Category Archives: Worship

10 Powerful Ways to Prepare for Worship

Worship

Lord’s Day worship occurs every Sunday. While worship can occur elsewhere, the assembly of the saints is a special and unique opportunity for Christians. But sometimes worship seems more like an obligation than a privilege. There are some things we can do to make worship more meaningful and far more powerful. Here are ten tips.

Prepare for Worship Personally

1. Relationship

True worship can only exist within a relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus said that the Father was looking for people to worship him (John 4:23). God desires our worship but without some relationship with him there can be no true worship. It is probably useful to consider the strength and depth of your relationship with God. If you find it lacking, do not despair! Continue reading 10 Powerful Ways to Prepare for Worship →

Rethinking Church

Bible General, Worship,

open bible empty pewsYou have noticed that people don’t attend church like they once did. Depending upon who you believe, experts say that as many as one-half of Americans do not attended church services on a regular basis. In some areas that number is far higher. Many churches close their doors every year. Even in established congregations the number of “core” adherents, those that attend every service, is maybe only 40 to 50 percent. A Sunday morning worship service may see 150 people but then attendance drops to maybe 80 on Sunday night and Wednesday. In fact, many congregations no longer offer Sunday evening worship services and have ended midweek studies due to a lack of interest. The view is quite dismal.

Some churches have assumed that their numbers are falling because they have not kept pace with changing cultural norms. They offer Saturday services as a substitute for those who do not attend on Sunday but even then the numbers remain poor. Maybe there is another way to approach the crashing decline of church attendance.

Continue reading Rethinking Church →

A Call for Courage in the Pulpit

2 Timothy, Bible General, Church, Homilitics, Uncategorized, Worship, ,

Preaching is the finest task a man can do. There is no more demanding work than that of a dedicated spokesman for God. The task is too important to be left to last-minute-find-a-sermon-on-the-internet kind of preachers. The preparation is hard and the presentation exhausting. To be sound, preaching must be done with courage.

Sound gospel preaching demands courage.

The time for men willing to stand and speak plainly is now. It takes little or no courage to preach the trends of today. Few people will complain of preachers who sound more like television variety show hosts or who seem to craft their preaching after a stand-up comic somewhere. However, men who call sin what it is and point out sin in their communities and even in their churches are not terribly popular.

“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

Paul’s carefully worded, inspired advice to Timothy speaks plainly to us today. Continue reading A Call for Courage in the Pulpit →

Presumptuousness

Bible General, Daily living, Worship
“going beyond what is right or proper; excessively forward.”
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th

God’s people have always struggled with presumptuousness. It has plagued them since Eden and shows no sign of slowing itself. Today it marks the nature of much of the religious world and even many within the Lord’s church. Some examples will assist our understanding of this terrible problem.

In Numbers 14, the children of Israel have heard the evil report of 10 of the spies who had viewed the land of Canaan. Their plan is to return to Egypt and the miserable conditions there rather than to allow God to work among them (14:4). They have begun to mourn and complain and have even begun to stone Moses and Aaron (14:10). The Lord has rebuked them sternly and told them they would wander in the wilderness for 40 years (14:34). Now they have now repented of their complaining (14:39). However, their repentance turned to presumptuousness for now they intend to march into the promised land like they should have done the day before (14:40).  Despite warnings from Moses, they march into the teeth of the Amalekites and Canaanites presuming that God would be with them. How wrong they were! The Bible records that they were beaten back.

In 1 Samuel 4 the children of Israel went up to battle against the Philistines. They were beaten in battle with the loss of 4,000 men (4:2). They re-assembled and took with them the sacred ark of the covenant (4:3-5) and again headed into battle presuming that God would certainly protect the ark and bless their plans. He did not! Instead, 30,000 Israelite soldiers died and the ark itself was lost to the Philistines.

In Amos, the prophet rails against the wickedness of Judah, Israel and the surrounding nations. He tells the people of the north that their desire for the Day of the Lord is misplaced and will bring destruction – not deliverance (5:18). The people had presumed that God would surely protect and deliver them in spite of their wickedness. How terribly wrong they were!

In each case, God’s own people took his providence and protection for granted. Without asking they assumed that God would bless their efforts because they were, after all, his people. However the Lord was pleased to allow them to fail miserably. Certainly they failed, at least in part, because of their presumptuousness.

The sin of presumptuousness follows us today despite warning from Holy Writ. John warns that “whosoever goes ahead…” does not have God (2 John 9). That is, when one runs ahead of what God has authorized and promised, he separates himself from God. It is not ours to presume that God will accept worship that he never authorized. It is not ours to presume that God will ever protect or defend us when we live apart from his word.

We avoid such sin when we surrender to his control and fully submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. A man in submission never presumes anything. He seeks for truth and allows that truth to transform his life (Romans 12:2). Let us always be people of the book and never presumptuous.

So What’s An Ebenezer Anyway?

Church, Worship,

Christian hymns draw people closer to the Lord and deepen their relationship with him. They also help Christians encourage other saints. But sometimes we find odd or archaic words in our hymns that could even be distracting to the worshiper. We sing them anyway because they just “sound” right.

How about the great song, O, Thou Fount of Every Blessing?”

“Here I raise my Ebenezer:
hither by Thy help I come…

So what exactly is an “Ebenezer” and what’s it doing in our songs? Bob Prichard, a fine preacher of the gospel and an associate from Polishing the Pulpit says it well:

As a reminder of the great victory God gave to Israel, Samuel took a great stone and raised it as a memorial “between Mizpeh and Shen.” As he raised it he “called the name of it Ebenezer [or stone of help], saying, Hitherto hath the LORD helped us” (1 Samuel 7:12). Whenever the Israelites looked at the stone, they would remember how God had helped them. Unfortunately, the exact site of the stone is unknown today.

Thanks Bob for the explanation. Now let us sing with joy and understanding and worship in both spirit and in truth.