in His Word, “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Corinthians 10:31)

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Have You Responded in Awe and Wonder Lately?

7/31/2014

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Awe and wonder . . . two words that perfectly fit any view of God. But in a world that thinks too highly of itself, populated with fallen people who seriously think too highly of themselves, awe and wonder do not describe the average response to God, Who has revealed Himself to us in Scripture - and His creation. And if I were to be completely honest (which hurts as I admit to my own sin of pride and over-aggrandizement of myself personally - and humanity corporately) I do not respond to Him nearly enough with the kind of awe and wonder that He deserves. At times I sing songs about His greatness with little more than yawning excitement - and even more sinfully - with a sense of wanting to get on with it so I can move on to other things more exciting to me. In an age where we make much of man - and even more of ourselves - the whole concept of being lost in wonder and awe of God is dangerously waning. And please understand I speak not of the world at large - but of those of us in the church.

There are two words that should show up often in our vocabulary when seeking to give any kind of description of God. The first of these words is the word "awe." We speak of things that, when we see them or experience them leave us awe-struck. That means the shear magnitude and majsety of them render us speechless because we are not sure there are words adequate to describe what we are seeing or experiencing. God, being both infinite and eternal, should be One who leaves us utterly speechless because His majestry and limitless magnitude are beyond human words or concepts. That is where we reach back to get our second word, "wonder." When I looked up wonder at Dictionary.com, the following definition began to take shape in my mind. Wonder means to be filled with admiration, amazement, or awe. This sense of wonder often illicits surprise, astonishment, and in some cases worship or adoration of what has caused our wonder. The God Who has revealed Himself in the Old and New Testaments - and Who is also revealed in what He has created, is a God Who can fill our hearts and our minds with both awe and wonder.

There is no way to adequately define or describe Who God is. One way that we can touch the fringe of His boundless, infinite magnitude is by looking at nature - most specifically - the heavens. Since the discovery of the telescope, we've enjoyed a view of the heavens that expands as quickly as we can upgrade the ability of our telescopes to see further and further into space. The information below was originally printed in John MacArthur's commentary on the book of Matthew.

"The more man delves into the universe, the more amazing and awesome the wonder of creation becomes. Telescopes can take us some four billion light years—about twenty-five sextillion miles—into space, and yet we have not come near the edge of the universe. We have discovered certain gravitational principles that keep the stars and planets in their orbits, yet we are far from fully explaining those principles, much less duplicating them. The earth spins on its axis at a thousand miles an hour at the equator, travels in a five-hundred-eighty-million-mile orbit around the sun at about a thousand miles a minute, and, with the rest of its solar system, careens through space at an even faster speed in an orbit that would take billions of years to complete. The energy of the sun has been estimated to be equivalent to five-hundred-million-million-billion horsepower. There are at least one-hundred-thousand-million other suns in our galaxy, most of them larger than ours." (John MacArthur, Commentary on Mark)

What is even more amazing to me after reading that again, is that MacArthur's statement is just a small paragraph, because there is enough to know about our universe to fill an entire library of books. That is after we've spent 100's of years looking into space. The truth is our knowledge of the universe is ridiculously limited at the present time. If we had instruments and ships that could take us far out into the universe (even into our own galaxy to be honest) our knowledge would grow exponentially!

To give you a perspective on how much we should be in awe and wonder of the God who created our universe, allow me to focus on one star within it. Granted, at the moment (due to our lack of a telescope powerful enough to see it) it is the largest star we know. Nevertheless, let's talk about the star Sirius, or Canus Majoris. This largest of all stars known was most recently measured at around 1500 solar radii. If you were like me, you had no idea what a solar radii was. It is the measurement of how big our sun is. That measurement is approximately 432,450 miles (to go from the outer edge of the sun to its center). If you want to know how far it is around our sun - that would be approximately 2.72 million miles (quite a walk - and take sunblock over 50 because you might get a sunburn!) Just our sun is so huge that it blows the mind to comprehend its size. But we speak of Sirius (Canus Majoris) which is now approximately 1500 times the size of our sun. Now I know that you are tired from that recent walk around the sun (and a little burnt probably) but you need to suck it up - because now we're going to walk around Sirius - which would be 4.1 billion miles give or take a mile or two.

Forgive me for using this comparison - but it will give you a little better grasp of how large this star is. Imagine our earth is a basketball. Compared to our sun earth is a little smaller than a popcorn seed. In order to get something as large as Canis Major you would have to have a ball that is over half the size of the Empire State Building. Let me put that into perspective for you. That height is larger than the full height of the Superdome. So we are talking about a ball bigger than the Superdome itself (try jumping high enough to dumk that sucker into a basketball rim that can fit it!). Another way of describing the size of Sirius is that if we put it into our solar system (starting at the center of our sun) its outer edge would reach beyond the orbit of Saturn (although some think it extends beyond that to about the orbit of Jupiter). That is HUGE! But . . . this is only 1 star, albeit the largest one on record to date. There are trillions times trillions more stars in our universe - all of which have been placed in orbital movements that conicide with each other with greater precision than that of a well choreographed ballet. It truly is incredulous to an infinite degree how men can think this is all a random cosmic accident!

