Continuing on from the quotations about worship, Sunday evening’s sermon was the final part in the series on a ‘Celebration of Discipline’ which has looked at inward, outward and corporate disciplines.

The word ‘worship’ has so many synonyms (nouns such as adoration, adulation, awe, blessing, devotion, exaltation, glory, honour, homage, laudation, love, praise, offering, supplication, reverence, veneration and service; verbs such as admire, adore, celebrate, esteem, exalt, extol, laud, revere, magnify, love, praise, respect, sanctify, sing and venerate.) We also looked at some of the Greek and Hebrew words for worship used in the Bible (conveying the idea of bowing down or kneeling, working or serving, being in fear of or having reverence towards, kissing or fawning, like a dog licking its master’s hand.) All these words convey the idea of relationship and remind us of the greatness of God and our humility before Him.

Worship is far more than just singing songs. It’s our response to the revelation of God and is what we were created to do. In the words of the Westminster Catechism, ‘the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’

Romans 12:1-2 gives us a clear picture of a life of worship:
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:1-2)

I like the way the Message translation of these verses talks about “take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.” Worship means there’s no separation of ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’; all we are, have, think, say and do should be given to God as an offering.

Can’t we just worship God on our own, though? How is this a ‘corporate’ discipline?

In a corporate setting, we remind each other of the truth of God’s Word, reminding ourselves of who God is and what He has done so that we have a revelation we can respond to. On our own, we very often fail to see the bigger picture, focussing in on the little details, easily swayed by our own favourite passages of Scripture, ignoring all the parts we don’t like or find difficult to understand. We are swayed by our emotions and our moods, able to praise God when the going’s good, but easily becoming sucked into depression and doubt when things become more difficult. The writer to the Hebrews encouraged people to keep meeting together so that they could be creative in finding ways to encourage each other and spurring each other on to love and good deeds. (Heb 10:19-25) This passage shows us the reasons we have to worship, the basis for our worship and reminds us of the responsibility we have to each other.

Whether we like it or not, we need each other. God has called us into His family, into His house, into His body and we all need each other. In corporate worship:
* we declare together the truths of God’s Word
* we stand on the revelation we have of God, whether we understand it or not
* we declare that He is good and His love endures forever
* we vow to serve Him to the best of our abilities, whatever those abilities are; in whatever fields He has called us to serve Him.
* We offer our prayers and support to each other in our vastly different circumstances
* we acknowledge that God is all to us.
* We understand, however dimly, that God has chosen to work through the church which He will build and all the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

We worship together; we pray together; we learn together; we serve together; we celebrate together. And we can say, on the authority of God’s Word:
“We will overcome
When You are with us, we are strong
And love will be our greatest song.
We’ll keep the faith and stand forever
We’ll live the faith and stand forever” (Tim Hughes, ‘Keep The Faith’)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNvmayt6tq0

We had two birthdays to celebrate yesterday:


God’s richest blessings to you both!

The topic of worship is so far-reaching that it can’t possibly be covered in one sermon or one blog post. But here are some thoughts on the subject from the Bible, from writers, theologians, worship-leaders and songwriters to stimulate our thinking on the topic.

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.” (Rom 12:1-2)

“Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognise what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” (Rom 12:1-2, The Message)

“A time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” (John 4:23-24)

“The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” (Westminster Catechism)

“Worship is the total alignment of our heart, soul, mind and strength with the will of God. It is our whole-hearted response to God’s extravagant love and mercy.” (Worship Central)

“Worship is a deliberate and disciplined adventure in reality.” (Willard Sperry)

“Worship is… our response, both personal and corporate to God – for who He is and for what He has done – expressed in and by the things we say and the way we live.” (Louie Giglio)

“Worship is not primarily man’s initiative but God’s redeeming act in Christ through his Spirit.” (Nikos A. Nissiotis)

“To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.” (William Temple)

“Worship is centering our mind’s attentions and our heart’s affections on the Lord.” (Bruce Leafblad)

“Worship of the true and living God is essentially an engagement with Him on the terms that He proposes and in the way that He alone makes possible.”(David Peterson)

