Jesus we love You…oh how we love You. You are the one that our hearts adore…

Last night was a praise and worship night where we joined together with another church.

It was wonderful.

From the beginning the Spirit’s presence was manifested. You know those chills you get, the smile that comes across your face, the joy, the victory, the hope we receive as we corporately gather together to recognize and praise our God.

Yet towards the end of the night and in the midst of telling Jesus how much I love and adore Him, I was drawn back to my own reality and the question that seems to steal away my intimacy with God.

Do I really know the love of God?

Meditating on this and seeking His word brought up two distinctions regarding God’s love.

The first belief without a doubt is that God is love.

His mercy, grace, forgiveness, and our very breath of life is because of His love.

Unchanging and steadfast, a love that nothing can separate us from!

A love that brought redemption and reconciliation and allows us the blessing of knowing Elohim, God Almighty as our Abba Father. Yes, I believe this!

Knowing that truth then lead me to then ask what I am looking for to determine if I know ‘the love of God’.

Many like myself, have grown up with brokenness in our families. Absent or unloving parents, mistakes made, and wounds unhealed have left a ‘longing for love’. In the flesh, my defensive responses of pride and entitlement or hurt and anger can even now arise as idols that compete and rob me of relational intimacy with God and others.

God has been continual healing me and I am grateful to say that the break in that moment of worship was by His grace. I knew to go to His word to allow Him to give the answers that I could now receive in His timing.

1 John 4 brought me to the truths that set captives free. Please walk with me through my thoughts as the Spirit did His transforming work:

8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Woah, that was right to the point and my first response was this doesn’t sound like the unconditional love I expect from God. God is telling me I need to do something to know Him and His love.

12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

‘If we love another’, there it was again, a condition and one that I don’t do well with. Is God then not abiding in me? Would not this thinking cause me to question God’s love for me?

15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.

Wait, that is me, I have made that confession and God is abiding in me and I in Him.

And there it was that God’s living, acting, mighty and powerful word spoke to me.

It was no longer about what I needed to do, but what God has already done. We love because He first loved us. (v19) and He who is in me is greater than he who is in the world. (v4)

These truths about love were not warnings and condemnation for my failure to love but instead a reminder that I am born again by His Spirit to love as He does(v7) and that as He is, so also are we in this world. (V17)

He reminds me His love will be perfected in me, (v12 and V17) and His love will cast out fears that are against His love. (v18)

His grace and faithfulness revealing His love as His prophetic word now answers my longing soul:

16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.

God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

Thank you Jesus that You are Love. May we continue to abide in love, love as You loved, and know and believe the love God has for us. Amen

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Speech can be a used greatly for good or ill. Everywhere there are people who have been encouraged, challenged, or had a major life change because of a speech they heard or a conversation they had. On the other hand, there are just as many people who are discouraged, hurt, or even considered psychologically damaged because of words people have said. The problem isn’t words themselves, but how they are used. As we’re going to see, our speech can be used as a tool to worship God, or not.

Worship, in summary, is giving worth to something or someone. It is an “expression of reverence.” The way we can worship God with our speech is by using our words the way God designed and intended us to. This is the way we worship God with any part of our life: we surrender how we would desire things to be used, and instead give God back control to work His original plan and purpose in our lives.

The perfect image of God’s will and purpose for our lives can be found in the law of God. When Jesus came to earth to pay the price for our sins, He said that He did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it (Matt 5:17). There was nothing wrong with the law of God - it is perfect. The issue is that we cannot fulfill the law perfectly, so, rather than giving us justification before God, the law left us at odds with God and in the crosshairs of His judgement (Romans 7:7-10). What is different for the Christian is that we see the law as a guide, a tutor, and something to show us the perfect will of God - yet we don’t look to it to be justified. No amount of working out the words of the law will make us right before God, only the grace and blood of Jesus can save us.

With that said, the law, and later Jesus, both show us to perfect will of God in every area of life, including speech.

Using Speech As Worship To God

I think most of the things we shouldn’t say are fairly obvious. We easily remember what our parents told us. “Don’t say it if it’s not true, unhelpful, or unkind.” However, this is a greater issue than we may realize. The book of James reminds us us it is detrimental to think that we can simply play God by worshiping Him with our words one moment, and then turn and use our words in a way He didn’t design us to.

"With it [the tongue, our words] we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.” James 3:9-12

This is a very sobering reminder. It reminds me of the phrase you might have heard from your mom, “Do you kiss your mom with those lips?” after you cursed or something else.

