Tag Archive - transformation

Is Worship Transformational?

May 16, 2011 in Media, Worship Leading with 2 Comments

Is worship transformational? At the church you attend? In your life? What does that even mean?

With the extra time I’ve had lately, I’ve been able to catch up on reading, blogs, podcasts, and videos that I had collected. One of the ones that I took time to watch recently featured Ed Stetzer (of LifeWay Research) and Mike Harland (of LifeWay Worship) as part of a monthly series LifeWay does called “The Choir Room”. In this episode, they spend time talking about and answering questions about the transformational aspects of worship and what that might look like. The topic came out of a book that Stetzer released in 2010 called Transformational Church: Creating a New Scorecard of Congregations (my Amazon link).

I’ve long believed that worship should be transformational in our lives and in our churches. Part of worship is the recognition and response to God and the aligning of our hearts with God. Each time we worship (which should be often), we should encounter God. And each time we encounter Him, we are hopefully becoming a bit more like Christ.

Enough of my thoughts, though. Continue Reading…

Following Forms

August 26, 2009 in Ponderings with 1 Comment

The thought occurred to me the other day as I was reading in Matthew 15, how often are we like the Pharisees as Jesus applied the words of Isaiah the prophet to them?

The Lord says:

“These people come near to me with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship of me
is made up only of rules taught by men.”

Isaiah 29:13 NIV

  • Following a form, but not the function.
  • Concerned with looks, but not substance.
  • Adhering to the letter, but not the spirit, of the commands of God.
  • Casting something in a “spiritual” light that really is in opposition to the revealed truth of God because we’ve convinced ourselves “God told me so.”

The Pharisees lived this way every day. Matthew 15:1-7 paints a clear picture for us.

Some Pharisees and teachers of religious law now arrived from Jerusalem to see Jesus. They asked him, “Why do your disciples disobey our age-old tradition? For they ignore our tradition of ceremonial hand washing before they eat.”

Jesus replied, “And why do you, by your traditions, violate the direct commandments of God? For instance, God says, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and ‘Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put to death.’ But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.’ In this way, you say they don’t need to honor their parents. And so you cancel the word of God for the sake of your own tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you.

Matthew 15:1-6a NLT

We often chastise the Pharisees for not getting it or having the wrong focus, but how often do we find ourselves standing right next to them?

May each day be a day we worship, not according to traditions or forms, but with pure and transformed hearts that draw close to God the Father through the Lord Jesus Christ in accordance with the revealed truth of God.

“Worship demands purity”

August 20, 2009 in Ponderings with 0 Comments

“Worship demands purity. Over and over we have seen that the prerequisite to the privilege of entering God’s presence is the recognition of personal sinfulness and a willingness to abandon that sinfulness. A consuming desire to be pure and clean is the normal result of being with God. The closer we draw to God, the more overwhelmed we become with our sinfulness…

If the corporate worship in the church leaves people unchanged, the church is not really worshiping. If what goes on in the church service does not spur the saints to greater obedience, call it what you will, it isn’t worship. Worship always results in a transformation, and the church is edified by it.”

- John MacArthur, Jr.

Do you agree or disagree? How is participation in corporate worship transforming you? How is your church body being enlightened and uplifted (both together and individually) by the worship that you do corporately?