“Worship is an active expression of our love towards God. It is vibrant and visible by our deeds and not only by the words we speak.” (Darlene Zschech)

“Faith is at the root of all true worship, and without faith it is impossible to please God.” (A. W. Tozer)

“Our worship services need to immerse us in God’s splendour.” (Marva J. Dawn)

“Worship must be vital and real in the heart and must rest on a true perception of God.” (John Piper)

“The fuel of worship is the truth of God; the furnace of worship is the spirit of man; and the heat of worship is the vital affections of reverence, contrition, trust, gratitude and joy. The Holy Spirit provides the ignition and fire.” (John Piper)

“We live as worshippers of the otherly in a culture of the ordinary… In worship, explanation gives way to mystery. And mystery leads us to reverence and awe.”(Matt Redman)

“The core of worship is when one’s heart and soul, and all that is within, adores and connects with the Spirit of God.” (Darlene Zschech)

“The real issue in worship isn’t so much about songs and style but the larger issue of Story: the story of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” (J. D. Walt)

“An authentic life is the most personal form of worship.” (Sarah Ban Breathnach)

“Worship is kindled within us only when the Spirit of God touches our human spirit.” (Richard Foster)

“Every once in a while remind the worshippers of God that competence isn’t a fruit of the Spirit – and watch freedom walk in the room.” (quoted by Chris Tomlin)

“Worship means to seek after God, to chase after a glimpse of His glory.” (Tim Hughes)

“Worship is a way of gladly reflecting back to God the radiance of His worth.” (John Piper)

“Worship pours from the overflow of our hearts.” (Tim Hughes)

“Worship without mission is self-indulgent. Mission without worship is self-defeating.” (Bishop Graham Cray)

“At the heart of worship, we as God’s creation choose to centre ourselves around God, our creator. We live to bless Him.” (Tim Hughes)

“It is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men.” (C. S. Lewis)

“Extravagant worship means to be elaborate in our offering of admiration to God… Excessive, abundant, expensive, lavish, costly, rich, priceless, valuable.” (Darlene Zschech)

” The revelation of God is the fuel for the fire of our worship. And there is always more fuel for the fire. When we open the eyes of our heart, God’s revelation comes flying at us from so many different angles.” (Matt Redman)

“Worship is inviting people to pursue God wholeheartedly and in so doing mature into lifestyles that are in themselves a living sacrifice and which reflect God-worship as a way of life.” (mission statement of www.worship.com)

“I can safely say, on the authority of all that is revealed in the Word of God, that any man or woman on this earth who is bored and turned off by worship is not ready for heaven.” (A. W. Tozer)

“You and I were made to worship;
You and I are called to love;
You and I are forgiven and free.
When you and I embrace surrender,
When you and I choose to believe,
Then you and I will see
What we were meant to be.”
(Chris Tomlin)

“Day and night they never stop saying: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come’.” (Revelation 4:8)

I’d love to hear your definitions of worship. Leave a comment and we can continue exploring what worship is and means to us all.

How do we define joy? What do we think of when we hear the word? For some people, they may think of a perfume:

Others may think of happiness, that good feeling when something goes right (your team wins at football, you go on holiday, you watch the latest Doctor Who episode, you win a prize…) We even talk about ‘jumping for joy’ to capture that sense of elation and well-being:

Garry preached on the subject of joy this morning, looking at what the Bible teaches us about this subject. That ‘jump for joy’ word in Greek is agaillaio, meaning ‘to exult, rejoice exceedingly, be exceedingly glad’, giving us the idea of a spring of water gushing up and shooting out.

Nehemiah 8:10 tells us that ‘the joy of the Lord is your strength’.

John 16:16-23 also looks at the promise Jesus gave His disciples that they would rejoice and no one would be able to take away that joy. God wants us to rejoice because He is joyful (Zeph 3:17 tells us that God rejoices over us with singing). Jesus was well acquainted with sorrow (Isaiah 53 calls Him the ‘man of sorrows’) and grief, but Hebrews 12:1-3 shows us that it was for the joy set before Him that gave Him the motivation to endure all He suffered on the cross. Jesus valued us so much that our salvation outweighed all the suffering. In the same way, He urged His disciples to ‘rejoice and be glad’ even when they faced persection, insults and slander (Matthew 5:11-12). We can only do this as we learn the value of what will be (see Hebrews 10:32-35).