So, we’re aware that God did not give us mouths to curse others, lie, and generally be unkind. But as a step further: how can we speak in a way that actually worships and glorifies God, and doesn’t merely avoid bad speech?

A simple way we could summarize the words we should speak is “truth in love."

Paul writes in Ephesians 4:15 that “…Speaking the truth in love, we [the church] are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ."

"Truth in love” is a great summary of how we should speak to people. The truth, as proclaimed in God’s Word is one of grace, encouragement, hope, and life. The truth God proclaims is one that reminds us that we are not perfect, yet in the same breath reminds us that He has hope for us because of His grace towards us. Here are some examples of things we ought to speak to people on a DAILY basis:

When life is hard and people loose hope, God is good and has a plan.
When people mess up, we have grace towards them, and remind them of the grace and love God has towards them.
When things are going well, we rejoice and encourage, and remind people of the goodness of God.
When faced with a difficult decision, we can pray for people, and remind them of God’s perfect guidance and plan.
When people are discouraged as they follow God, we have a truth that our labor is not in vain.

God’s truth and love covers every situation we may face, good or ill. Our mouths were created, not to hurt or discourage, but to pass on the truth and love that God has for each and every one of us. However, since sin entered the lives of the human race, we’ve missed this great calling, but by the grace of God, we are given the opportunity to reclaim the God given purpose for our mouth and words.

Where Does the Change Come From?

The Bible isn’t into simplistic outward change. Jesus made clear that our words are not merely a speech problem but a heart problem.

"Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” -Jesus (Matthew 12:34)

What Jesus is saying is that you can have the best methods to change your speech in the world, but eventually, the heart will win out. And not only will the heart come to the surface, but God sees your heart throughout your entire life. You can’t fool God by only fixing your words without having a heart change.

The solution? We should strive for our words to glorify God, but we should not neglect the source of the issue. If we want a fruit tree of unkind words to stop producing fruit in our lives, we need to be proactive in destroying limbs, but we also need to continually ask for God’s grace, that He would pull the tree up by it’s roots.

So as you pray and seek to worship God with your words, let us use every failure of speech, and even our ongoing successes, as an opportunity to go to God and ask Him to continue to work in our hearts so that our words would have a long lasting change.

So will you take back the purpose of your words? We ought to realize the great calling we have on our lives. Not one where we merely avoid saying “bad” things, but where we take hold of the good words and life giving encouragement that we were created to speak. Will you speak in truth and love today?

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Worshiping God in our actions is well known idea amongst Christians. Though, just because it’s a common idea doesn’t mean it’s well understood.

A primary verse for worshiping God in action is Colossians 3:17 where Paul writes:

"Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father."

But the question is HOW do we do all things “in the name of the Lord Jesus”?

The answer is straightforward. As described in Hebrews 11:6, it’s "impossible to please God without faith" (Hebrews 11:6a). All faith responds in action, whether it’s song, prayer, etc - yet what we’re looking at now is, what does it look like in the normal actions of life?

Hebrews 11 has many great examples of “heroes of faith” such as Abel, Abraham, Moses, and others. The common thread is that they acted in faith towards who God is and what He told them to do.

What does this mean for us?

I trust that God has spoken to you. In fact, I know He has. If you have sought to hear from God, He promises that He will speak to you. I don’t guarantee that He will open the heavens and speak audibly to you, I don’t even assume that you have “felt” God saying something specific to you. However, God’s Word has many things to say about how God desires us to live. It tells us how He desires us to love others, to encourage others, to flee sin, to repent when we sin, etc. There are many things God has asked us to do, and when we act on these things in faith, we are worshiping God in our actions.

Faith in action

Look at it this way, you can wake up and pray out of duty, or even a good habit, OR you can choose to pray because you have faith that what God has said about prayer is true. That because of your faith in Jesus, God desires to hear from you and desires to be a part of your every moment.

We can give to the church we attend or help out the homeless person on the street, but Hebrews 11 tells us that all of these things are not worshipful to God unless they’re done through the eyes of faith. Faith that believes that God has called us to do something that will have impact because He is working through us.

Now, you can be sure that God will be working through you no matter what. We see God using people throughout the Bible who had no intention of seeking God, or obeying Him. However, although your actions are used by God regardlessly, it has to be your choice to have your actions be based in faith towards God, and therefore, done in worship to Him.

Worship is an internal decision with outward consequences. So the question remains yours to answer: why do you do what you do? Is it because God has told you to and you desire to please Him, or is it because it’s “how you were raised” or “it’s just the right thing to do”? The answer to this question will determine how much of your life is wasted effort and how much is truly worship to God.

