True Worship

Psalm 63:3 Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, My lips shall praise You. 4 Thus I will bless You while I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name. 5 My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, And my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips.

A few weeks back, our worship leader at church was sharing her story of when worshipping God became real and meaningful to her. In so many words she said that it was when she really came to believe that God loved her through Christ. Up to that point, she recounted how it was more like going through the motions when she worshipped God.

This hit me as so simple yet so profound. It is in grasping with my heart the belief that God truly loves me personally that makes worshipping Him a real experience. It changes how I sing, how I pray and how I serve God and others. Without this revelation flowing out of my heart, it will only feel like duty or obligation. It is love deposited in the heart that makes all the difference. It changes me! I truly love Him in response to the love that I experience from Him. In the opening verse, the psalmist says he will praise the Lord with joyful lips and bless him as long as he live; he will be satisfied as when one eats a feast. Why? Because the psalmist knew the lovingkindness of the Lord. So great and real that it was better than life itself. How true is the Apostle John's proclamation, "We love Him because He first loved us" (1 John 4:19 NKJV).

John Calvin summarized true faith as a person being firmly convinced of God's divine favor toward him personally, that he is reconciled to God, his loving Heavenly Father through Christ. If I have no heart conviction of God's grace toward me through the cross of our Lord, then I can not say that I have really arrived at faith, true believing faith. Because only when I become truly convinced that God has taken away my guilt, shame and sin and I have become precious and beloved to Him, can I truly return that love and live in an abiding relationship with the living God.

When I finally grasped the truth that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, loved me and gave his life for me and believed in my that that it was really true, my entire life was dramatically revolutionized. Yet even as a believer, 24 years later, the strength of the conviction ebbs and flows. When I prayerfully read or listen to God's Word, feeding on the promise of His unchanging love toward me in Christ, I tend to feel the power of that revelation return. When I get distracted and neglect the loving promises given to us, the light of that love gets relegated to just a mental affirmation.

I can sing the same song in church one week and the light of the Lord's glorious love is dim and it becomes almost just a song that I sing. Another week (like this morning!) singing the same song is more an expression of great joy, gratitude and love. In other words, it is REAL!

I pray that my life may be more characterized by this type of worship than the other. Here are a couple prayers from the Bible I will be praying for myself and others:

Ephesians 3:14 For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, 16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, 17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— 19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Psalm 27:4 One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple. 5 For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle and set me high upon a rock. 6 Then my head will be exalted above the enemies who surround me; at his tabernacle will I sacrifice with shouts of joy; I will sing and make music to the LORD.

Some quotes by John Piper

I thought I would share some quotes by John Piper off of his website http://www.desiringgod.org/:

"holy living is the outward form of delighting in God above all sin"

"The greatest news in all the world is that there is no final conflict between my passion for joy and God's passion for his glory. The knot that ties these together is the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him."

"The love of God is not God's making much of us, but God's saving us from self-centeredness so that we can enjoy making much of him forever. And our love to others is not our making much of them, but helping them to find satisfaction in making much of God."

"Do people go to the Grand Canyon to increase their self-esteem? Probably not. This is, at least, a hint that the deepest joys in life come not from savoring the self, but from seeing splendor. And in the end even the Grand Canyon will not do. We were made to enjoy God. "

Read the entire articles:

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/
Articles/ByDate/2000/
1515_The_Goal_of_Gods_Love_May_Not_Be_What_You_Think_It_Is/

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TasteAndSee/
ByDate/2005/1288_Godly_Sorrow_Jesus_and_Ours/


My Lord and God, great is your love and greatly to be enjoyed. Thank you for revealing your great salvation that I may sing, dance and celebrate the greatness of your mercy!

Pleasure

Along the path of my Christian walk, I occassionally come across something monumental that has a lifelong impact. Some years ago I read the book "Desiring God" by John Piper. This book was one such monumental encounter.

Piper's shocking term that he uses throughout the book is "Christian Hedonism". Hedonism is the philosophy of seeking pleasure at all costs. It is something we believers associate with crass depravity and degeneration. And in a worldly sense it is. The Christian life on the other hand is often seen as a life of surrending our desires and living a self-sacrificial life, denying pleasures and living for God out of duty. In a sense it is.

However, the denying and sacrifice is not of all pleasure. Rather it is denying ungodly and evil desires and pleasures and exchanging it for the better, pure pleasure. The truth is that God created us to find pleasure and happiness in our relationship to Him. He created so that the highest pinnacle of joy and fulfilled desire is realized when we find Him! This is not to be confused with our outer circumstances, which are usually filled with troubles. But in our inner peace and enjoyment of fellowship with the Lord.

It comes to this: God WANTS us to find the fullness of spiritual pleasure in Him. Piper says it this way: "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." In other words, we glorify God the most when we enjoy Him the most. The reason we sin so often is that we believe we will find more pleasure in the sin than we would in the Lord. What an afront to God. The truth is that walking with Christ is the only path to the highest happiness.

Psalm 16:11 You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Psalm 63:2 I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. 3 Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. 4 I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.

Genesis 15:1 After this, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: "Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward."

Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace...

If I want to please God; if I want to glorify Him, then I should seek the pleasure found in Him. And I must believe that my highest happiness is found in obeying Him and demonstrate my faith by living it.

Seek true pleasure!

It is not foolishness

1 Corinthian 1:18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

Isn't it totally amazing how to people can have such diverging views? How can something be so precious to one and abhorrent to another? I remember having a conversation about the Christian faith with some one a long time ago. "I just don't understand the 'blood' thing?" What kind of God would kill his own Son? To this person, the cross was an act of a cruel God exacting pain and suffering because of our mistakes. All the more reason for this person not to accept the teachings of the Bible. Somehow, I don't think this person is alone. In fact, it is the common response of those outside the faith.

But why is it so precious to us who believe? The difference is that believers apply it to themselves personally. If you just look at the crucifixion of Christ as an event ordained by God with no application, then it will look like a cruel tragedy that makes no sense. But when a soul applies it to themselves, it takes on a new light. Yes, the cross was a primitive cruel act. But that violent death was allowed for my sake. It was an act of love by God through Christ to save me from eternal misery. Because of that cross, I will be forever in perfect divine bliss and happiness. In eternity, I will never sorrow again. There will be no more pain or suffering. I will be freed from sin and will love as I was originally intended to. I will see my God face to face and enjoy the fulness of his kindness forever!

When I apply the cross to myself, I don't see a mean God, but a God who so loved me that He allowed his one and only divine Son to come in human flesh and free me of my guilt. His love was so great that He broke his own heart by giving up his beloved Son for my sake.

Those who look at the cross as foolishness, fail to look further. If they did, they would see that the Son of God willingly took on the punishment of our sin. It was a sacrificial act of love, not a senseless event. And looking even further, they would see that it was not possible that death would keep it's hold on Jesus. The Father raised him from the dead and He is crowned in heaven with glory and honor as Lord of all. He was raised to highest position, at the Father's right hand, where He reigns forever and ever and where at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow. To those who see only foolishness, we say, "Come join the celebration!"