Worship: Come Together Right Now

John 4:23&24
23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.

There is much talk today about being relevant in worship. There is much emphasis on externals, such as having a particular musical instrument, not using a particular instrument, dressing one way or another, etc.. Is this really going to improve and unite our worship? It is basketball season again and we are once again preparing to cheer for our favorite teams. There is a lesson to be learned from cheering on our favorite basketball teams. It is often suggested that the lesson to be learned is from the excitement we get when we go to a ball game, and the question is left, Why can we not get that excited about Worshipping God? I do not fully buy into that argument, because there is a distinct difference between the attitude we are to have when going to a sports bar and going to a king's banquet. However, there is another important lesson. As you watch fans pile into arena pay attention to how they dress and what age they are and how they get along. They are all different ages, they are all different races many times, they usually all bear the mark, logo, or color of their team but they are dressed differently. The elderly fans will often dress up in nice sweaters or even a tie, the young fans will dress with their faces painted and yet they have one purpose when entering the arena and join together to make sure to cheer on their team. Sure, the older fans may not like the baggy shorts on the players, and the younger fans may wish the uniforms were more flamboyant, but this is of little matter at the point when they enter the arena. How does this relate to worship? Some may want this music or that music, or whatever the issue may be, but the focus of worship is God. This is what brings us together. The externals should be non-issues for either party when we begin to worship God.

The Day the Church Stopped Believing In God

John 17:3 “And this is eternal life, that they may know you the only true God.”

How can the Church stop believing in God? Every church is centered on God. It would be better stated that every church is centered on a god. If you believe the logic for the reasoning for God that says God is the being of which no higher being can be thought, then there is only room for one God in the universe. Therefore, God must then be higher than any of our thoughts and thus the only way to know him is to believe what He has revealed about Himself to mankind. In churches all over, they have stopped believing in this Being. It is common to hear someone say, I cannot believe in a God who would send people to Hell. I cannot believe in a God who would not allow women to preach. I refuse to believe in a God that says homosexuality is wrong. I do not want to believe in a God that would choose to save one person and not the next. And all over, without verbalizing it, many have made the claim that they cannot believe in a God that does not let His will be dictated by men's will. I would challenge you to study the Bible and see what God says about all of these things (Romans 9:22-23, Romans 9:13-18, 1 Corinthians 6:9, 1 Timothy 2:12). This does not exhaust the list, but are some of the ways in which we reconstruct God. We try to make him fit our mind, our logic, and our desires. However, the end result is that we stop believing in the one true God, and start worshipping a god constructed in our own mind. What are you basing your eternal life on, the only true God, or a god of you mind?