Category: Worship

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Worship

The Hard Work of Thanksgiving

It’s Thanksgiving Day!
The one day of the year we are supposed to be thankful.
Then we can go back to being regular ole grumps!

Actually, this isn’t the only time of the year when we are to be thankful, but the thankfulness aspect of today was originally about being thankful for a good harvest. Having a good harvest meant lots of food on the table, so I guess that is why our holiday tradition for today is eating until the point of discomfort!

So the eating isn’t hard work, though having motivation to do much else with that full belly might be. The laughing at the table with family isn’t hard work. The watching of football games with each other isn’t hard work. So what is the hard work of Thanksgiving?

I believe it is keeping a right focus in today’s American society about WHO we should be thankful to.

It will be easy today to say…” I am thankful because such-and-such happened to ME because I was able to use MY abilities to….” And in doing so, we can focus our thanks on self – on I and Me. That is the American way. To go against that grain takes effort.

The hard work is to honestly ask and answer the question – who has ultimately given us these good things to be thankful for? Who has blessed us with family, with the good things that are on our table, with the innate abilities in us to even work and provide for our families?

God.
He alone.
He is the reason you have food on the table.
He is the provider of rain.
He is the provider of life.
He is the reason you are able to take each breath.

The hard work is refocusing today on Him – the author of good gifts. “Every good thing given and every perfect gift come from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17).

“Will we only give God the things that cost us nothing?” King David was freely offered what he would need to make a sacrifice to God, but David replied: “No, I insist on paying the full price. I will not…sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing.”

It won’t cost us much to be a part of the celebration today, but refocusing our attention on God is hard work. Stepping up as the spiritual leader of your family and asking them to pray with you to thank God might be foreign to you and your family. It is a foreign concept for many in America today. But God desires for you to exalt His Name, and today is the perfect day to do so.

The rest of Thanksgiving won’t cost you much. “But it costs plenty to pray with others. Prayer is hard work, and it takes courage, dedication, concentration, and steadfastness.” As we pray with others, we open up our lives to them – our thoughts, our ideas, our beliefs. This is hard work that God desires of us today – to open ourselves up to others in prayer as we honor Him with thankful hearts.

Don’t let the day just be about turkey and dressing, full bellies, football, hunting, or shopping. It will be easy to stop there. Go further. Do the hard work. Refocus the day on the Giver of all good things so that your family members develop a deeper Thankfulness to the One worthy of all Thanksgiving.

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Worship

Thinking Deeply About God

We all think about God.
But when we give thinking about God a name, such as “theology,” we think to ourselves –
b-o-o-o-o-o-o-ring!

Systematic Theology. It even sounds boring.
And then when we hear preachers talking about words like glorification, imputation, sanctification, and plenty of other long words, we say – obviously, my initial thoughts were right on target! This is no fun.

So we occasionally hear people say things like, “I don’t have any use for theology.”

“I love flowers, but I hate botany; I love Jesus, but I hate theology.”

Certainly, when we think of theology as an unnecessarily tedious study of something beautiful, we can “feel” that there is not much value in it. But that just isn’t true.

I think about my own experience with learning History in school. I hated it because my teachers were boring, the textbooks were dry, and I was forced to memorize dates and facts that I never could connect back to my life. But later on, when I read the “right” historians who knew how to share history with creativity and excitement, I realized the truth – that history is not only interesting, but that there is value in knowing history. Certainly at least in the fact of “Those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”

Theology is similar. It can be miserable if presented poorly. But it is so very important, useful, and exciting as we learn more about our amazing God.

We all have our own beliefs about God. The study of God is to help us better understand Him so that we aren’t just relying on our own beliefs, which have the potential to get extremely clouded. By refusing to think deeply about God, we can find that we easily slip into bad theology.

“Theology can be dull, or much worse, it can be ruthless. In Christianity, however, the answer to bad theology can never be no theology. It must be good theology. God gave us minds, and he surely expects us to use them in thinking about his truth” (Bruce Shelley).

You’ve said to someone before, “We were just talking about you,” and you’ve probably heard this reply – “Well then you had a good subject!” And when we are thinking about God, we are thinking about the greatest subject.

Let’s learn to enjoy thinking deeply about our great God as He is the best subject we could possibly think about.

He tells us – whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good repute, excellence and if anything worthy of praise, think on these things. He is the pinnacle of all of these things; theology is the study of who He is. Let’s study Him – we’ll find He is ANYTHING BUT dull!

As an example in closing, here is a great quote that is a statement of theology, and the more I think about it, the more I am amazed by it…

“Christianity is the only major religion to have as its central event the humiliation of God” (Bruce Shelley).

