The Perseverance of Prayer by Travis Sinks

We’ve all prayed those prayers that feel as if they’re hitting the ceiling. Prayers we’ve prayed for days, weeks, months, years, and with no answer. Thankfully, we have a greater hope than immediately answered prayer. Jesus has not only promised to hear every prayer, but to be constantly doing what’s best on our behalf.

So, what are we to do in times of “silence?"

Pray.
Pray.
And pray some more.

We see in God’s Word that He sometimes answers prayers with ‘yes’, other times with ‘no’, but still other times with ‘maybe/not yet’. We see plenty of ‘yes’ answers, and even a few ‘no’ answers, where we either find that something we’re praying for is against God’s Word or sometimes we just know that God has told us to stop (as He did to Paul as described in 2nd Corinthians 12:8).

Beyond the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers is the troubling answer of ‘maybe/not yet’. Most often, this answer just feels like God is silent. It’s when we have this answer that we need to persevere in our praying.

Jesus gave us a parable in Luke 18:1-8 where He tells us of a widow who went before an unrighteous judge. This judge wasn’t going to give her justice, but she continued to come before him. Day after day she would come, and it says that he feared she would exhaust him by her persistence. So he gave her justice.

Jesus ended the parable reminding us that if an unrighteous judge could be swayed, how much more would our Father in heaven desire to give justice to those who persist in prayer. He then left us with this question: “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"

Jesus’ question should be sobering to us. He is telling us to persevere and not give up, then turns the question on us: will we?

I pray that we will, but let us be encouraged by Jesus’ parable, as it speaks volumes as to the wonderful situation we find ourselves in.

Rather than comparing us to the widow, and God to the unjust judge, Jesus is using their story to show how much better our situation is.

The widow’s situation compared to ours

The story is of a widow who has no public standing, and therefore, no hope before an unrighteous judge. She has no bribe to give, or power to sway the judge. Yet she realizes that she can wear Him down.

We, on the other hand, have as our judge One Who is fully righteous and yet fully loving. By His grace, He pays our debt Himself so that we will not be condemned before Him (since He is perfectly just). Our current standing before Him, by His grace, is one of a child to a Father. What a great position to be in when asking for justice to be done!

Why persevere?

Jesus told us to persevere in the verses leading into the parable. But why should we? If we have a perfectly just and godly Father as our judge, shouldn’t we only have to ask once? Even if, in God’s timing, it was to be fulfilled later, why should we keep asking?

I have 4 reasons for you.

We’re forgetful

The fact is that if we prayed once and left it alone, we’d forget by the time it was answered and we would not be blessed knowing that He heard us, nor would He get the glory for answering our prayer.

We’ll appreciate it more

We tend to appreciate things we anticipate. I love how Donald Whitney puts it:

"Persistent prayer tends to develop deeper gratitude as well. As the joy of a baby’s birth is greater because of the months of anticipation, so is the joy of an answer to prayer after persistent praying.” -Donald Whitney

God wants participants

God does have a plan, but He also wants us to be involved along the way. This is seen perfectly in the fact that Jesus prayed often. By Jesus praying, He was revealing God’s desire to answer prayers (as we’re told that Jesus reveals the Father’s nature), and Jesus was also demonstrating our role to go before God the Father in prayer.

It builds our faith

The last and most important of the reasons is that God has ordained not-yet-answered prayer to be a way to build our faith. Again, Donald Whitney says it really well:

"Sometimes a failure to persist in prayer proves that we were not serious about our request in the first place. At other times God wants us to persist in prayer in order to strengthen our faith in Him. Faith would never grow if all prayers were answered immediately.” -Donald Whitney

Another way to think about it is:

"As we ask, and while we wait, we learn to depend on God.” -Bruce Zachary

We gain nothing but the answered prayer when the answer is immediate. But when we have to wait and labor in prayer, we gain newfound trust, and faith, in God’s working, more than we could have in any other way.

So let us seek God in our not-yet-answered prayers. Let us persevere that we may not only gain our prayer answered, but that we may also draw even nearer to the God we’re praying to, and into deeper relationship with Him and faith in Him.

