Back in Time...

Wrote this my freshman year in college...January of 2006...


Today I wanna talk about some deep stuff....
God is really amazing, and his plan is fitting together like a puzzle....
Ok, so this DNOW I'm leading in the woodlands this weekend, the subject is "Consuming Fire: The Authentic Worshiper", my Henderson folks will remember this from '03 DNOW Totally Consumed....anyway The subject of that is none other than, duh, worship....ok so yeah here's how everything fits together with the class that I magically got put into even though it is a senior level course, yet I did really want in it...now I see God put me in the class to prepare me somewhat for this weekend to talk about worship....it is just so amazing....ok so here goes some deep stuff.....
Ok for years upon years I've gone to church and pondered what the heck was wrong with me that I couldn't worship God every Sunday, yet go to Super Summer, Camp, or wherever and have like the greatest worship experiences and be so dern close to God....well I have a theory on why that was happening to me....First of all, worship is in the heart, all those times that I had those wonderful encounters with God, my heart was ready and purified for it...Maybe by me writing this you'll be helped to, I pray so...
Worship itself us an active response to God whereby we declare His glory...there's the second part, I couldn't lay down my pride and give Him the glory...It was as if inadvertantly, I was saying "it's mine, I made this..." and so on...It's kind of like Satan, ya know?  He wanted all the glory for himself, therefore, he fell.  Follow me? Good, let's move on...Whether we like it or not we will worship something.  God, baseball, football, make-up, food, money, friends, popularity, power, or whatever, we are going to end up devoting our mind's attention and our heart's affection on something.  Worship becomes the greatest thing when we stop and have our sins washed away and then we see God for who He is and ourselves for who we are. 
Guess what?!? Worshiping is a form of slavery...don't believe me? Check it, Hebrew word for worship in the OT, abad, meaning work, bond-service, labor, or general service.  When you truly worship God you give your all, therefore, you are His slave which Paul points out in Romans 6:18: "You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness." Guess what?!? God is righteousness!  There you go, plus furthermore He purchased you, remember that time on Calvary? 
Our position in worship? VULNERABLE!  "shachah" in the Hebrew means: to prostrate oneself, to bow down or stoop before the one you worship...which was in the OT for bowing down....Greek "proskuneo": to crouch, to prostrate oneself in homage, to revrence and adore "kissing the hand"...Think about, say, King Arthur or King Richard, back then the weapons they used were? Swords yeah that's right, and when you stepped foot into their courts and you bowed in front of them....the could have sliced your head off and you would have been able to do nothing about it....That's honestly how God wants us to be in worship...we've all heard, "God break our hearts"....that's vulnerability, a broken heart is very seceptible to many things.....now, no, God is not gonna chop our heads off, but He will break our hearts and destroy our lives so that He can rebuild us to what He wants us to be...
To worship is to...quicken the conciense by the holiness of God (constitutes heart)....feed the mind with the truth of God (constitutes intellect including thinking, yes we are called to think in church)...purge the imagination with the beauty of God (heart and intellect)...open the heart to the love of God (emotion)....devote the will of the purpse of God (response)...that is what worshiping is all about....it is also this...
"It is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men."- C.S. Lewis
You didn't think I could get through a very indepth post, without quoting my favorite author?
If our worship doesn't please God then it is for nothing.  I know it sounds really harsh but it is true.  How we worship both reveals and forms our identity as persons and communities and churches.  Everything we do in the service shows who we really are.  Pretty much a character thing.  Prayer is a vital part of worship.  Sometimes we start our services begging God to come in and be with us.  However, we invite Him in but once He gets there we ignore Him. 
We have become too simple in our generation.  I can get on the internet now and shop at WAL-MART, WAL MART OF ALL PLACES!!!!!!!!  But thats a different task, however it has made our church services become so simple that its crazy.  Instead of being in the fellowship of believers at a church I can turn on the TV or Computer or Radio and listen to a service of my choice....now I know that like homebound people and all those people who can't be there but for those of us who are just too dang lazy to roll out of bed take a shower and put on clothes c'mon...one more thing and I'm done, when we are in church we must remember that we cannont pasify the non-Christians, they must know what the Christian life is straight up because if they come into it thinking that its a bed of daisies then they are in for a world of hurt when they see what it is...be honest because
When non-Christians are throne in front of the face of God, it should not be comfortable.  They should feel pain for what they have done ya know? Then they will repent and be our new brother or sister in Christ!!!!
Finally let me end with a few words and a quote....Worship is not meant for our entertainment and if it was it would be called a concert not a worship service and we would pay $50 bucks for a seat and some popcorn....Worship is an encounter with the One, True God and we should treat it as such or we will fall apart...this quote is from a book called "Reaching Out without Dumbing Down" by Marva Dawn, also a lot of this stuff came from my notes from my worship class and my own mind...
"when the congregation becomes an audience and its worship a vaudeville act, then the Church finds itself at risk; the death of faith and Christian character is a clear possibility"
chew on that