It’s a lifetime process, but I hope we can all answer these questions more and more with:

"I do ___________ because of what God has done for me, and what He promises to continue to do."

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We don’t often think about prayer being in worship to God, but that’s because we so easily forget the true meaning of worship which is an “expression of reverence”. Think of it this way: By praying to God, we are telling ourselves, and those around us, that God is Someone we need. Someone we desire. Someone we revere with great honor, and respect.

However, by God’s design, our prayers represent something even greater than the words we speak: they symbolize the aroma of incense around God’s throne.

Psalm 141:2 says: "May my prayer be counted as incense before You; The lifting up of my hands as the evening offering."

Our prayers represent the incense that was ordained by God to fill the temple and be both a sacrifice to God and also to set the mood for us. The temple is a holy, special place, where there is peace, calm, and God Himself. This is the environment our prayers are meant to create.

When God ordained how the incense would be prepared and taken care of on a daily basis, He said: "There shall be perpetual incense before the LORD throughout your generations.” (Exodus 30:8)

Just as God’s holiness and presence never cease, neither was the incense to end. It was to represent the presence of God to the people.

And similar to incense, we have found this same calling in prayer.

Prayer is to fill our lives as our bodies are now the temple of God (1 Corinthians 6:19). By having prayer fill our lives, we are not simply asking for God’s power to work, but we are filling our lives with the reality of God’s presence just as incense filled the temple.

Our prayers are meant to be ceaseless (1 Thessalonians 5:17), meaning that we are to have prayer be our 1st response to every situation in life - good, and bad. This embodies the entire purpose of God’s plan of redemption for all people: to have a personal, and constant relationship with God Himself.

In the days of the temple, only the priests had the privilege of lighting incense and giving sacrifices. However, now we are all made priests and have the privilege of praying directly to God and enjoying His presence. Even better than extending that privilege to all people, God has also allowed this to be done in all places! We see in Acts that disciples would praise and pray to God in all circumstances and locations - and God would be present.

This doesn’t mean that setting aside a special place or time is not useful. Although God has made Himself available in all places and times, we, as people, aren't well suited to enjoy meaningful prayer in all circumstances. It is wise for us, as people, to set aside the time, and place to pray to God, as well as have prayer be our first response in everyday life. We see this example in Acts when the it says that “They [Christians] devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” (Acts 2:42). “The prayers” refer to the standard daily times of prayer that the Jews had. There is nothing wrong with having time set aside to pray, this discipline is actually of great benefit to us.

So take this privilege of prayer and enjoy it! We get to speak to the God of all creation. The One Who created us, and knows everything about us. The God Who is above everything and yet still cares for us. The God Who not only knows our present, but desires to work in our lives today! Let’s not take this for granted, but enjoy it to the fullest.

For when we pray, we are giving reverence, honor, glory, and worship to God.

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Worship is what we were made to do, and it is the most fulfilling, and long lasting joy we can find on earth. As covered in the previous post, worship is an “expression of reverence” which comes from every part of our life. This series will touch on multiple areas of life reminding us that we truly can worship God in every area of our life.

Starting off these areas is the one that seems most obvious: Worshiping God in Song.

The Bible is full of singing. In the Psalms alone the word sing or singing is found 76 times, and song or songs is found 118 times (in the ESV version). That is a lot of calls for singing! Later in scriptures Paul even writes that we should be singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs together with thankfulness to God (Colossians 3:16; Ephesians 5:19).

The reality is, singing is meant to be a big part of our worship to God, and there are many benefits to worshipping through song. This article (http://www.unlockingthebible.org/why-singing-matters) gave 7 great Biblical reasons why singing matters, and I’ll summarize each point below.

Obedience

There are many times we are told to do things in God's Word, and one of these is to sing in worship to Him (see verses above). God knows best and the reality is that we are blessed when we obey Him. James 1:25 says that the person who follows and obeys God "will be blessed in his doing.” Although the blessings of God don’t always come in the form of a job we enjoy, a pay raise, popularity, or even the things we pray for - God’s blessings do come in a way that is best for us. God, being God, knows our needs and is a loving Father who desires not only for us to enjoy good things, but to have our character built to be more like Him.

All of these subsequent blessings listed flow from this first one. When we obey God we are blessed. Below are 6 blessings we receive from obeying God by worshiping in song.

A Focus on God’s Word

Many worship songs are written with the intent to speak the truth of God through the voices of His people. This truth comes from and points back to Scripture. As Colossians 3:16 reminds us to have the "Word of Christ dwell in you richly” we are given one way to do that through “singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs."

