Tag Archives: worship

Our Confession of Treason

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This past Sunday in worship we confessed our Sin of Treason in the Garden.

God’s word teaches in Genesis 2:10-17 and 3:1-7 that although our King gave us everything that we need to enjoy our lives with him, we instead believed a set of lies that led to our revolt against him. With his half-truths, the devil stirred up discontent in our hearts with God. He suggested a perceived injustice on behalf of God – “he can’t be trusted to take care of you – he’s holding out on you – you don’t need him – you can make your own rules and live free – you can be your own king of the world – you can know all that he knows.”

Here is our Mutual Confession of Treason:

We rejected a Good King for a Tyrant

We traded a Tree of Life for a Tomb of Death

We forfeited Safety for Danger

We gave our Allegiance to a Murderer

We trusted in our own idea of Justice

We believed that we could Provide for Ourselves

We denied that God’s Commandments are for our Good

We exchanged Objective Truth for a Lie

We denied Reality and Fabricated a False World

We left A River of Life for a cesspool of Sorrows

We said “no” to true Love, Joy, and Peace

This is why Christ came – to restore a Kingdom where Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of Lords. Your heart is tempted still to revolt against your King, which is why Jesus says, “seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you” (Matt. 6:33). And which is why Jesus suffered the consequences of treason on the cross. Do you believe that he suffered in your place?

In Worship, we confess our sins and receive forgiveness so that we may know afresh all that we have in King Jesus. His Rule and Reign over your life is the best protection that you could ever have. Seek him and you will find that he is a very good King.

 

I must be getting old. I’ve turned into a bird-watcher.

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Spread some grape jelly on an orange and what do you get? A Baltimore Oriole. I look forward to this time of the year when you can lure these beautiful creatures to your back yard in Northern Illinois for about a month until the mulberry trees bloom, then they disappear for another year.

There was a time that I wouldn’t give a hoot about birds:) – I must be getting old. As years go by what should happen is perspective – it should widen with more and more appreciation for what is lovely:

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” – Philippians 4:8.

Our Lord wants our hearts stirred to worship him through whatever there is that stirs affections and perspective of the grandeur of the world we live in. It can be anything that is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, and worthy of boasting about. Our world is filling up with the exact opposite of what is lovely and pure. So it is incumbent upon the believer in Christ to stay focused on anything that incites wonder, so that you can say more and more as the years go by,

“God must be a beautiful God to make such a lovely bird.”

 

The aim of every Sunday morning: Making much of Christ.

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I recently shared this quote below to our elder and deacon boards to encourage us to keep doing what we’re doing (found the quote on thegospelcoaliton blog). In the end, the size of our church will not matter but the object of our worship will. Isaiah worshiped (Isa. 6) but no one joined him. God was well pleased. Jesus worshiped, and very few joined him. His Father was well pleased. The Father is seeking worshipers. Worship Christ this Sunday (John 4:23) in a church that makes the worship of Christ central. May the Lord bless you this weekend.

“If we entertain people, our church will grow. If we lead in worship, our church may shrink until it is composed of a group of people who want to worship. Then the church has a chance to grow based on the precedent of worship. The church that worships will have many visitors who never come back, and a few who cannot stay away.”  – David Hansen, The Art of Pastoring

Back to Work! But not back to Worship.

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The reason why I’m not back to worship is because I never stopped over the Labor Day, Holiday Weekend. And neither did you. The heart never, never, never takes a day off from worshiping something. The heart never stops calculating the pluses and minuses of what it thinks and feels is an asset or a liability to happiness. Each day that you wake up, you treasure, value, and prize something that you believe is worth living for, worth dying for, worth believing in, worth putting your hope in, worth pursuing. Why? Because the heart was designed that way. Your heart is right now spontaneously worshiping, calculating and assessing worth and value as effortlessly as it is pumping blood. We can’t help believing that something or someone is valuable to my well-being and consequently, something or someone is a waste of my time and effort, at least for now. The heart always puts everyone and everything in a pecking order.

Whatever your heart believes is satisfying, gratifying, mesmerizing – your heart also has eliminated, or at least, bumped-down a rival suitor for the affection and allegiance of your heart. Something or Someone has to always take the back seat so that what your heart really craves gets the attention. Our heart will always de-value something because it is always treasuring something. Someone or Something is always sitting on the throne of our hearts and someone or something is always in the barn cleaning out the dung.

Questions: What did your heart crave the most over the weekend? Did it have to do with the all-satisfying treasure of knowing Christ? Did your participation in one of God’s good gifts cause your heart to give thanks for what you have in Christ? Who or What Did You Worship? However you spent your extended weekend, I hope that Christ was the center of it. If he wasn’t, please consider this: Whatever you enjoyed more than Jesus, he probably made it. Do you think that there is more pleasure in enjoying a peach than enjoying the one who made it?

Come Now, Let Us Reason Together!