I've taken all this time - and verbiage - to hopefully get you to stand in awe and wonder of a single star - in a galaxy filled with billions and billions of starts - which is in the midst of millions of other galaxies - all moving in such synchronization that we set our clocks by its movement. God created all this by His infinite power and wisdom. He did it so that they would proclaim the glory of His great name! Thus this mere creation of the genius and limitless strength of our God is itself infinitely inferior to Him - the One who spoke it into existence. It required no over-exertion on His part and its creation was no drain on either His intelligence or His might. He is beyond its existence and could as easily consume it entirely with one additional word spoken to utter remove it to little more than an afterthought flying quickly through our minds. So please . . . the next time you consider the God of your salvation - the God of creation - the God of eternal, timeless existence and infinite, measureless magnitude . . . do so with awe and wonder . . . oh, and a little reverence might be in order too (just as an infinitely understated suggestion). And one other thing . . . this coming Sunday when you meet with the saints to sing of the God of your salvation - remember Sirius, Canus Majoris - or by its common name, "The Big Dog!" When you do - and you also meditate on the fact that God created this giant ex-nihilo (meaning out of nothing) as He spoke the world into existence (By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. Hebrews 11:3, NASB), we will be moved by His Spirit and the truth to sing and worship Him with both awe and wonder! Or, in a euphamism more familiar to our current age, "Let the 'big dawg' speak, and when you feel him - get crunk as you worship God off the hinges." (Yes, I know that just exposed me as a really old white guy trying to look cool - sorry, couldn't help it with the star being named, "the big dog.")

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What's Your Inner Posture Like?

7/14/2014

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May the Lord grant you grace to move into the proper inner posture to be able to hear what He IS saying to you TODAY! This past week I was blessed to read a chapter in a book by A. W. Tozer. The chapter had to do with Abraham's relationship with God. The gist of what Tozer said was this. The reason Abraham heard God and eventually obeyed Him was because of being in the proper spiritual posture. God was on His throne speaking - and Abraham was on his face listening. There is a whole lot being said in that statement. Let's look at it for a few minutes this week together.

The first proper inner (or spiritual) posture for us to know is the posture of God. He IS seated on His throne. In understanding that posture we are grappling with the fact that God is king, that He rules and reigns over all things, and that He is seated in the place of absolute, ultimate, unquestioned authority over ALL THINGS (and by the way - that "all things" includes you and everything that ever has or will pertain to you).

Some think God is in a posture other than this. Some consider that throne to be empty and non-existent - but we know that the fool is the one who says in his heart, "There is no God." Others think God, after winding up the earth, took a break from it all and is allowing the earth to wind down on its own. He is not active in the scope of human affairs. Some would place another chair next to God. Seated in that chair opposite Him is the devil who, according to their thinking, is somewhat equal with God as the two of them "duke it out" for supremacy over earth and the spiritual realms.

Here are the facts! In Isaiah 37:16 we read the following, "O LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, who is enthroned above the cherubim, You are the God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth." In addition to this we read 5 other times in the Psalms that God is enthroned in the heavens as well. In Ephesians 1:20 we read that Jesus was exalted, after His resurrection, to the right hand of God's throne. God is seated on His throne - and what we read in the Bible is His revelation - i.e. Him speaking to us! But if we are going to hear Him as we should - we need to remember and submit to the fact that when He speaks - it is from the place of ultimate authority - on everything!

What this means is that when God says it - we have heard ultimate truth spoken with ultimate authority. We can debate it in our minds and even with others - but - when we're done God is right and we are still called to respond obediently. Our other choice is rebellion. We are truly ready to hear from God when we acknowledge from where He is speaking and with what authority those Words come to us.

The second inner or spiritual posture Abraham portrays for us is that he was on his face listening. The posture here is unmistakable. It is a posture of submission - to listen - to hear - to understand - and then to obey. Think about this - even when God tested Abraham with the request to sacrifice Issac - Abraham did not rebel. He chose to obey God and head to Mount Moriah to do what God said. We read in the New Testament that Abraham thought that God would raise his son from the dead if he had to. Such was the faith and the truth that Abraham had for God and His commands.

Are you in a spiritual posture to listen to God? Can you hear what He is saying through the Spirit to the church? Does He speak to you through His Word? Are you getting it - understanding what He is saying and dealing with the ramifications and the obedience that He is calling you to in life? Is hearing God resulting in action in your life - a choice for obedience and a choice to DO what He says you should do? Is your obedience instant - or delayed - or even subject to what you think in the end? Your spiritual posture often has a lot to do with whether you will hear Him at all. What is your spiritual or inner posture? Are you on your face - ready to obey OR are you sitting on a throne of your own making? Have you set up a rival throne to God from which you speak over your own life?

Dearest saints of God, THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION YOU FACE DAILY IS THIS, "WHAT IS YOUR INNER, SPIRITUAL POSTURE BEFORE GOD?" Nothing is more important that this. Nothing supercedes it. It is THE determining factor on how your life will ultimately go each and every day you live. Join me, saints, in assuming an "on your face" posture of hearing, listening, understanding, and obeying God. There is another word for this - it is WORSHIP. Romans 12:1 tells us that posture when we read there, "I urge you therefore, brethren, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God which is your spiritual service of worship." You could almost switch the word "posture" for "service" here and lose little in the translation. Our posture before God - our whole selves as a sacrifice to God. Oh, may God's grace make such a wonderful thing possible - and may our passionate obedience follow Him entirely in the way our inner posture is set daily. See you Sunday as we continue our study in 1 Peter!

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Engaging God in Worship

Calvary Core Values - Core Value #4 - Worship

Have You Responded in Awe and Wonder Lately?

What's Your Inner Posture Like?

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