Monthly Archives: March 2009

Worship is Seeing: The Change

Posted on
3

In my last post, we saw how worship can be defined as seeing or searching for something. Here, I hope to adequately describe what happens to us as we search and see God. To begin, let’s read I John 3:2:

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

The point of this passage is obvious—when we see Jesus, we become like Him. There is a profound change that occurs when we view the face of a holy God. We take on His characteristics,  attributes and even His power! I remember asking several of my classmates from CFNI this question: In which period of the day did you have your most life changing moments? Without exception, all of them said it was in the morning chapel service, when we did nothing but gather and worship Jesus. And as I watched their lives, I saw that the change was real.

Let’s review. If I see Jesus as He really is, then I shall become like Him. The elders of TOP and I grabbed a hold of the practical  value in this and decided to make worship our strategy for success at Tabernacle of Praise. The reason is simple. If we can get people to see Jesus as He really is over and over and over again, then they will be like Jesus. They will make the vision of the church their own and live their lives according to it’s boundaries.

Think about it. Less work for us leaders because the Holy Spirit is given enough workspace to move in the people’s lives! Through worship, we ascend to higher levels of godly character.

How often do you look at  Jesus as He really is? How have you been changed by worship?

Worship Is Seeing: A Summary

Posted on
2

Yesterday, Tabernacle of Praise (TOP) and I began a sermon series on worship. For those of you who know us, you’ll remember that worship is one of the five central strategies to building our church. In this series we wish to define worship and share why we believe it has to be one of the critical means of building TOP.

There are many ways to define worship, yet for the purposes of this series, I have chosen to use Luke 10:27 as the foundation of our interpretation.

He answered: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

If you remember the context, a lawyer made this answer to Jesus’ question on what the Law says we have to do to access the kingdom of heaven. In the next verse, Jesus agrees with him. So, if using this to structure our definition, we can say that worship is loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. Yesterday, we began our definition by tackling the soul part of loving God.

How does one love God with his soul? Simply put, I believe the answer lies in a search. The soul is that part of man that thirsts, hungers and longs for things outside of itself. The soul’s hunt for something greater than itself is what I call worship. Worship is searching, looking, seeing.

Now, the Bible is full of verses describing the worshiper’s search for God. In the first part of the series, we used Psalm 63 for our reference. Please read it and you’ll see a man whose passionate pursuit of God will inspire you.

www.biblegateway.com

What are you looking for? What you look for every day?

Hello, WordPress!

Posted on
4

This is my first ever blog post on WordPress. There are no fancy images. No accessories. No widgets.

Nothing.

Just plain old text and a promise to grow this thing into a beautiful blog of which mom would be proud. Well, if she ever reads it.

I have some ideas for where this blog is going to go, and I hope that you would like to go there with me. I am looking forward to hearing your comments and interacting with you all. I have every intention of building blog content in several areas that are of interest to me: 1.) Theology, 2.) Ecclesiology (the Church), 3.) Messianic Judaism, 4.) Personal Spirituality, 5.) Culture Studies (especially concerning the issues facing immigrants in the United States), 6.) Leadership and 7.) Writing.

If anything else sneaks up on me, I’ll just squeeze it in there somewhere. By the way, I am on Facebook and Twitter, if you would like to follow me there.

If you are already familar with my work and life, what would you like to read here on the blog?