A fascinating article...

This is an article by CNN about a study done by a professor at Princeton. I think it may ironically illustrate some of our concerns for the church today.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/08/27/almost.christian/index.html

This has been my struggle.

While the church uses the term Worship frequently, it is rare to find a comprehensive definition of worship. In Give Praise to God’s introduction, James Montgomery Boice is quoted, defining worship as a metaphysical event in which the spirit of Man meets with the Spirit of God, and praises God’s Attributes. But when I compare this with an exposition of Romans 12, I find this definition lacking. In Romans 12 I find that obedience to God is our worship. On its own, Song is not worship. Boice claims that worship is a term built from the English Launguage that attributes worth to an object (God). I think that Boice and I agree that worship places God first, and praises his attributes. Burroughs also states that worship has a ‘Drawing Nigh’ aspect to it. This is a point that my current position has difficulty with. It is obvious from John 3 that without God, obedience alone is nothing. Salvation is by Grace through Faith. But if a believer does not living out his faith, then how is he worshiping God? Is Obedience not still a part of worship? Obviously there is a prerequisite that God must be a part of the life of the worshiper, or there is nothing but words. But how can we define worship in a way that is not limited to singing “In the Garden” on Sunday morning and reading a KJV text? What is worship, and what is its role in the daily life of a believer?

Mutual Priority

"If it comes to be that the lives of men and the sanctifying of God's name cross, the glory of God must pass on and must have its course, let the lives of men go which way they will." -Burroughs pg. 26- All throughout scripture God demonstrates that his priorities will be accomplished, despite anything man might do. We as believers, especially in worship, need to have the same priorities that God has, a mutual priority. The priority that God is worthy and will be glorified surpasses any priority that man might have. The death of Aaron's sons is a sobering passage in scripture and makes me realize even more just how important it is to prepare my heart before I come to worship a God who is and will be continually glorified no matter what. In light of the death of Aaron's sons, Burroughs says this, "We think much to have the lives of men taken away, but if we knew what the glory of God meant and what infinite reason there is that God should be glorified, we would not think it so much that the lives of many men should go for the glory of God." -pg. 26- Part of the reason why pride is so dangerous is that it causes man to want to substitute his own glorification in the place of God's glorification. Priority number 1 is the Glory of God.

Reading into it too much?

It's very interesting how Burroughs stresses that Aaron's sons were renowned & with such status and worth. He reminds us over & over again how esteemed these men were in the Israelite nation. Yet THEY were the ones who were put under severe judgement by God. They had been put to higher standards and therefore a higher, more drastic consequence. On page 25, Burroughs states, "...but it did not appear what fire for it did not so much as consume their clothes nor their bodies but went through all and struck them dead, and nobody could tell how." It does not state in the Bible that the fire was invisible or unable to be seen. It also does not state that this fire did not consume them. All it states was that there was something left after this fire to carry out. The tunics may have been charred & burnt with holes in it. There still would have been a tunic & body to carry out. -Leviticus 10:5

The Bible as our Basis

God is not satisfied with our worship if it is not done according to what he has commanded. Boice clarifies this well when he states, "This reminds us that there are two ways to commit idolatry: worship something other than the true God or worship the true God in the wrong way (GPTG 33)." This struck me more as I was reading it because I have heard girls make comments like, "I don't like songs in chapel because we sing too much Bible." Comments like that have always bothered me because how can we go wrong in our worship if we are bringing praise to God according to the words of the Bible. Our worship needs to center on the Bible. While reading this section of GPTG, I was really convicted about how we are supposed to worship. Worship is to bring praise to God the way he desires not the way we like to worship. The Bible must be the basis for our worship anything else is idolatry and does not give God all the glory that is due his name.

Holy, Holy, Holy

Jeremiah Burroughs makes this quote on p. 27 of Gospel Worship, "God stands upon nothing more than to appear to all the world to be a holy God." He goes on to expound on this on the next page as well. Above all things God desires that His holiness be glorified above all other attributes or acts that He has done.

This concept that God's holiness is what He wants to be pointed out above all else is foreign to me. Yes I praise Christ for his death on the cross, for God's faithfulness, etc. But when it comes to praising God for Him being holy, for being set apart from and set above all other things and beings in the universe, it is something I'm not sure I totally understand. Does the general Christian practice praising God above all other things that He is holy? Do we even understand what holy means when it comes to God? How do we practice praising God for Him being holy? What does it look like for us to have a mindset of God being holy above all other awesome things that He is?

I'm not blest with a talent to title things well.

so my inclination for this blog is to talk about something that really made me think, and something that was sort of a bright revelation to me as I was reading through this section of the text (“Give Praise to God” because I’m still waiting on the other text).  Since I haven’t been saved for a huge amount of time right now I feel like a ton of things have really just took me by surprise. For instance, whenever I thought of God, I usually imagined this big tough man who ruled all there was in creation and saw too it that things came out the way he wanted to. authoritative and strong willed-- I never imagined that he was a sensitive God who cared so much about the way that we worshipped, and that he hurts if we end up worshipping for the wrong reasons.  I’m thrown for a loop because the God I always saw as the big tough guy who runs our world- is hurt if I am personally worshipping him for the wrong reasons- it even says that He’s greatly concerned with how we worship. Later on on page 31 it mentions something that we get caught up with our imaginations and opinions on how we should go about things, and that REALLY made me think about how much I’m just so chill about everyones opinions on things. God wants everything that we believe to be bible based and completely in scripture, and for me it’s always been something I’ve been so chill about. I’ve always just thought that it was absolutely fine to have your own opinion on how you’re supposed to do things and what you believed, because in the end God’s going to sort out what’s right and what’s wrong anyway. So this text has really been helping me get more things in check-

I’m confused about things too though, because if we’re to be so concerned with how we worship then what exactly ARE we supposed to do for worship? What I personally believe is that for worship, it’s because we ourselves are worshipping with whatever we do, our whole being, with the everyday lives that we live. I truly believe that when I sit down and start a painting that I’m glorifying God with a passion he gave me, something that I can use to witness to people because of the messages I try to have in all the paintings I do.