Journey of Worship

Posts Tagged ‘Worship’

I know it’s a little late, but here are two video from the worship service on 2/28/10. The first is of the worship songs that we did. The second is of the message that I had the opportunity to give from John 11. Enjoy, and let me know what you think.

Thanks!

We began a new series this week that will take us through Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter. The series, called “Do You Believe?” is designed to help us again consider the claims Christ made about Himself and the evidence that proves those claims. In hearing the truth about Christ, we have to occasionally stop and ask ourselves, do we believe? Because if we believe, it will affect how we live, what we think, and what we do.

For the people who walked with Jesus during the final weeks of His earthly life, they discovered some amazing things about Him as He spoke and demonstrated God’s glory. Those same things can be as significant for us today. In this first week, we looked at the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead in John 11 and His declaration that He is the resurrection and the life. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been said that our life betrays what we believe. Or that our beliefs are betrayed by our life. Either way, most, if not all, Christians say that Christ is the most important thing to them, but their living says they are more concerned with life, work, status, homes, cars, retirement plans, etc. Most aspects of life reflect a forgetting of our Maker, Redeemer, and Savior. I’m not here to tell you how a life that has Christ as the most important thing will be played out in you specifically, but to simply cause you to think.

This aspect of drift and forgetting is a common occurrence in all of our lives. The issue isn’t so much if it has happened (because it will at some point), but recognizing it and making appropriate course corrections.

The season of Lent, at its core, calls us back to God, back to basics, and back to the spiritual realities of life in Christ. Back to the things that we say we believe in. It’s a time when we can ask Christ to once again put to death sin and indifference toward God and others so that we might fulfill the Greatest Commandment to love the Lord our God with all of who we are and to love our neighbors as ourselves. We can once again enter fully into the joy of the Lord Who is our strength. Read the rest of this entry »

If you attend a church for any amount of time, you will eventually be asked to learn a new song. For some this is an exciting thing. For others it is not. Perhaps you wonder why we choose to do new songs. By doing new songs, are we saying that the old songs are bad or no longer useful? Not at all. The song selection for a worshipping community does not need to be either new or old, but can be both.

Some may say that we should do new songs because the Bible tells us to. They will point to Scriptures such as those found in Psalm 96:1, which says “Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth;” or Psalm 149:1, which says “Praise the LORD. Sing to the LORD a new song, his praise to the assembly of the saints.” However, most scholars believe that the meaning of these verses, and others like them, has little to do with an actual song, and more to do with what happens in our hearts as God renews us through the Holy Spirit and we see and understand the amazing grace extended to us through Jesus Christ. As our hearts are reborn, then what is expressed is a new song of praise to the King of kings instead of the old song of sin and selfishness. It is the redemption through Jesus Christ within our lives. Read the rest of this entry »

As we move through February, we continue the “Be People of Prayer” series. This past Sunday, Valentine’s Day, we took a little different approach to the topic of prayer. Focusing on passages in 1 Peter 3:1-7 and Matthew 18:19-20, we took a look at the value of husband’s and wives praying together and how the relationship between the two can impact the effectiveness and vitality of the prayer life in a home.

The service as a whole was a great time together of remembering and celebrating Jesus. We sang, prayed, heard Scripture, and did communion together. Click through for more details… Read the rest of this entry »

Disclaimer: None of these companies/products are giving me anything to talk about them. I just like them a lot.

As I do life and ministry, there are number of online tools that I find extremely helpful. I thought I would share a little about them. If you have more questions, or if I can help you get hooked up with them, let me know. These tools are a huge help for me to keep things organized, tracked, and synchronized. Very important when you have a lot of irons in the fire.

Dropbox is an online sharing, synching, and backup tool. But it’s not just about dumping stuff on someone’s web server and hope they don’t lose it for you. Dropbox is a web-based service, yes, but it is also a computer based service. What happens is that you download a small program that you install (windows, mac, and linux compatible). Once you install the program, you end up with a special folder on your computer(s) called “My Dropbox” and a small tray application. As you move files into the My Dropbox folder, they are automatically uploaded to your account at www.dropbox.com. Here’s where the cool part comes in. Your files are then available on your original computer, under your account on the Dropbox website, and also on any other computer that you connect to your Dropbox account. You can even view your files on any web enabled device (like everyone’s favorite the iPhone or iPod Touch).

