i am an offering

There are many things that hinder us from worshiping God, but sometimes we don’t even know what they are or what to do about them. For me, for a long time, it was a double life of saying and teaching one thing but living another, struggling with a particular sin. I still fight this battle often, but God has given me great resources to help. So what are some things that keep us from worshiping Him?

• First, unbelief. It is impossible to worship God if we don’t believe in Him. Shannon from 4whatitsworth has a great article about this.
• Second, a lack of understanding of who God is. Either we don’t know Him at all, or we’ve been taught incorrect things about Him. Solution: Get to know Him by reading and meditating on His Word daily, listening to messages and reading books on theology, and spending time with Him in prayer.
• Unconfessed sin. Once we get to know God we know that He hates sin. If we don’t confess our sin to Him and to others, it is very, very difficult to worship God rightly.
• Pet sin. Sure, we confess it, but we keep on coming back to it and justifying it. God says through the prophet Isaiah, and again as Jesus quoted this passage, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” (Isaiah 29:13, Matthew 15:8, Mark 7:6). This was a tough one for me for a long time, and I still battle with it, but as I mentioned, God has brought me a long ways and I’m so thankful for His correction and His grace!
• “I can’t worship when…” Perhaps you think you can’t worship God when a particular worship leader is leading or a particular song that you don’t like is sung. Or you think you can’t worship God when a particular song you like isn’t sung. This is a dangerous trap to fall into and it shows more about the attitude of your heart than your ability to worship. I struggled with this one for a long time as well until God has recently convicted me of this attitude and is helping me grow tremendously in this area.

I’m sure there are many other personal worship lids that we’ve dealt with. Care to share any and how God has perhaps freed you from them? Or maybe your struggling with how to break free. Leave a comment and we’ll help each other out.

The more I study the subject of worship within the Bible and how God made things right through Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross the more I am completely blown away at how it all works. I am blown away at the privilege we get now to actually be the sacrifices that God now desires; living sacrfices. (Romans 12:1)

But what happens when we fail? And fail we do. Over and over and over. We are called to “continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God” (Hebrews 13:15) to present our bodies as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1) and to “offer spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2:5) But how do we succeed in the task of doing these things we have been called to?

The simple answer is this: we can’t succeed. It is hopless for us. No matter how hard we try, we won’t make it. The longer answer and the one that gives us victory is found in that small phrase in 1 Peter 2:5 that we might skip over sometimes: “acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

If you are feeling like your offering isn’t good enough, you’re right! But the comfort comes in this. Because of the Blood of Jesus Christ, our sinful offering becomes not only acceptable but perfected before God! Perfected! Hebrews 10:14 says,

For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.”

Yes, our lives are sinful and will never measure up to God’s standard, but because of Jesus’ perfect blood becoming the perfect sacrifice for us, He now perfects all of our sacrifices that we are called to make to God! What victory that brings us! Does this give us license to sin and just take for granted that perfect sacrifice? Absolutely not. The rest of Hebrews 10 gives some strong warnings against this. But we have the confidence and ability to know that when we do fail in the midst of pursuing holy lives, Jesus is always there for us before the Father, pleading for us to the Father that His blood makes us completely and absolutely clean.

Sunday was again a great day in the life of Living Word (as always).

Songs for the service:

• Lord Most High - Harris/Sadler
• Sing to the King - Foote
• How Deep the Father’s Love for Us - Townend
• Jesus, I Come - William T. Sleeper

We’ve been talking about “the day the universe changed” for the last two Sundays and it’s been really interesting. This past Sunday we talked about the blame game and were definitely challenged to examine ourselves. We were also reminded of the promise in Genesis 3 that the woman’s offspring (Jesus) would bruise his (the serpent’s) head. Literally blow a crushing blow to him and vanquish him. I thought it was awesome that Sing to the King has the exact words, “Satan is vanquished and Jesus is King” in it. I had no idea that there would be a section on “how to vanquish Satan” in the message. I love it when God works like that.

We had another awesome Truth Project small group meeting with some tough discussion. We talked about the question “who is man” and how society generally teaches that man is basically good with no tendency for evil. The Bible teaches the opposite. It was a struggle for some people in the group to understand how children could be born into sin. I have to admit that I was having a tough time coming up with an explanation. I know the Bible says “in sin my mother conceived me” (Psalm 139) and “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3) but how do you argue that children are sinful to someone who doesn’t believe that the Bible is true (our group believes the Bible is true, I’m talking in general here)?

I also assured the group that even though children are sinful, there is somehow a mystery that they can have great faith, even at the infant stage (at least I’m fairly certain the Greek implies this in the New Testament where Jesus talks about having the faith of a child). This is something that we can never understand, one of those amazing mysteries of God that we can take joy in.

Well, today has been full of interesting comments and laughter because of the fact that there is a mouse apparently living under the Ministry Director’s mini-fridge in his office! It’s amazing how something so small can create such a different atmosphere.

It’s good to think about as we think about ministry. Small things can affect an entire church, even though we might think about it.

Negative effects:

• Small sin - Which in truth doesn’t exist. No sin is small. When there is unconfessed, unrepentent sin in leadership ugly things happen.
• Small vision - We cannot even begin to comprehend the vastness of God. Why do we limit the vastness of what He could be doing through the local church?
• Small attitudes - Even a tiny bit of negativity towards each other can influence people much more than we realize.
• Small planning - Ministry is hard work and needs to be prayerfully planned. While we definitely want to be open to the Holy Spirit’s promptings, we can’t blame our lack of planning on “waiting on the Holy Spirit.”

Positive effects:

• Small pride - “He who neglects discipline despises himself. But he who listens to reproof acquires understanding. The fear of the LORD is the instruction for wisdom, and before honor comes humility.” Proverbs 15:32-33 Humility is so important in ministry.
• Small view of ourselves compared to God - Without Him, we can do absolutely nothing.
• Small details - Quality is very important to have in a church. Pay attention to the detail of small things that could influence others to respect the church more and eventually come to a love of God (bulletin design, worship team training, publication design, Scripture readers that read with passion, many more)