Encouragement

Singing truth about God solidifies it inside of our hearts and will remind us of the truth as we go about our day. We all have experienced having a song stuck in our heads, why not have the words to those songs be uplifting, truthful, and God focused?

Spiritual Warfare & Spiritual Strength

When we’re focusing on God’s Word, we will naturally be spiritually strengthened. In addition, God has wired us in such a way that we are built up by song. When we combine these two things, we enjoy a spiritual strengthening from God. We see a perfect example in Acts 16:25 when Paul and Silas were in jail. It says that they sang! Singing to God refocuses our attitudes and hearts and prepares our spirit for the spiritual warfare right in front of us.

A Pathway to Joy

In the Bible we oftentimes see joy and singing hand-in-hand. Sometimes joy leads to singing, while other times singing leads us to joy. The most obvious of these calls is found in James 5:13: “Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.” It doesn’t get any simpler than that. However, if you’re struggling with finding joy, sing to God the truth of His Word and preach/sing God’s truth to your own heart as well (Psalm 42 is a great example).

Gives Glory to God

Last, but certainly not least, singing gives glory to God. This brings us back to the purpose of these posts on worship: We are called to worship God, to give an "expression of reverence” to Him. Singing is a large part of worship both now and forever. In Revelation, John has a vision of heaven and in chapter 7 verses 9-10, He writes a scene in heaven when everyone is gathered around the throne of God and singing to Him. This is what singing is about. Singing to God on earth is, and will be, one of the most intimate forms of worship and we’ll get to enjoy it for eternity.

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What do you think of when you hear the word: Worship?

Many of us quickly think of the time in church where we sing “worship” songs, or times where the Bible says that people "fell down" and "worshiped" God. But this is such a small view of worship. Worship is meant to be an all-encompassing lifestyle not only an action done before an altar.

The dictionary’s first definition of worship is: “The acts or rites that make up a formal expression of reverence for a deity.” The Bible clearly teaches that people can give an “expression of reverence” to God in formal settings such as church, but also in every moment of our informal and normal lives. In fact, God often rebuked people in the Bible who had “expressions of reverence” formally, but did not live out their belief in God in their everyday life.

There will be 5 followup posts to this one that will touch on a different areas of life and how we can worship God in them, but as a guideline to live by, we need to ask ourselves:

Am I expressing reverence to God in my daily life?

Everything comes back to that question. Are my actions, speech, thoughts, dreams, and hopes all reflecting the truth that God is real, and that He is truly God, not me? The litmus test for whether our lives are worshipful to God is if we would continue to do, say, and think everything we just the same if God Himself was right beside us. If not, we need to repent and ask God to grow our worship for Him in our daily lives.

I hope this, and the subsequent posts on worship will be both convicting, and freeing. That you will have a sense of lack in your current worship, but that you will realize the grace and freedom in Jesus to be able to worship God in every area of life with joy. Worshiping God is not putting on the bondage of boring, instead, it is life giving because it is truly what each of us was designed by God to do.

Here are links to the followup posts on this subject:

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“And all the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them.” Nehemiah 8:12

They understood. They rejoiced!

And so often I hear the word of God and I groan.

God wants me to be relentless in pursuing Him. God wants me to put the needs of others ahead of my own. God wants me to give the first of my money with a cheerful heart. God wants me to serve others with humility.

Yet they rejoiced.

They read commands like give the first and the best of all your increase and do not exact interest from your brothers and they rejoiced. They rejoiced.

But I so often read the commands and sigh. And then Nehemiah 8:12 and I wonder what’s wrong with me. They rejoiced at the reading of the law and I find myself stressed when I think about making time to pick up His Word. And I wonder why?

But as I look closer, it becomes clear that they didn’t rejoice at a list of rules.

They rejoiced to know God.

And I think that’s where I get off track.
I turn God into a to do list and a list to check off and a measuring stick to see how tall I stand when really it was supposed to be a relationship.

They rejoiced to know God, and I am taking the knowing of God and turning it into a list of rules. And rules and religion never made anyone rejoice.

But knowledge of a good and loving God brings great joy!

When I read the rules and the challenges of God’s Word and see God’s character through them, that brings joy. Because the rules and the lessons of the Bible aren’t a measuring stick so much as they are laser pointer, always focused on Jesus.

So day by day I’m reordering my mind...it’s not a book to read and obey, it’s a relationship to partake in and be transformed by.

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Jesus We Love You by Sue Stahl