4 Things To Remember When Facing Trials by Travis Sinks

We will all face our own times of trouble. Peter tells us that we should not be surprised when testing and trials come (1 Peter4:12), and James encourages us to approach our trials with joy knowing that trials and temptations produce endurance (James 1:2). Whether they be personal, family, ministry, or other in nature, they will come, and we ought to be ready.

In Genesis chapter 26, Isaac experiences his own difficulty, a famine. In the first five verses, we are reminded of 4 major truths about facing difficulties in life:

1. We have to experience our own “famines"
It’s specifically said in verse 1 that “there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham.” The writer is making clear that Isaac is about to experience something that is not new to people, but new for him. We should, and can, learn from the sufferings and experiences of others, but God knows that there’s no teacher quite like experience.

2. We need to go to God
In verse two, the Lord appears to Isaac and says:
”Do not go down to Egypt; dwell in the land of which I shall tell you."

If you’re familiar with Bible symbolism, you’ve probably heard that Egypt often depicts the world and it’s system, which are against God and His ways. Just as He tells Isaac to trust Him, rather than Egypt, and to go where He says, rather than what would make sense, God also tells us to go to Him in times of difficulty.

3. Our trials will bless us
God gives Isaac a promise that if he would go into the land that He told him, He would bless him and his offspring. Similarly, when we use our trials as a time to act in faith towards God, He promises that our trials will turn into blessings (James 1:2).

4. Our trials will bless others
In addition to blessing himself, God reminds Isaac that He doesn’t bless people in a box. He blesses us so that we may in turn be a blessing. In Isaac’s case, it means the lineage that would bring the Savior of the world. In our situations it could mean a new empathy or increased character that God will use. Or it could mean a testimony that will be shared in the future or an example set for other believers. God has many uses for our trials, and it’s important to remember that He has a much bigger picture in mind than just ourselves.

If you are going through a trial of ministry, family, personal wellbeing, finances, etc. I hope you take God’s Word to heart and press on knowing that He is good.

Worship In Work by Travis Sinks

Whether we like it or not, work takes up a lot of our lives. If you include your job, housework, errands, and the like, you will spend at least half of your life doing “work”. As our God has told us to “redeem the time” and “make the most of every opportunity," it is necessary for us to realize how to worship God in our work.

So often, work is viewed as punishment. However, this is not the way God primarily views work, and neither should we. True, if a child breaks something, you might have them “work it off” with chores in order to help instill in them them the value of things and to care for the things we have. However, the original purpose of work is not punishment, but an opportunity to worship God. Contrary to common thought, work was not instituted as a punishment of sin. It begins before the fall of man and sin entering the world in Genesis 2:15:

“The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it."

The very first “job” was a groundskeeper for God’s garden, Eden. Could you imagine having the privilege to take care of God’s original creation? I don’t know if animals came to assist Adam and Eve as they did Snow White, but I’m sure it was a glorious endeavor nonetheless.

What can we take away from this?

If God instituted work before the fall, then that makes work an inherently good thing. God did say that work would become more difficult and painful because of the fall (Genesis 3:17-19), but that doesn’t negate it’s original design. Remembering that God instituted work before the fall helps remind us that God has a purpose for us in our work that is outside of living in a world ruined by sin and its affects. That purpose is to worship God, to give an “expression of reverence” towards God, in our working. And just as in every other area of life, we do this by living out God’s initial intent and purpose for our lives regarding our work.

Many people assume that the only “worshipful” work is one of a pastor, staff member of a Christian organization. The truth is that God doesn’t separate between the spiritual and the secular when it comes to worship. Anything can be done in worship to God, as we saw 2 posts ago in the “Worship in Action” post, and this includes work. Whether working as a pastor, CEO, garbage man, barista, app coder, or the thousands of other possibilities, you can worship God while at work.

So HOW can I worship God at work?

The first major piece to worshiping God at work is not abusing our authority at work.

In Luke 3, John the Baptist is calling people to repentance and proclaiming that judgement is coming. There were three groups of people we see asking John what repentance looks like in their situation:

1. The Crowds. Verses 10-11 tell us that the crowds (generically, everyone) asked John what repentance meant for their life and he said that if they had two tunics, to share one with someone who didn’t have one, and whoever had the same with food, should do the same. Generically, we are told to be caring for one another. To be generous, and love one another as we would like to be loved.

