Grace. Amazing grace. We hear the word so often but do we understand the scope of those 5 tiny letters?
No matter:
How many people I feed
How good I am (or think I am)
How many habits I give up
How often I go to church
How many ministries I am involved in
How many times I talk about Him
How much I write about Him
How many people I love
I cannot earn one single drop of His love.
I cannot make Him love me more than He does right now.
No matter:
How many times I skip church
How many habits I refuse to let go of
How many excuses I make
How many opportunities I let slip away
How badly I screw it up - repeatedly
I cannot make Him hate me.
I cannot make Him throw me away like yesterday's trash.
I cannot make Him love me less than He does right now.
This is grace.
I come to Him with nothing and He gives me everything.
I do "great", He gives me everything.
I do 'far, far less than great", He gives me everything.
I deserve wrath and judgment.
He gives me mercy and life.
Grace.
He was not kidding when He told the Apostle, "My grace is enough for you" (2 Cor. 12:9)
If you turn to Him, no matter how good or how bad you think you are, grace is what you will get.
And His grace shall carry you always, for the rest of your days.
Amazing grace.
Monday, May 30, 2016
Monday, May 16, 2016
You put your left foot in, you take your left foot out...
"Come Holy Spirit"
"Holy Spirit, You are welcome here"
"We invite Your presence"
"Come Lord"
There is a good chance you have either heard, or said, those phrases during a church or worship service at some point. You may even pray them on a regular basis. Also, there is a good chance that in both situations, you repeat them over and over again repeatedly.
While this is the "face of the modern worship" service, there might be a some items worth the noting.
"And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words." ~ Matthew 6:7
(We also see this verse "played out" in 1 Kings 18 with Elijah on Mount Carmel)
No where within the New Testament do we see this (sometimes bordering on extreme) repetition, other than being mentioned in the above as something to not do. Granted, the Matthew verse references prayer and the priests in 1 Kings are "praying" but are not those phrases we began with more akin to prayers than to worship?
Do me a favor and put down the stones for a few minutes anyway, ok?
Why do we "do" worship like this? Is it not because for someone - maybe you - God made His presence "known" (remember that word) during a service or prayer time that included those elements? So, obviously, we assume that if it worked once it will work again. Now stop for a moment and consider the absolute insanity of that line of thinking. That we - people - have somehow discovered the "magical / mystical" pattern to "make" God show up. My use of those terms for the pattern is no accident as doing so borders far closer to witchcraft spell casting than worship. That might rile you a bit but take a look at the worship we see elsewhere in the Bible, say in Isaiah 6:3 or Revelation 4:8 for example. Now compare that to the more "modern" repeating of set patterns in order to obtain the reaction that "we want" and you will see that the modern approach looks a bit more like what happened on Mt. Carmel than what we see being done in His presence in heaven.
There is another slight issue with our opening phrases. Simply put, where is God? Where "is" the Holy Spirit? I mean, we sing / pray for Him to come or that He is welcome to show up or whatever so, obviously, He must not be there. Which, again, is insanity at its' finest. Last time I checked, God was omnipresent - that means He is already there, whether you "feel" Him or not. And even if He were not, He hardly needs your permission to show up nor your personal invite. And just because you extend your personal invitation, does not mean He has to do anything - He's God, He can do what He wants.
Now then, I realize that there is some pretty touchy stuff here but I want you to know I am not - by any means - bashing worship or worship services or how you pray, etc. I do however, want you to consider the "why" of what you do. For if you organize worship music, for example, in such a way as to try and make God show up and do stuff that you want Him to do, then you are - in essence - doing the exact same thing those priests of Ba'al did in 1 Kings. You may try and justify that by saying you are talking to God not whoever they were looking for, but you are doing the same variety of action with the same variety of motive - to get something.
Just something you might want to ponder a bit.
*EDIT*
I have had things I have penned before taken out of context to support or condemn <whatever>. While I do try and be thorough, obviously I cannot control what someone else uses this (or other posts) to say. That said though, I want to reiterate that I am not condemning any modern worship service style or format any more than I would condemn a worshipper of my God.
"Holy Spirit, You are welcome here"
"We invite Your presence"
"Come Lord"
There is a good chance you have either heard, or said, those phrases during a church or worship service at some point. You may even pray them on a regular basis. Also, there is a good chance that in both situations, you repeat them over and over again repeatedly.
While this is the "face of the modern worship" service, there might be a some items worth the noting.
"And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words." ~ Matthew 6:7
(We also see this verse "played out" in 1 Kings 18 with Elijah on Mount Carmel)
No where within the New Testament do we see this (sometimes bordering on extreme) repetition, other than being mentioned in the above as something to not do. Granted, the Matthew verse references prayer and the priests in 1 Kings are "praying" but are not those phrases we began with more akin to prayers than to worship?
Do me a favor and put down the stones for a few minutes anyway, ok?
Why do we "do" worship like this? Is it not because for someone - maybe you - God made His presence "known" (remember that word) during a service or prayer time that included those elements? So, obviously, we assume that if it worked once it will work again. Now stop for a moment and consider the absolute insanity of that line of thinking. That we - people - have somehow discovered the "magical / mystical" pattern to "make" God show up. My use of those terms for the pattern is no accident as doing so borders far closer to witchcraft spell casting than worship. That might rile you a bit but take a look at the worship we see elsewhere in the Bible, say in Isaiah 6:3 or Revelation 4:8 for example. Now compare that to the more "modern" repeating of set patterns in order to obtain the reaction that "we want" and you will see that the modern approach looks a bit more like what happened on Mt. Carmel than what we see being done in His presence in heaven.
There is another slight issue with our opening phrases. Simply put, where is God? Where "is" the Holy Spirit? I mean, we sing / pray for Him to come or that He is welcome to show up or whatever so, obviously, He must not be there. Which, again, is insanity at its' finest. Last time I checked, God was omnipresent - that means He is already there, whether you "feel" Him or not. And even if He were not, He hardly needs your permission to show up nor your personal invite. And just because you extend your personal invitation, does not mean He has to do anything - He's God, He can do what He wants.
Now then, I realize that there is some pretty touchy stuff here but I want you to know I am not - by any means - bashing worship or worship services or how you pray, etc. I do however, want you to consider the "why" of what you do. For if you organize worship music, for example, in such a way as to try and make God show up and do stuff that you want Him to do, then you are - in essence - doing the exact same thing those priests of Ba'al did in 1 Kings. You may try and justify that by saying you are talking to God not whoever they were looking for, but you are doing the same variety of action with the same variety of motive - to get something.
Just something you might want to ponder a bit.
*EDIT*
I have had things I have penned before taken out of context to support or condemn <whatever>. While I do try and be thorough, obviously I cannot control what someone else uses this (or other posts) to say. That said though, I want to reiterate that I am not condemning any modern worship service style or format any more than I would condemn a worshipper of my God.
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