The folders automatically sync with each other, and if you accidentally delete something, Dropbox saves it for 30 more days. You can share files with other Dropbox users, and you can even share files with folks who don’t have Dropbox yet by sending them a special link.

All this for the low, low, price of free for 2GB of storage space. You can gain more storage space if you refer someone and they sign up. If you need lots of space, you can increase with a paid plan.

I’ve been using Dropbox for a while now to have easy access to ministry related files, stuff I want to transfer from home to work, and other stuff. It’s been great. If you would like to try it out, use this link, and we will both get a 250MB bonus added to our limit.

A couple of quotes about worship that I really enjoy from various places.

You can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell. -C.S.Lewis

Worship is what you do to show God that you know who He is and what He has done. -Unknown

Don’t sing on Sunday what you’re not willing to live on Monday. -Scot Longyear via Resonate

Worship: Our always response to God’s amazing grace and mercy shown through Jesus. -Unknown

We began our second series of the year this past Sunday called “be People of Prayer.” If you are the observant-type, you may notice that the title and look is similar. This is by design, as the previous series (Be People of the Word) and this one (Be People of Prayer) are designed to work together. We’ll be taking the next four weeks looking at some different aspects of prayer and helping people to begin to establish or continue a pattern of prayer.

The first week was focused on looking again at the example of Jesus and the time He spent in prayer. We looked at Mark 1:35-39, Luke 6:12-13, and Luke 22:39-46 as Jesus prayed often, He prayed hard, and He prayed through. Click for more info and video! Read the rest of this entry »

We concluded our “Be People of the Word” series this Sunday in Deut. 6:1-25. There were a number of threads that weaved through the morning as we focused on taking advantage of teachable moments, especially as parents, to help people see God as the giver of life in all situations. There was also a tie-in with Sanctity of Life.

Because we had some extra elements in the service (focus on Sanctity of Life, interview about the formation of a Crisis Pregnancy Center, special prayer time, and baby dedications), we had a little less singing. Even so, we took the time we had to help people focus on remembering the God who is always worthy of praise because of His faithfulness, power, daily blessing of physical life, and eternal blessing of spiritual life in Jesus. It seemed that people really connected and engaged with the themes and expressions that we did together this Sunday. Click through to watch a video and for more information. Read the rest of this entry »

What does worship look like?  As the practical, pragmatic, and action-oriented Americans we are, how do we do this thing that is supposed to draw our attention to God so that we can give Him all glory and honor with our whole being?

The event of worship takes many forms.  One of the biggest ways that worship happens is through music.  This is true today and has been for centuries.  Psalm 69:30 tells us that “I will praise God’s name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving.”  Music, in its various forms, provides an avenue where worshippers can open their hearts to God and one another.  There is power in the corporate application of music.

Martin Luther (the one who nailed the 95 theses to the door and kicked off the Protestant Reformation), was a huge proponent of the role of music in worship.  Charles Moss in The Musical Reforms of Luther writes that “Martin Luther viewed music as having powers to repulse evil and to glorify God at the same time.”  In the forward to his Symphoniae, Luther himself wrote that “next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.  It controls our thoughts, minds, hearts, and spirits. “

As vital as music is, there is a downside to the association of music with worship.  Unfortunately, we have made worship about music and the two have become synonymous in our minds.  Instead of music being an aspect of worship, worship is music.  Then we find ourselves in a place that says we can’t worship without music.

The fact of the matter is, as songwriter Paul Baloche says, “worship has more to do with relationship than with music.  Worshipping God with music is simply a tool to help us connect relationally to a living God.”

So, we return to our original question of what does worship look like.  We know one way is music.  But what other ways can we connect with the living God?  How about things like reading, hearing, and applying the Word of God, tithing, living generously, serving, loving others, meditating on who God is, making our prayers more than just requests, developing an attitude of thankfulness, surrendering full control of our life to God, and responding to the truth of God by living it out in our daily lives.

There’s a reason why the event we attend each Sunday is called a “worship service.”  All of the elements that take place in it should facilitate our whole self connecting with God and choosing to live for Him.  It’s not called a “music service” as music is but a part of the whole.

Worship looks like a lot of things. We can connect with God in a variety of valid ways both corporately and personally.  We should not be limited in our ability to worship the living God based on whether there is music available or not.

What does worship look like to you?  What helps you connect with God?  Let me know in the comments.