The following two groups shed more light on our situation with work:

2. The Tax Collectors. Verses 12-13 shows the tax collectors coming to John and asking what they should do. It may come as a surprise to you, but John didn’t tell them to quit their jobs. Tax Collectors were the most hated of all people in Israel as Rome decided to hire Jews to tax their own people so they were viewed as traitors serving an oppressive government. The money they took from the people paid for the salaries of many an unjust soldiers who were known for oppressing the Jews on a personal level. To make matters worse, many of these tax collectors would demand more from the people than Rome did. For example, if Rome wanted 20% of a person’s salary, it wasn’t uncommon for a tax collector to charge 25% and then to pocket the additional 5%. If a Jew refused to pay the higher price, then they would be arrested for not paying taxes. The system was very corrupt. However, John’s response wasn’t to quit their jobs and remove themselves from what many considered an already oppressive government. Instead, John told the tax collectors to only collect what Rome told them to. Essentially, he told them not to take advantage of their position by hurting others.

3. The Soldiers. Verses 14-15 tell us that the soldiers were told a similar thing to the tax collectors - to not take advantage of their position over others. To not enjoy the “perks of the job", that hurt others.

What we can gain from this passage is this: not all "perks of the job" glorify God. I worked as a barista for a few years, and it was assumed that your friends would never pay for drinks. I was pretty much the only one who didn’t go along with this mentality, because unless my employer said to give it for free, it is not my position to give away free drinks. It’s a simple example, but every job is given some level of authority, but it is your choice to use that authority to worship God, or not.

The second major piece to worshiping God with our work is that we ought to work hard and well. Paul writes in Ephesians 6:5-8,

"Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free."

As described in this passage, Christians ought to be the best employees ever! Paul is saying that we should work to the very best of our ability, as if Jesus were our direct boss in the workplace. This means that we should not be known as lazy in the office. That we should not use our time unwisely, or take unnecessary breaks (time theft really is stealing). As Christians, we should work hard to do our job well, and with a desire to bless our employer/boss.

I love the way Martin Luther King Jr. described how a Christian should work:

“If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music ... Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”

What an awesome way of putting it. We should work hard, and work well, not so that we may receive glory from people, but from God. Because as we work hard, we are giving a testimony and witness to the God who gave us that job. To the God who created the concept of work, and desires us to work well. This is how we give worship to God in our work.

Worship In Speech by Travis Sinks

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:

1. When life is hard and people loose hope, God is good and has a plan.
2. When people mess up, we have grace towards them, and remind them of the grace and love God has towards them.
3. When things are going well, we rejoice and encourage, and remind people of the goodness of God.
4. When faced with a difficult decision, we can pray for people, and remind them of God’s perfect guidance and plan.
5. 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?

Worship | In Action by Travis Sinks

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."

Love On Display by Travis Sinks

Our Mission

At Redemption Church, our mission is to Pursue & Proclaim Jesus. We accomplish this through our four main focuses: Sunday Mornings, Community Groups, Leadership Development, and Outreach. Everything we do as a church comes from one of these main sections. We desire to gather together on Sundays to worship and hear the public proclamation of God’s Word, we gather together in Community Groups to encourage, and pray for each other, while also living life together through each other’s joys and struggles. We also desire to specifically build up people in the church who are called lead in larger capacity at Redemption Church by focusing on Leadership Development. Each of these three things are meant to build up and encourage the current Christians that gather together at Redemption Church Delray Beach.

However, God has called us to not only build up each other, but to reach outside our four walls and show the love of Jesus to our local community and all those we come into contact with. We do this through Outreach. Sometimes this means that we host a booth during a city event, other times we run shoe drives, or help the local food kitchen, but it’s not limited to organized group events. Outreach is also a daily activity that every Christian should be engaging in. Paul teaches that we are ambassadors for Christ in our everyday life, and therefore, we never “clock out” of our Christian life (2 Corinthians 5:20).

One way we, as a church, will be equipping ourselves to show the love of Christ to people throughout our day is through our new “Love On Display” cards.

As a Christian, we should be living lives that cause people to ask: “Why?”. People should wonder why we would desire to help them when they can’t pay for their groceries or why we would comfort them when they are obviously having a hard day or why we would go out of our way to help them when their car is on the side of the road. However, sometimes, we can’t always find the words to share why we do what we do, or maybe there’s no time to. We want to help reach out to our community through our actions of love, and we want them to know why.