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Worship

You Are As Close To The Lord As You Want To Be

Lo Siento… (I am sorry).
I’ve been “off the grid” for two weeks. But that is often what happens when I go out of the country. It is not that I don’t have internet access as much as I don’t have time to post when on an international mission trip. But I had a great time in Mexico with friends I had not seen in a year, as well as being part of the very first worship service at a church plant in Uriangato, Mexico.

Anyway, back to today’s post…

“You Are As Close To The Lord As You Want To Be.”

Yowch!

Can that be true?
Definitely not.
It can’t be.
It can’t be my fault.
I mean, I want to be closer to God.
But then why aren’t I?
Is God moving away from me as I am trying to draw near to Him? No. That can’t be it.
Maybe it is true.
Maybe I am as close to the Lord as I want to be.

“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.”

The scriptures seem to be clear that God doesn’t move away from us, rather we move closer or further from Him.

If I want to be closer to Him, then it is on me to spend more time talking to Him, reading His Words to me, worshiping Him. He is as close to me as He can get – in that He has put His Holy Spirit within me. So it is up to me as to how much I choose to interact with Him.

If I truly want to be closer to God, then I will be closer by making the necessary changes in my life to spend more time with Him.

Guess it’s time to make some changes.

How about you? Are you close enough?

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Worship

Seeking Can Be Serious Business

So my cell phone is lost, and I must’ve left it on silent. Calling it from another phone isn’t working. I’ve looked in the usual spots on the kitchen counter, the nightstand, the desk. No luck. Now I’m looking in every room. I’ve searched high and low, near and far. I’ve even looked in the crazy places – under the car seats, in the refrigerator, between the couch cushions. The phrase “hide & seek” is taking on a new meaning.

I’m sure you’ve had a similar experience – one where you had to seek for something important that you just couldn’t find. How long did you search? How serious were you about finding it?

If we are serious about finding something important, we will seek for it intensely and for a long time…you’ll do all you can to seek it out.

So… am I seeking God with the same intensity that I have for my lost cell phone?

Can I say that I am truly seeking God with a 5 minute prayer time? With short little prayer times and no significant time alone with Him without distractions, can I truly say I sought God and His will today? Seeking Him means I should be setting a “big chunk” aside each day, as well as working to be more constant in prayer throughout the day.

I need both types of prayers, but I know that it takes more than 5 minutes, more than 10, to truly seek God and His heart and will.

Are you really “seeking” God in your prayer time?
Fortunately, He is not lost like a silent cell phone, so that when we are ready to seek Him, we will find Him. But it also takes the discipline to set aside significant time to hear from His heart!

And don’t worry, we called in the FBI search party. They sent out the tracking hounds and finally found my cell phone!

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Worship

Learning to Pray in God’s Will

Do you ever wonder if we have been taught to pray incorrectly?

Have we tried to use God as our genie? Or maybe we’ve thought of Him more like Santa Claus – hoping that if we are “good enough” that He will give us the things on our wishlist.

Our prayers often seem to lean in that direction. But God is not a genie we can manipulate when we feel like it, nor is He a jolly spy in a red suit who is “always watching” so as to put you on the gift-getting list when you meet his “good enough” standard. (Which is kinda creepy when you think about it!)

But God IS always at work and wants us to be working with Him. He wants us to talk to Him about things that He cares about. And what He most cares about is the spiritual condition of people. That’s why Jesus went to the cross. He didn’t go to the cross to fulfill my my desires of more stuff, and though He cares about my physical condition, that’s not why He went to the cross, either. No, He went for my spiritual situation to be changed from death… to life! So if God is most concerned with spiritual matters, then what should we focus our prayers on?

However, we do not spend time praying about spiritual things near as much as we do for physical things. In the Bible, we see prayers about confession of sins for individuals and the nations, we see prayers that go on and on about adoring and worshiping God’s characteristics and His laws, we see prayers about bringing glory to God, we see prayers about revival and turning people’s hearts back to Him, we see prayers about lost people coming into His kingdom.

In the Bible we see prayers that are focused on God’s will, and yet we often do not pray that way. We spend more time praying for the increased comfort of those who are already saved (us and our family and friends) than we do praying for the eternal destination of those who have no relationship with Jesus.

Perhaps we need a change. Perhaps we need to use the model of the Bible more than whatever model taught us to pray about the physical.

If we want to receive God’s blessings and have our prayers answered, I believe that we must ask, seek, and knock with prayers that are in-line with God’s will. He is not going to give us every one of our heart’s desires until every one of our heart’s desires are exactly in line with His will. But if we ask where He is at work and how we should pray, He will show us and we will be more blessed than ever before.

What do you think are some of the things He most cares about that we need to include in our prayers for today?