What do we rejoice in? Jesus told us not to rejoice in the suffering of our enemies but to love them. He also told us to rejoice not in power or authority but in the fact that our names are written in heaven (Luke 10:17-20). We rejoice in our salvation, purchased by God, in the fact that we have a new birth, a living hope and an inheritance that will never perish, spoil or fade:

“In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.” (1 Pet 1: 3-6)

We rejoice ultimately because of the revelation that we have of God and in the fact that any happenings we face are God-happenings, only allowed into our lives to shape us into the image of Christ.

After that sermon, you just wanted to sing about joy! – the song ‘Set Free’ starts with the line ‘Joy, joy, unspeakable joy’, which sums up all Garry had to say!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARiwN-iqQmU

It seems I can’t escape building work anywhere… my house is still in utter chaos and now the builders have been working at church to brick up various doors and windows and do all kinds of jobs which were previously unfinished.

These were our willing workers:


Bricking up a former window from the outside:


Working on the kitchen door:




And from the inside:



Working on the back door:

Many thanks to the willing workers and volunteers who have helped in this next stage of the development of the building.

“The plenitude of God, not the penury of the human condition, undergirds intercession.” (Eugene Peterson)

Have you ever finished praying and felt worse than when you started?! There have been times when I’ve been praying for someone, either personally or corporately, and I’ve felt so overwhelmed by their need, and my helplessness to do anything about that need, that I’ve wondered if prayer really does any good at all. I’ve prayed because I know God can work and because I know I’m helpless to do anything about that particular situation, but in truth, all I’ve really done is make yet another list of intractable problems with no real faith that there are any solutions to them. (I’m not quite sure why I think God needs a list of the problems to solve them, since He knows everything, but somehow that’s how I often think of prayer, as yet another ‘to do’ list, just this one is for God, not me!)

Have you ever read prayers in the Bible and thought that they sounded great but didn’t really look anything like your prayers? They seem so waffly and vague, never mentioning specific situations so you can never actually know how God answered those prayers. Paul’s prayers in Ephesians often used to strike me in that category: lofty, amazing, asking for so much and yet I used to wonder how on earth you could tell if God had actually done all those things, filling people with discernment, hope, love and knowledge.

The more I pray and meditate on Scripture, however, the more I realise that the difference between the prayers I read there and my own prayers are based in this idea of the plenitude of God and the penury of the human condition. Plenitude means fullness, an ample amount, an abundance. It captures this idea that God really is “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Eph 3:2). Penury is the opposite, meaning extreme poverty or destitution. The human condition is such that often we have no power to do anything about the situations we are praying about and feel overwhelmed by our own sense of desperation and helplessness. Intercession, however, is more than simply identifying with someone’s needs, with entering in to their suffering and hurt. Undergirding means supporting or strengthening from underneath and when we intercede for others, we are really realising that God is the only one who can do anything about those situations. We can therefore pray with confidence and hope rather than despair, because God is far bigger and more powerful than even the worst circumstance we can imagine. He is not helpless or limited. He is all-powerful, all-knowing and utterly able to act!

Paul’s prayers are not, therefore, irrelevant to real life. They are prayers that see beyond the visible and understand the key issues far better than we often do when we simply name the visible problems before God. So he prays for wisdom and discernment and revelation to know God better (Eph 1:17), especially that they may know the hope to which God has called them, their inheritance in Christ and God’s power towards believers (Eph 1:18). He prays that Christ may dwell in their hearts by faith (Eph 3:17) and that they may truly grasp the extravagant measure of Christ’s love (Eph 3:18), so that “you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Eph 3:19)

When I read that verse, I get a glimpse of the plenitude of God in prayer and after reading that, I definitely don’t feel worse than when I started! My eyes are lifted beyond the problems. I see God as He is, lifted high, all-powerful, well able to do more than I can ever possibly ask Him, and I am then encouraged to pray more, understanding that as I pray, God really does do so much more than I am able to understand!