These cards simply say that Jesus has come to give us life, and life abundantly. The back of the card tells the reader that your act of love towards them was to remind them that Jesus loves them, that He has a great plan for their life, and that He desires them to know HIm. The cards also direct readers to visit "www.redemptiondb.com/love”. This webpage explains the Gospel and invites them to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior.

We desire for Delray Beach to be one of the most well loved cities in the world because we are a people who have been saved and redeemed by Jesus, Who first loved us, and we want the people of Delray Beach to have the opportunity to know Him as well.

So please, keep some cards on you and be looking for opportunities to love the people around you. God has prepared good works for you in advance that you might walk in them, so enjoy the supernatural opportunities God provides for you to love people in your very normal, daily situations.

-Pastor Travis

Worship | In Prayer by Travis Sinks

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.

The Best Trick To Wake Up Earlier by Travis Sinks

Sleep Is Necessary.

I was so disappointed when I realized this. I held onto the hope, even through early college, that there must be a way to sleep less. Although I enjoy the benefits of sleep, it's always felt like such a waste of time.

I've wondered for a while how much sleep is really needed/appropriate. That's obviously a question that will be answered different for each individual, which makes it even harder to answer. I've seen endless posts from entrepreneurs and church leaders on how much sleep is needed. I read an article recently covering the range of sleeping patterns of a variety of famous leaders: from Winston Churchill, to Benjamin Franklin, and even Barrack Obama. The conclusion was that you have to sleep whatever is best for you (again, not helpful). Some of these people slept 4 hours a day, while others 9 hours. Some went to bed at 9pm and others at 2am. There was no perfect system - just a perfect system  for each person.

THE SITUATION

Sleep will always be a blessing and a vice. The Bible warns people of sleeping too much, and too little. Proverbs 6:10 and 24:33 both teach that if you sleep and rest too often, then you'll fall into poverty. Your life will be a wreck. On the other hand, Psalm 127:2 reminds us that it is in vain that we rise early and stay up late because we are anxiously working, and it ends by reminding us that God is good, and He desires to give us the good gift of sleep and rest.

The balance is found in resting, but not being lazy.

THE FIX

As mentioned above, there is no perfect system - but if you've read this far, then you probably want to shift your schedule and wake up earlier. I can't remember where I heard this, but this is the best advice for waking up earlier that I've ever heard:

"If you want to wake up earlier, you have to go to bed earlier.”

As much as this seems not helpful, this truth is GOLD. The issue isn't a discipline to wake up early, but a discipline to go to bed earlier. You can be disciplined to wake up earlier all you want, but that will only last so long before your natural need for sleep catches up with you.

It's as simple at that. If you individually need 7 hours of sleep and you want to wake up at 5am - then you need to be asleep at 10pm. You have to work backwards and choose your bedtime to get the rising time that you want.

NOTE: I've also heard that one of the best things you can do is have the time you wake up be consistently the same. This doesn't work for some lifestyles in the service industry, or others, but it does work well with the above mentioned tip of choosing your bedtime to reflect your rising time.

THE BEST TRICK TO WAKE UP EARLIER

However, we are blessed in a couple weeks with a once a year opportunity. If you're wanting to change your sleep pattern, it can be fairly difficult. It can take a week of extra discipline to wake up an hour earlier until your body's clock follows in suit. However, I heard this great tip from Chad Brooks over at The Productive Pastor where he suggested utilizing Daylight Savings Time when you are wanting to wake up earlier.

It's as simple as this: when daylight savings time ends on Sunday, November 1st this year - wake up at the new time you want to wake up. If that's half an hour earlier that normal, it'll actually feel like half an hour LATER because of the time change!

Usually, Daylight Savings Time Ending is just a wasted time change where we enjoy 1 day of sleeping in, and then complain the rest of the year about wanting to wake up earlier, so don't make that same mistake this year!

If you're wanting to wake up earlier: take advantage of the opportunity coming up, and enjoy the benefits all year long.

Worship | In Song by Travis Sinks

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.

Worship | A Summary by Travis Sinks

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:

WORSHIP | IN SONG

WORSHIP | IN PRAYER

WORSHIP | IN ACTION

WORSHIP IN SPEECH

WORSHIP IN WORK